East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

East Baton Rouge Parish Jail

Operated byEast Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office, Corrections division
Jail address2867 Brig General Isaac Smith Ave, Baton Rouge, LA 70807
Capacity"1420 male and female adult incarcerated persons"
Age"The oldest section of the jail was built in 1965, and the last major renovation was completed in 1988"
WardenLt. Colonel Cathy Fontenot; Deputy Warden Major James McFarland
Staff"268 dedicated commissioned deputies, clerical and administrative staff"
Bookings"approximately 25 people who are booked into and released from jail each day"
RosterThe sheriff's inmate list page links a live inmate lookup hosted on an outside vendor's domain (centralsquarecloudgov.com), which returned HTTP 403
PhonesBonding (225) 358-4005; Central Booking (225) 358-4009; bond and charge information line 225-308-3400 (24/7)
Visitation"Free video visitation with inmates is available via the kiosks at the prison", scheduled through IC Solutions
Calls and mailPhone calls through ICS Corrections (no rates on the sheriff's pages); regular mail to a processing address in Phoenix, MD
Other programsRe-entry program; work release operated by LA Workforce, LLC
Public recordsThe sheriff takes records requests through a GovQA portal linked from its services page
What was triedSheriff's inmate-list disclaimer, inmate list, About the Sheriff, services, Corrections division and Finance division pages on ebrso.org. The outside inmate lookup returned 403. The Louisiana Sheriffs' Association directory page for the parish was refused with PROVENANCE_REQUIRED and not retried.

Source: EBRSO - Corrections · checked 2026-09-18

Transparency rating

1/10Closed

✓The jail is named
✗Who is in custody — not published
✗Beds and daily population — not published
✗What it costs taxpayers — not published
✗Deaths in custody — not published
✗PREA audits — not published
✗Independent inspection — not published
✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
✗How to post bond — not published
✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what East Baton Rouge Parish publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-09-18. Nothing here says the jail is run well or badly. Every mark moves the moment the parish posts the document.

The Building

You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.

Year built1965 for the oldest section (sheriff's Corrections page)
Original costNot found
Paid for byNot found
Beds1,420 ("1420 male and female adult incarcerated persons", sheriff's Corrections page)

Since then

Last major renovation completed in 1988 (sheriff's Corrections page)

The Sheriff

Sheriff Sid J. Gautreaux III

Runs the jailYes - the sheriff's Corrections division operates the East Baton Rouge Parish Jail (also called East Baton Rouge Parish Prison on the sheriff's inmate pages)
How the office is filledElected parish sheriff
Statutory basisLa. R.S. 15:704 makes each sheriff the keeper of the public jail of his parish; the parish governing authority maintains the jail building and provides the jail physician (R.S. 15:702, 15:703)
Tenure publishedThe sheriff's own page says he has served as sheriff since December 4, 2007
Main office8900 Jimmy Wedell Dr., Baton Rouge, LA 70807; non-emergency (225) 389-5000

Still needed

Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail

Source: EBRSO - About the Sheriff · checked 2026-09-18

The Judges

Louisiana district judges are elected in partisan elections to six-year terms. They are state judicial officers, not parish officials. Who sets bail at first appearance varies by parish - a district judge on rotation, a magistrate or commissioner, or in some parishes a justice of the peace - and Louisiana's bail statutes do not require that first appearance to happen in open court.

Still needed

The parish's bond schedule
Share of the jail population held pretrial
Median time from booking to first appearance

Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-09-18

The Parish Governing Authority

They maintain the jail building. The sheriff runs it.

What they controlThe physical maintenance of the parish jail and the jail physician (La. R.S. 15:702, 15:703).
What they don'tCustody of the jail. Under La. R.S. 15:704 the elected sheriff is “the keeper of the public jail of his parish.”
The governing bodyNo governing-body page was found on the parish's own site

Notes on the record

Louisiana has no general parish-jail inspection law. The Department of Public Safety and Corrections monitors compliance with its Basic Jail Guidelines at least annually, but only for jails that house state inmates for the state per diem; no public repository of those compliance reports was located.
The sheriff runs his own domain, ebrso.org. East Baton Rouge Parish, not West Baton Rouge: every page used names East Baton Rouge Parish.
The capacity check is no: the sheriff publishes a capacity of 1,420 and about 25 bookings a day, but no daily population figure was found.
The roster check is no on a strict reading: the sheriff's pages link a real-time inmate lookup, but it sits on an outside vendor's domain and returned HTTP 403.
The bond_info check is no: the sheriff's pages give bonding and bond-information phone numbers but no guidance on how bail is posted.
The fees check is no: video visitation at the jail's kiosks is described as free, but no phone, remote video or commissary rates are published.
The Corrections page lists PREA oversight among the Chief of Operations' duties, but no PREA audit report was found. The Finance division page publishes no budget. No housing contracts, deaths or inspection report were found.
Parish seat from CCCarto's Louisiana parish-seat list (https://www.cccarto.com/countyseats/louisiana/), checked 18 September 2026.
Not found on a parish page. East Baton Rouge is one of Louisiana's consolidated city-parish governments (Baton Rouge), but no city-parish government page was opened, so no titles or names are recorded.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in East Baton Rouge Parish and what it costs the people who live here. Nationally, almost 77% of the people who died in local jails in 2019 had not been convicted of anything, and suicide was the leading single cause of those deaths (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Mortality in Local Jails, 2000–2019).

How much is your sheriff — and your judge — costing you?

Your VOTE is POWERFUL.

The sheriff who runs this jail is elected. So is the parish governing body that pays for it.

Names verified 2026-09-18 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered