Franklin Parish, Louisiana — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Franklin Parish Detention Center

Operated byFranklin Parish Sheriff's Office
Jail address388 Natures Acres Road, Winnsboro, LA 71295
Jail line(318) 435-8229; jail@franklinsheriff.net
ProgramsThe National Institute of Corrections' Thinking for a Change site lists the Franklin Parish Detention Center, Winnsboro, Louisiana, as a participating facility
What was triedThe sheriff's home page (franklinsheriff.net) was opened after a domain-scoped search; it is a single page with no menu. The bookings page returned by search (franklinsheriff.net/criminal-division/bookings/) returned HTTP 404. The NIC Thinking for a Change page and the Louisiana Sheriffs' Association directory were opened. No parish government (police jury) page was returned by search. Commercial inmate-lookup results were not used.

Source: Franklin Parish Sheriff's Office · 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 Franklin 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 builtNot found
Original costNot found
Paid for byNot found
BedsNot found

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Bryan Linder

Runs the jailYes - the sheriff's home page lists the Franklin Parish Detention Center alongside the sheriff's main office
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)
Where the name comes fromThe Louisiana Sheriffs' Association directory lists Bryan Linder as Franklin Parish sheriff; the sheriff's own home page names no sheriff
Office address6556 Main Street, Winnsboro, LA 71295
Office line(318) 435-4505

Still needed

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

Source: Louisiana Sheriffs' Association - Franklin Parish · 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.
Franklin Parish, Louisiana, not a Franklin County elsewhere: the sheriff's home page says it is "Serving and protecting Franklin Parish, Louisiana" and gives Winnsboro addresses.
The sheriff is named from the Louisiana Sheriffs' Association directory, not from a sheriff or parish page; the sheriff's own home page names no one. The seat (Winnsboro) also comes from that directory.
Only named passes. The sheriff's site is a single contact page; its bookings page returned 404, so no roster was seen. No beds, population, budget, PREA material, housing contracts, bond guidance, fees, deaths or inspection report was found.
The parish's spare search was spent here, scoped to franklinsheriff.net; it returned only the home page and the broken bookings page.
Not found. No Franklin Parish government page was returned by the searches spent on this parish, so the form of government and its members were not read from a parish page and are not recorded.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Franklin 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