The Detention Center
Not scored. The parish's and sheriff's own websites could not be reached or read in the session that produced this record, so their disclosures were never examined. This is a gap in the research, not a finding about the parish.
- Operated byIberia Parish Sheriff's Office
- WardenPatrick Freyou, Parish Prison Warden (answers to the sheriff); prison phone 337.369.2431 — per the LSA directory, not a parish page
- Jail nameNot confirmed from a first-party page; a name appears only on commercial inmate-lookup and victim-notification sites
- State prisonersState prisoners held in parish jails are paid for by the Department of Public Safety and Corrections through a per diem to the sheriff under La. R.S. 15:824(B)(1)(a), stated as $26.39 per day in HB 143 of the 2026 Regular Session, which proposed raising it; whether HB 143 was enacted was not confirmed. That is state money, not federal.
- What was triedThe sheriff's home page (iberiaso.org) returned only a "You need to enable JavaScript to run this app" shell. Before it was returned by search, iberiaso.org and iberiaparishgovernment.com were refused (PROVENANCE_REQUIRED). Two searches (the second was the group's spare) returned no parish government page. The LSA directory entry was read. Commercial inmate-lookup sites and a victim-notification site (iberia.lavns.org) were returned and not used.
Source: Louisiana Sheriffs' Association — Iberia Parish directory entry · checked 2026-09-18
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 Tommy Romero
- Runs the jailYes — the Louisiana Sheriffs' Association directory lists a parish prison warden under the Iberia Parish sheriff
- 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; under R.S. 15:702 and 15:703 the parish governing authority maintains the jail building and provides the jail physician
- Tenure publishedThe Louisiana Sheriffs' Association directory lists "Sheriff 'Tommy' Romero" of Iberia Parish, "Year Assumed Office: 2020"
- Office4701 W Admiral Doyle Dr, New Iberia LA 70560 (LSA directory)
- CautionThe sheriff's own site (iberiaso.org) loads only by script and showed no readable content, so the name comes from the sheriffs' association directory, not a parish page
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Louisiana Sheriffs' Association — Iberia Parish directory entry · 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.
- 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.
- Checks left empty: the sheriff's own site returned only a script shell with no readable content, and no parish government site could be opened, so nothing first-party was examined. This is not a finding that the parish publishes nothing.
- The sheriff and warden names come from the Louisiana Sheriffs' Association directory; it does not count toward any transparency check.
- Iberia Parish (22045, New Iberia) is not Iberville Parish (22047, Plaquemine); the LSA entry and sheriff's site title both identify Iberia Parish.
- Parish seat from CCCarto's Louisiana parish-seat list (https://www.cccarto.com/countyseats/louisiana/), checked 18 September 2026.
- No Iberia Parish government page was opened (none was returned by search and iberiaparishgovernment.com was refused), so the form of government and its members are not recorded here.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Iberia 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