The Detention Center
Ouachita Correctional Center (OCC)
- Operated byOuachita Parish Sheriff's Office
- Jail address400 St. John St., Monroe, LA 71201
- WardenMajor Chris Jerkins, Warden (promoted September 29, 2025; answers to the sheriff)
- Beds"maximum bed capacity of 1,222"
- HistoryHas served the parish "since 1963, when it first opened" with a capacity of 180 inmates
- Operating budgetThe sheriff's page cites the facility's "$13 million operating budget" (a statement, not a published budget document)
- StaffingAbout 150 deputies, per the sheriff's page
- Who is heldLouisiana Department of Corrections inmates, parish court-sentenced people and pretrial detainees
- Other programsTransitional Work Program (its own division page) and a Women's Temporary Work Program for approved female inmates
- PREAZero-tolerance policy stated; PREA Coordinator Sgt. Amber Bowlen, 318-324-2700. No audit report published on the page.
- BookingsThe sheriff's Bookings page (opso.net) links a bookings list at bookings.opso.net after a disclaimer that "inmate information changes quickly"; the list itself was not opened
- Phone and videoPhone service by GTL; video visitation through Getting Out. No rates are stated on the sheriff's pages — they point to the vendors.
- BondA Bondsman Request Form page exists; no instructions on how to post bond were found
- What was triedopso.net: Bookings, Ouachita Correctional Center, Offender Phone Calls, Video Visitation, Bondsman Request Form, 2025 Annual Report (page only; the report itself is on Google Drive and was not read). The OPSO App page returned HTTP 429 twice. No parish government page was returned by the search. Commercial inmate-lookup sites were ignored.
Source: Ouachita Parish Sheriff's Office — Ouachita Correctional Center · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
2/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✗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
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year built1963 (first opened, per the sheriff's page)
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds1,222 (maximum bed capacity, per the sheriff's page)
Since then
- Grew from an original capacity of 180 to a maximum of 1,222 beds, per the sheriff's page; dates of expansions not stated
The Sheriff
Sheriff Marc Mashaw
- Runs the jailYes — the Ouachita Parish Sheriff's Office operates the Ouachita Correctional Center
- How the office is filledElected parish sheriff
- Statutory basisLa. R.S. 15:704 makes the sheriff the keeper of the public jail of the parish; the parish governing authority maintains the building and provides the jail physician (R.S. 15:702, 15:703)
- Named by the sheriff's siteThe correctional center page states: "Sheriff Marc Mashaw has implemented innovative initiatives" to reduce the cost to taxpayers
- Office line(318) 329-1200, Monday–Friday 8am–5pm
- State confirmedThe sheriff's site (opso.net) is for Ouachita Parish, Louisiana — not Ouachita County, Arkansas
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Ouachita Parish Sheriff's Office — Ouachita Correctional Center · 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.
- Roster is recorded yes: the sheriff's own Bookings page on opso.net leads to a bookings list on the sheriff's own subdomain (bookings.opso.net). The list itself was not opened.
- Capacity is no: beds (1,222) are published but no daily population figure was found. Budget is no: the page mentions a $13 million operating budget but no budget document was found. PREA is no: a coordinator is named but no audit results.
- State prisoners held in parish jails are paid for by the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections at a per diem of $26.39 per day (R.S. 15:824(B)(1)(a), as stated in HB 143 of the 2026 Regular Session, whose proposed increase was not confirmed as enacted). That is state money; the sheriff's office is also funded by its own millages, sales-tax shares and tax-collector commissions.
- Deaths: R.S. 13:5713(A)(12) makes deaths in prison a category the parish coroner must investigate; no death in custody was found on the sheriff's pages read.
- Parish seat from CCCarto's Louisiana parish-seat list (https://www.cccarto.com/countyseats/louisiana/), checked 18 September 2026.
- Not found. No page of the parish governing authority was opened in this session (the one search per parish returned only sheriff and third-party pages), so the form of parish government and its members are not recorded here.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Ouachita 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