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 byRichland Parish Sheriff's Office
- Prison address456 Hwy 15, Rayville, LA 71269 (Louisiana Sheriffs' Association directory)
- WardenAlan Cupp (Louisiana Sheriffs' Association directory)
- Prison line318.248.3057
- What was triedrichlandso.org home and /inmates are disallowed by robots.txt. No parish government page was returned. Commercial inmate-lookup sites were ignored.
Source: Louisiana Sheriffs' Association — Richland Parish · 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 Neal G. Harwell
- Runs the jailThe elected sheriff is keeper of the parish jail under Louisiana law; the Louisiana Sheriffs' Association lists a sheriff's prison and warden
- 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)
- Source noteName from the Louisiana Sheriffs' Association directory; the sheriff's own site (richlandso.org) refused automated access
- Office708 Julia Street, Suite 113, Rayville, LA 71269; 318.728.2071
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Louisiana Sheriffs' Association — Richland 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.
- 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 refused every attempt (robots.txt) and no parish government site was reached. The Louisiana Sheriffs' Association directory does not count as the parish publishing.
- Richland Parish, Louisiana — not Richland County in another state; the directory entry is for the Louisiana parish.
- 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.
- 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 Richland 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