The Detention Center
Not found
- Operated bySt. James Parish Sheriff's Office
- Parish prison wardenCaptain Conrad Lewis, per the Louisiana Sheriffs' Association directory (sheriff's staff; not confirmed on the sheriff's own site)
- RosterThe sheriff's site has an inmate search page (stjamessheriff.com/inmateSearch), but the fetch tool was refused by the site's robots.txt, so it could not be read
- What was triedSheriff's home page read twice: contact numbers, hours and press releases, no jail page content. Inmate search page refused by robots.txt. No parish government domain was returned by search. Commercial lookup sites (including stjamesparishclerkofcourt.com and louisianainmaterosters.org) were not used.
Source: · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
0/10Closed- ✗The jail is named — not published
- ✗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
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 Claude J. Louis Jr.
- How the office is filledElected parish sheriff
- Statutory basisLa. R.S. 15:704 makes the sheriff keeper of the public jail of the parish; under R.S. 15:702 and 15:703 the parish governing authority maintains the jail building and provides the jail physician
- Assumed office2024, per the Louisiana Sheriffs' Association directory
- Office address5800 Louisiana Highway 44, Convent, LA 70723 (P.O. Box 83)
- Office linesMain 225.562.2200; Criminal Division 225.562.2374; Westbank Office 225.562.2510 (sheriff's own site)
- CautionThe sheriff's own home page still lists an older press release headed "Sheriff Willy Martin Awards Scholarship to College-Bound Teen"; the LSA directory shows Claude J. Louis Jr. assuming office in 2024, so that press release is not treated as naming the current sheriff
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Louisiana Sheriffs' Association — St. James 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.
- The sheriff's name comes from the Louisiana Sheriffs' Association directory, not from a parish or sheriff page; the sheriff's own home page did not name the current sheriff in its current text.
- All ten checks are no on what could be read: the sheriff's home page names no jail and publishes no roster, capacity, budget, deaths, PREA, inspection, contract, bond or fee information. The roster check is no only because the sheriff's inmate search page was blocked by robots.txt and could not be read; a roster may exist there.
- No main jail name is recorded because no first-party page opened names the facility.
- Parish seat from CCCarto's Louisiana parish-seat list (https://www.cccarto.com/countyseats/louisiana/), checked 18 September 2026.
- Not found. No St. James Parish government page was returned by search or opened, so the form of government and its members are not recorded.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in St. James 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