The Detention Center
Washington Parish Jail
- Operated byWashington Parish Sheriff's Office (Corrections Division)
- Jail address1002 Main St., Franklinton, LA 70438 (legal mail); general inmate mail goes to P.O. Box 591, Longview, Texas 75606
- WardenCaptain Michael Guitreau (sheriff's staff, listed on the Corrections page)
- BedsThe Corrections page states both "144 beds" and "over 200 beds"; the figures conflict and no daily population is published
- Condition and plansThe sheriff's home page: "The current facility is poorly located, significantly outdated, and expensive to maintain"; the goal is a new jail near the Emergency Operations Center on land donated by the State. No cost, funding or timeline is published.
- RosterThe sheriff's menu links an inmate roster at inmates.wpso.live (a separate domain); the link was refused when fetched and was not read
- Video visits and messagingThrough NCIC (ncic.com); no rates published
- Commissary depositsThrough commissarydeposit.com, supported by Forecomm Solutions; no rates published
- VisitationScheduled by housing block; two adults and three minors per inmate; 30-45 minutes; jail line 985-839-3434
- What was triedOpened: wpso.la.gov home, /corrections, /finances, /history. Refused (PROVENANCE_REQUIRED): inmates.wpso.live/inmate-roster; the Financial Statements and Proposed Budgets PDFs linked from /finances (storage.googleapis.com); www.wpgov.org.
Source: Washington Parish Sheriff's Office - Corrections · 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
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- BedsConflicting on the sheriff's page: 144 beds and over 200 beds
Since then
- A replacement jail near the Emergency Operations Center is described as a long-term goal; no cost or funding published
The Sheriff
Sheriff Jason Smith
- Runs the jailYes - the sheriff's Corrections Division operates the Washington Parish Jail
- How the office is filledElected parish sheriff; keeper of the public jail of the parish (La. R.S. 15:704)
- Confirmed LouisianaSheriff's domain is wpso.la.gov; jail is in Franklinton, LA 70438
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Washington Parish Sheriff's Office - home page · 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 as no on a strict reading: the sheriff links a roster on a separate domain (inmates.wpso.live) that could not be opened, so its content was not verified.
- Budget is recorded as no: the sheriff's finances page lists 2024 financial statements, amended budgets, agreed-upon procedures and 2025 proposed budgets, but the PDFs were refused and no jail line item was read. They may well contain corrections figures.
- Capacity is recorded as no because the published bed figures conflict and no daily population is published.
- Parish seat from CCCarto's Louisiana parish-seat list (https://www.cccarto.com/countyseats/louisiana/), checked 18 September 2026.
- Not found. No Washington Parish government page could be opened, so the form of government and the members' names are not recorded here.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Washington 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