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 byWinn Parish Sheriff's Office
- Jail address460 Thomas Mill Rd., Winnfield, LA 71483; phone 318.209.4277 (Louisiana Sheriffs' Association directory)
- WardenDon Reading, Detention Center Warden (directory; sheriff's staff)
- Other facilityThe directory also lists a Winn Correctional Center Warden, Eleazar Garcia, among the sheriff's staff; nothing opened describes that facility further
- What was triedOne search returned the sheriff's inmate page, the Louisiana Sheriffs' Association directory (opened) and commercial lookup sites. Blocked (robots.txt): www.winnsheriff.gov/inmateLookup. Refused (PROVENANCE_REQUIRED): www.winnsheriff.gov and winnsheriff.org. No parish-government (police jury) page was reached.
Source: Louisiana Sheriffs' Association - Winn Parish directory · 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 Josh McAllister
- Runs the jailThe sheriff is keeper of the parish jail under La. R.S. 15:704; the Louisiana Sheriffs' Association directory lists a Detention Center Warden under him
- How the office is filledElected parish sheriff
- TenureThe directory states he assumed office in 2024
- Source caveatName taken from the Louisiana Sheriffs' Association directory entry for Winn Parish, Louisiana; the sheriff's own site could not be opened to confirm it
- Office119 West Main, Courthouse Room 106, Winnfield, LA 71483; 318.628.4611
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Louisiana Sheriffs' Association - Winn Parish directory · 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 transparency checks are left empty: the sheriff's own site refused every attempt (robots.txt on the inmate page, provenance refusals on the home pages) and no parish-government site was reached, so nothing the parish or sheriff publishes was examined. This is not a finding that the parish publishes nothing.
- The search did surface an inmate-information page on the sheriff's own domain (winnsheriff.gov/inmateLookup), so a first-party roster likely exists, but it could not be read.
- Facility, warden and sheriff names rest on the Louisiana Sheriffs' Association directory, not a first-party page. Winn Parish was carried over from group 66.
- Not found. No Winn Parish government page was opened, so the form of government and the members' names are not recorded here.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Winn 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