Sheriff says ‘defective’ locks were a key factor in Louisiana jailbreak by 10 men

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Just days before 10 men broke out of a New Orleans jail, officials with the sheriff’s office asked for money to fix faulty locks and cell doors deemed a key factor in the escape.

As the manhunt for the remaining seven fugitives stretches into a new week, officials continue to investigate who or what was to blame in a jailbreak that even the escapees labeled as “easy” — in a message scrawled on a wall above the narrow hole they squeezed through.

Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson said she has long raised concerns about the jail’s ongoing “deficiencies,” adding that the breakout has “once again highlighted the critical need for repairs and upgrades” to the ailing infrastructure. But some officials are pointing the blame in security lapses at the person who oversees the control and custody of the inmates, Hutson.

Early Friday, 10 men being held at the Orleans Justice Center — many awaiting trials or sentencing for violent charges, including murder — yanked open a cell door, slipped through a hole behind a toilet, scaled a barbed wire fence and fled into the dark. Only three of the men have since been caught.

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While Hutson said the locks played a key role in the escape, there are other crucial elements that officials have outlined; Indications that the escape may have been an inside job; the hole that officials said may have been formed using power tools; a lack of monitoring of the cell pod; and law enforcement not being aware of the escape until seven hours after the men fled.

Attorney General Liz Murrill said on Monday said it’s no secret that the jail has been experiencing staffing shortages and maintenance defects for years and that state and local officials, courts and law enforcement are working together to hastily address issues.

Four days before the escape, Jeworski “Jay” Mallet — chief of corrections for the jail — presented a need for a new lock system during the city’s Capital Improvement Plan hearing.

Mallet said the current system at the jail, which houses around 1,400 people, was built for a “minimum custody type of inmate.”

But he classified many at the facility as “high security” inmates, who are awaiting trials for violent offenses, and require a “restrictive housing environment that did not exist” at the jail. As a result, the sheriff’s office has transferred dozens in custody to more secure locations.

In the aftermath of the escape, Murrill said officials are looking to “harden physical aspects of this prison so that we can be realistic about the population that is being held there.”

Mallet said some cell unit doors and locks have been “manipulated” to the point that they can’t even be closed properly.

Since becoming sheriff in 2022, Hutson said she has complained about the locks at every turn and advocated for additional funding to make the facility more secure.

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell says that funding for the jail has been “a priority” and money has been allocated to the sheriff’s office for operating expenses and capital improvements. Bianka Brown, the chief financial officer for the sheriff’s office, said the current budget “doesn’t support what we need” to ensure critical fixes and upgrades.

“Things are being deprived,” Brown said of the jail, which for more than a decade has been subject to federal monitoring and a consent decree intended to improve conditions. The jail, which opened in 2015, replaced another facility that had its own history of escapes and violence.

Other’s have pointed to Hutson being at fault.

“Rather than take accountability, she’s pointed fingers elsewhere,” State Rep. Aimee Adatto Freeman, who represents much of the uptown area of New Orleans, said Monday as she called for the sheriff to step down. “Blaming funding is a deflection--not an excuse.”

Hutson has faced criticism in recent months for continued violence and dysfunction in the lockup. An independent watchdog overseeing the federal consent decree noted in a report last fall that Hutson, after taking office, abandoned a practice of housing certain inmates in a “high security unit” in the jail.

The report found that inmates were left unsupervised for hours, allowing for “inmate-on-inmate assaults” and access to materials to fashion weapons.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry recently announced the state is launching an investigation into who is responsible in the escape. He is also asking for an audit of the jail’s compliance with basic correctional standards and an inventory of pre-trial detainees or those awaiting sentencing in violent cases at the facility, to consider moving them into state custody.

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Associated Press writer Jim Mustian in New York contributed to this report.