Ascension Parish government and the sheriff have agreed to renovate he parish jail's female wing, addressing the problem of sending female prisoners to north Louisiana jails because there's not enough room in Ascension's.

Under the new funding agreement, Ascension Parish Sheriff Bobby Webreplans to add 16 more beds to the parish jail's 48-bed female wing.

The renovation, which the sheriff hopes to start in early spring, will convert the old facility, built on the parish's west bank in the mid-1970s, from individual cells into an open bay-style dorm, freeing up space for beds.

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"And hopefully, we can control that population for quite a while and not have to ship females out of parish," Webre said.

The dorm is expected to cost $670,000 to $680,000 to renovate and will include new plumbing.

Though the sheriff runs the jail, it is parish government, under state law, that owns the facility and has the responsibility to maintain it. The parish will pay $600,000 for the renovation and the Sheriff's Office will kick in $80,000.

Webre's office has already spent $40,000 toward that bill for architectural plans and other early costs, the agreement says.

Currently, female inmates who don't have a bed in the dorm are being housed in Madison Parish in northeastern Louisiana, costing Ascension a $24 per prisoner daily fee and complicating transportation costs to bring the inmates back and forth for court, Webre said.

The Ascension Parish jail has been routinely seeing about 55 to 58 female inmates per day, with most being held for nonviolent crimes, such as theft, drugs and bad checks, the sheriff said.

Webre was the jail's warden for 16 of his 34 years in the Sheriff's Office, from 1996 to 2011. He said that when he first began overseeing the jail in '96, its maximum population for female inmates was 16 and the dorm then was rarely full.

General population increases in Ascension have contributed to the rise in inmates but Webre said many of the female inmates end up in the jail because they continue to fail to show up for court dates. Judges won't recall bench warrants for their arrest and the inmates are held for court, Webre said.

"By far, this is my largest female population in my 34 years," he said.

Overall, the jail facility has a capacity of 572 inmates.

A $11.5 million expansion in 2008 doubled the jail's capacity to the current level,Webre said, and has left the Sheriff's Office in good shape for housing the male inmates.

Parish government financed its construction in 2007 and will continue to pay off that debt through 2027. The balance on the debt is expected to be $5.5 million by the end of this year, said Martin McConnell, parish spokesman.

Parish Council members and outgoing Parish President Kenny Matassa spoke in support of the funding agreement at the Parish Council meeting Thursday night. The agreement, which Webre said has been discussed for about a year, was approved without opposition.

"We appreciate the sheriff very much and his concerns for being able to secure those inmates here in our parish," Council Chair Teri Casso said.

Though Webre is pushing forward with the female dorm expansion, he said he has no plans to build a new juvenile facility unless it can be a multi-parish operation, to help defray its costs. The sheriff reserves six beds in St. Bernard Parish for the juvenile offenders at a cost of $200 per offender per day.

After new state standards took effect several years ago, the St. James and Assumption sheriff's offices closed multi-parish juvenile detention centers, citing the cost.

The Ascension Parish Council adopted a 1-mill, 20-year tax in 2013 in hopes of one day building a new facility after the St. James facility closed. The fund is being used to pay to house the juveniles out of parish.

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Why Bobby Webre is eyeing expansion of female dorm at Ascension jail - The Advocate