New Orleans jail, site of a brazen inmate escape, faces flooding and plumbing failures

Audio By Carbonatix

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The New Orleans jail that gained national attention for a brazen escape by 10 inmates earlier this month is experiencing “significant flooding” from “ongoing and severe plumbing failures,” the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office says.

Embattled Sheriff Susan Hutson and her deputies have portrayed the bold jailbreak — one of the largest in recent U.S. history — as the result of an ailing facility in dire need of repairs and improvements such as replacing faulty locks.

State and local officials have generally disputed Hutson’s characterization of the $150 million state-of-the-art facility built in 2015 and blamed the sheriff’s leadership since taking office in 2022. The jail system has been under the oversight of a federal judge and the U.S. Justice Department since 2013.

“These recurring plumbing issues highlight a much deeper infrastructure crisis at OJC, rooted in years of deferred maintenance, chronic overcrowding, and a lack of meaningful investment,” Hutson said in statement Wednesday. “This is not just a facilities problem. It’s a public safety issue, a staffing issue, and most of all, a human dignity issue.”

The sheriff's office renewed calls this week for “immediate and sustained infrastructure investment,” saying jail flooding and other issues were both “foreseeable and preventable.” It said it requires at least $13 million in urgent fixes and that requests for help have been made repeatedly to city officials.

But New Orleans City Council members questioned management of the jail last week during a tense meeting and argued the sheriff's office requires greater transparency and accountability. The city's chief administrative officer also noted the department has received a larger proportionate increase in funding since 2019 than any other public safety agency in the city.

The longstanding debate over how to improve the city's jail system persists as two inmates remain at large. The group of fugitives escaped in the early hours of May 16 by yanking open a jail door, removing a toilet and crawling through a hole in the wall where steel bars had been cut away, then hopping over barbed-wire fencing using blankets.

Authorities say the inmates were able to escape because a maintenance worker, Sterling Williams, turned off the water in the cell after an inmate allegedly threatened to shank him.

Williams' lawyer Michael Kennedy has said the plumber was not threatened and had only turned off the water after being told to do so by a deputy. Williams was unaware that the inmates intentionally clogged the toilet as part of an orchestrated plan to escape, Kennedy said. Authorities have made no mention of the cell having a clogged toilet.

Over the weekend — in a seemingly unrelated incident — the jail received “emergency repairs” as water pooled and the facility remains forced to rely on an “external water supply" as of Wednesday, the sheriff's office said.

Flooding in the jail has been exacerbated by inmates' “misuse the plumbing system” such as flushing “inappropriate items” down the toilet, the sheriff's office added.

While the Orleans Justice Center is only a decade old, dysfunction has long plagued the city’s jail system.

___

Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.