Around 160 locks need replacing at Orleans jail, AG estimates

By Chris Joseph

Source: FOX 8

May 21, 2025

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) – Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill toured the Orleans Justice Center jail on Wednesday (May 21) and laid out the scale of the facility’s damaged or defective lock issues.

“There’s probably 160 of them – doors that in some form need to be fixed or have the mechanisms replaced – in order to make them what we want them to be,” Murrill said.

Her comments come less than a week after OPSO identified faulty locks as having played a role in the May 16 escape of 10 detainees from the jail.

Jail incident records indicate that Orleans Parish detainees regularly tamper with the locks inside a facility where direct supervision by OPSO guards has been found to be severely lacking.

Sheriff Susan Hutson’s office used to post weekly incident reports online in 2024 after pledging greater transparency, but has not posted any such reports in 2025.

The last full month of reports was October 2024. Fox 8 tallied eight tampering reports from early October through early November 2024.

Records show inmates clogged door locks with paper, damaged recently repaired doors, and in a December incident, jammed cell door tracks.

Florida-based corrections expert Gary York said the jammed locks pose security threats to the community and detainees themselves.

“Inmates will pick up anything they can and jam the door lock, close the door of the cell. And when it’s count time, and all the cell doors are supposed to be locked, that one cell looks locked, but it’s not locked,” he said.

The OPSO has begun replacing its damaged locks and is seeking help to do more.

Four days before the jailbreak, members of OPSO leadership presented to the City Planning Commission on needed capital improvements, including a $5.1 million ask for lock replacement.

The commission is responsible for making recommendations to the New Orleans City Council.

“If I was going to spend money on locks for my jail or my prison, No. 1, I want a tamper-resistant lock,” York said. “That said, all locks could probably be tampered with if you have enough time.”

Murrill expressed her support for the effort.

“I think that’s work that probably needs to be completed for the whole project,” she said. “I certainly support finding a way to fund that and make sure that it gets done. It seems to me that’s a no-brainer.”

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