Orleans Parish New $162M Jail: Naked inmates, hands used as toilet tissue, TV-watching guards
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A day after the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office moved inmates into a new, $145 million jail, corrections experts appointed by a federal judge to monitor the jail's conditions toured the facility.
One of those monitors, Darnley Hodge, described in court Thursday (may 26) some of what he witnessed. Inmates in one part of the jail, he testified, weren't wearing any clothes.
"The entire pod was completely nude," Hodge said.
Pods house about five-dozen inmates.
Some cells hadn't been equipped with toilet paper, he said. "I saw one inmate use his bare hand as toilet tissue."
Ten mattresses were already torn, he said, and some inmates were sleeping on the floor.
Hodge delivered the testimony during the second day of a still-unfinished hearing to determine if conditions at the jail are bad enough to merit a federal takeover from Sheriff Marlin Gusman.
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