City & County Jails in Louisiana
Louisiana - Inmate Search - All County Jail Rosters
Clicking on any of the Louisiana Counties or Cities below will direct you to a list of all the City Jails, County Jails and Juvenile Detention Centers in that specific County.
Search for any jail in Louisiana
Louisiana parish jails and state prisons
Louisiana has 64 parishes. The sheriff runs the jail. Orleans, Jefferson, East Baton Rouge, Caddo, and Calcasieu run the large buildings. A rural parish may have one jail or send people to a neighbor. City police departments have holding rooms, not parish jails.
Jails in Louisiana hold people before trial, people serving a misdemeanor, and a large share of state prisoners. A sentence to the Department of Public Safety and Corrections does not mean a bed at Angola. The department pays the sheriff a daily rate, and many parishes built jails larger than local cases require. In December 2025 the department was responsible for 30,161 people: 14,737 in state facilities, 14,924 in local jails, and 500 in transitional work programs. A federal sentence goes to the Bureau of Prisons. FCC Oakdale and FCI Pollock are federal prisons in the state.
How many parish jails are there in Louisiana?
Each of the 64 parishes has a sheriff responsible for adult detention. Some run more than one building. Some contract. When a jail holds a state inmate, the department is the payer. When it holds someone for another parish or for the U.S. Marshals, that agency pays the contract rate. A family can drive to the parish jail and find the person has been moved to a jail in another part of the state.
State prisons are the other half of the map. Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola is the maximum-security prison. Other state facilities include Elayn Hunt, Dixon, Rayburn, and Wade. The December 2025 state-facility count was 14,737. The local-jail count of state inmates was higher.
How many juvenile detention centers are there in Louisiana?
Parish detention and state secure care are different systems. Sheriffs and local boards run the detention centers that hold a youth before a hearing. The Office of Juvenile Justice runs secure care for youth who have been adjudicated and need a locked placement. On July 16, 2025, OJJ counted 420 youth in secure care, 351 in non-secure placements, and 1,850 on community supervision. By the fourth quarter of 2025, secure-care services had reached 510 youth, up from 308 in the fourth quarter of 2020. Secure facilities include Swanson Center for Youth and Acadiana Center for Youth. Jetson Center for Youth, long closed, was funded to reopen in part. A Vernon Parish secure-care project was in the budget request for the next cycle.
A youth in a parish detention center is usually waiting on court. A youth in OJJ secure care has been committed. Search the parish of the arrest. The listing shows the local detention center, and the state facility only if the youth has been placed in secure care.
What the first days in a Louisiana parish jail are like
Booking is a queue: identity, prints, a medical screen, a search, property bagged, one call. The person has not been convicted. The dorm still runs on counts. A state inmate serving a felony sentence may be in the next bunk. In summer the building is hot. Food is plain, the uniform does not fit, and sleep is broken. Withdrawal from alcohol, opioids, or methamphetamine can start before the first appearance.
Deputies who apply the rules the same way to everyone run a quieter floor. Uneven enforcement is how contraband moves. Orleans and East Baton Rouge can separate by risk. A small parish jail often cannot, and a full jail means a transfer, sometimes hours away.
Many parish jails sell tablet time, video visits, and deposits through a vendor. Those accounts can be shut off. Each parish page on this site lists the jail phone, the vendor, and the way to send money for that sheriff’s office.