Caddo Parish Sheriff Steve Prator talks with 101.7 / 710 KEEL's Robert J Wright and Erin McCarty on the effects the proposed state budget would have on the Caddo Correctional Institute and parish jails across the state.

Prator tells KEEL listeners that "we're being used as pawns" by both sides in the state budget debate. "It's sausage down there, the way that things are handled. You've got jockeying, you've got egos, you've got selfishness, you've got politics and you've got needs. But if I have needs I don't try to push it down on somebody else."

The House Appropriations Committee budget calls for a cut of twenty seven dollars a day to twenty four in daily per prisoner payments made to parishes across Louisiana for housing state prisoners. "At twenty four dollars we're losing money," says Prator, "We're doing the state a favor by keeping them. What's the state's basically doing with this budget is putting their priorities above ours."

 

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