Prator ‘Willing to Talk’ About Shreveport Prisoners Going to CCI [VIDEO]

Parish Sheriff Steve Prator talks about the idea of taking Shreveport City Jail prisoners at Caddo Correctional Institute.

The idea, suggested by Shreveport City Councilman James Flurry at Saturday's budget meeting, would call for prisoners currently arrested in Shreveport be taken and kept at the parish facility. Part of the proposal also called for the Shreveport jail to become a juvenile detention facility.

Sheriff said his first reaction to the Flurry idea was the increase in the work load on his department. "Right now we're booking more inmates than ever, nd we're holding them longer," the Sheriff says, explaining that CCI is already over its prisoner limit, "Right now we have almost a thousand people awaiting trial in our jail and we have another three hundred that we're having to hold out there. It's going to be difficult to find the manpower, the extra help that we need and the space that we need. But we're willing to talk and look at it."

"It's going to cost us," Prator continues, "A jail is a money losing proposition anyway. Only the ignorant and the uninformed would think that a jail is profitable. We take two to three million dollars a year out of our general fund, our law enforcement budget, to our corrections budget just to survive."