New Orleans jailbreak: Sheriff says she complained about cell locks 'at every turn'

While four of the 10 inmates who broke out of a New Orleans prison have been caught, officials continue to investigate who or what was to blame in a jailbreak which even the escapees labelled as “easy” — in a message scrawled on a wall above the narrow hole they managed to squeeze through.

Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson said she has been raising concerns about Orleans Justice Center 's ongoing “deficiencies." The jailbreak, Hutson added, has “once again highlighted the critical need for repairs and upgrades” to the ailing infrastructure.

"Since becoming sheriff in 2022, I have complained about the locks at every turn and advocated for additional funding to make the facility more secure," news agency AP quoted the sheriff as saying.

Louisiana attorney general Liz Murrill, too, said some cell unit doors and locks have been “manipulated" to the point that they can't even be closed properly.

Four days before the men escaped, Jeworski “Jay” Mallet, chief of corrections for the jail, had presented a need for a new lock system during the city's Capital Improvement Plan hearing.

However, there are other crucial elements which officials have outlined. For instance, indications the escape was an "inside job"; the hole which officials suggest may have been formed using power tools; a lack of monitoring of the cell pod; and law enforcement "not being aware" of the jailbreak until seven hours after the men fled.

Meanwhile, others have pointed to Sheriff Hutson being at fault.

“Rather than take accountability, she’s pointed fingers elsewhere,” Louisana representative Aimee Adatto Freeman, who represents much of the uptown area of New Orleans, said Monday as she called for the sheriff to step down.

Early last Friday, 10 men being held at the Orleans Justice Center — many awaiting trials or sentencing for violent charges, including murder — broke open a cell door, slipped through a hole behind a toilet, scaled a barbed wire fence and fled into the dark.

The fourth and most recent arrest came late Monday, when 21-year-old Gary Price was taken into custody.