Radical departure as bus station becomes New Orleans penitentiary

AS looters filled the streets and shots rang out, the city’s overmatched police knew that whatever other endeavours Hurricane Katrina had brought to a halt, crime wasn’t one of them.

Police are booking suspects at the temporary jail set up in the bus and train station. Up to 700 inmates can be housed there.

After being criticised for letting lawlessness spiral out of control in the immediate aftermath of the storm, police began arresting people but then ran into a new problem - where to put them. With the jails flooded, a temporary holding facility was set up at the city’s train and bus terminal.

The jail holds 124 inmates, the Department of Corrections said.

Nearly 8,000 prisoners were taken out of New Orleans jails last week and moved to state prisons and jails in neighbouring towns.

“The first guy we housed drove up in a stolen car and wanted to buy a bus ticket,” said Colonel Terry Norris of the Louisiana Department of Corrections.

“We gave him a bus ticket, just not to the place he wanted to go.

“They dropped three of us off and said, ‘Make us a prison,’” Col Norris added.

He and two other former troopers arrived on Saturday morning and had the place open for business at 2am on Monday.

The temporary jail has a capacity of about 700. The cells behind the terminal are actually open-air cages with chain-link fencing, topped by razor wire, extending from the concrete platform to an overhang about 15 feet high.

Each cell is identified by a hand-lettered sign - ‘Cell 1, misdemeanours’, for example - and contains a portable toilet with the door removed.

The prisoners are separated according to crimes.

Inside ‘Cell 3, felony’, some two dozen men mill around. Nearly all were brought in for looting.

Any stolen property valued above $300 (€242) is being treated as a felony.

“We reviewed every case carefully,” said a corrections department official, who asked not be identified because of safety concerns.

“These are not people who stole food. They stole drugs from pharmacies or TVs from stores.”

The cells set aside for women, as well as those for prisoners on federal and misdemeanour charges, are empty. Col Norris says only one prisoner is on federal charges, stemming from a shoot-out with police.