How Louisiana jails are organized
Each parish in Louisiana runs its own jail, and each has its own page here. New Orleans is Orleans Parish. The suburbs are Jefferson Parish (Metairie, Gretna), St. Tammany (the Northshore), and St. Bernard. Baton Rouge is East Baton Rouge Parish. Lafayette, Shreveport (Caddo), and Lake Charles (Calcasieu) are other parish jails. We do not call them counties on this page. Baton Rouge is the state capital, but arrests are booked in the parish where they happen.
Parish sheriffs run the jails. OPP (Orleans) is not Jefferson Parish Correctional. DOC (Angola, Dixon, Elayn Hunt) is prison. A NOPD lockup overnight is not the parish roster. This site currently has live roster pages for 13 of 64 parishes (13 jail pages, 4,877 records tracked). The other 51 parishes have a jail information page with lookup steps and contacts; until a roster feed is connected, the sheriff or detention center is the official source for who is in custody there.
Finding someone in a Louisiana jail
Louisiana parish inmate pages vary from rich vendor searches to thin lists. Orleans and Jefferson are high-volume. There is no statewide parish merge. If you know the parish, open its roster above and search by name or charge. If you only know the city of arrest, find which parish the city is in first.
Criminal District Court in Orleans is not 24th Judicial District Court in Jefferson. Parish courthouses sit in the parish seat (Gretna for Jefferson, not Metairie). The courthouse and the jail are often in different buildings. Confirm the facility name on the booking paperwork or with the attorney before you travel.
Bond, visits and money in Louisiana
Louisiana commercial surety is a deep local industry. An Orleans bondsman may not cover Jefferson. Magistrate court sets many first bonds in New Orleans. Bond amounts shown on a roster can change after the first court appearance. CurrentPrisonList does not post bail or accept payments.
Orleans and Jefferson are minutes apart and different doors. Northshore visits are a lake crossing. Do not copy Texas county visit rules onto a parish jail. Dress codes, video-visit providers and appointment times are set by each jail. Check the sheriff's website on the day of the visit.
Travel and common mistakes in Louisiana
MSY for Orleans and Jefferson. BTR for East Baton Rouge. SHV, LFT, and LCH for other metros. The causeway does not merge St. Tammany with Orleans custody. Take the jail address from the sheriff's website or from the contact section of the parish page, not from a generic map search.
A common mistake: searching “New Orleans county jail,” or driving to Angola because the case is a parish felony. Angola is DOC. Neighboring states have their own state pages on this site.