There appears to be considerable mischief afoot in Catahoula Parish and it seems to keep circling back to the sheriff’s office and the Catahoula Correctional Center.
There is no shortage of verified reports (and photos) and several more unverified claims that might seem to attract an investigative audit by the Legislative Auditor. While some events might only cause raised eyebrows and knowing looks, others call into question the legality of the expenditure of public funds.
And then there are the allegations of beatings at the Catahoula Correctional Center, now run by Sheriff Toney Edwards after his office bought the facility for about $12 million from LaSalle Corrections which has experienced its own public image problems. There have been reports of:
- At least two inmate deaths at the correctional center;
- Twenty stabbings in a single month;
- Inmates beaten by inmates;
- Inmates beaten by guards;
- The arrest of corrections center employees for smuggling contraband into the facility;
- The use of inmate labor to cut firewood that a prison official sold for personal profit;
- The use of inmate labor to perform construction projects for private citizens;
- The use of inmate labor to construct a storm shelter for Edwards and his family;
- The use of public funds to purchase materials for the storm shelter – from a Mississippi firm;
- A cozy relationship with the former sheriff of a neighboring parish who operates two companies that conduct business with the correctional center;
- Nearly a dozen deputies having been fired by Edwards in recent months, leaving a force mostly devoid of Police Officer Standards and Training (POST) certification.
In a move that was eerily reminiscent of similar actions by the sheriffs of ST. TAMMANY and TERREBONNE parishes, Edwards even had a local man arrested and jailed for five days for the unforgivable sin of saying something bad to hurt Edwards’s feelings. What makes that problematic, however, is a little something called the First Amendment which covers things like free expression – and the 1973 ruling by the Louisiana Supreme Court that said the state’s criminal defamation law was unconstitutional. The state court’s ruling followed by nine years a similar 1964 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. Nice to know the state finally got around to acknowledging it. Now, if only these Roscoe P. Coltrane sheriffs could just get the message…
Edwards also spent a million bucks to purchase a run-down, overpriced building and promptly moved his office out of the courthouse and into the newly-acquired building. AUDITORS did question the method by which Edwards purchased the building without State Bond Commission approval or without even an appraisal of the property which was originally built for about $40,000.
Edwards, seeing Catahoula Parish as the hotbed of political unrest as it must surely be, saw the need to purchase an armored vehicle for his department for the paltry sum of $277,000, a bargain by any standard. It’s unclear how many insurrections and/or riots have been snuffed out by using the prodigious machine but I’m told it really looks good in parades.
Around 9 p.m. on Oct. 29, 2023, there was a reported homicide at the correctional center. On arrival at the facility, deputies found inmate Montrell Rogers dead from multiple stab wounds.
A deputy, in his report, said Rogers had been transferred from East Carroll Parish to the Catahoula facility at Harrisonburg (local attorney Paul Lemke told LouisianaVoice in November 2022 that the Department of Corrections routinely moves prisons from site to site in efforts to conceal them from their attorneys and families).
The report, witnessed by another deputy, confirmed local attorney Paul Lemke’s 2022 assertion that Rogers had told Catahoula officials that he would be killed if sent to the Harrisonburg prison. “…[H]e told then-Capt. Jeremy Wiley, who was the night shift supervisor over the facility that he would be killed if he was put in any dorm or with other inmates,” the report said. “Capt. Wiley ignored his please and placed him in J-Dorm where approximately 10 minutes later, he was attacked by multiple inmates and killed.” Edwards was advised of that information “but no further action was taken,” the report said
Instead, Wiley was promoted to warden of the center to succeed Pat Book upon his retirement.
On May 5, 2022, then-Deputy Russell Evans, on Edwards’s orders, drove a correctional center vehicle to Washington, Mississippi, where he purchased building materials from Miss-Lou Steel Supply at a cost of $4,298, charged to the correctional center.
(To view entire document below, slide gray bar at bottom of illustration to the right.)
Prison labor was employed to then use the taxpayer-funded materials to construct a storm shelter which, upon completion, was transported by Edwards and Det. Ben Adams to Edwards’s Jonesville home for the sheriff’s personal use. To see a photo of the storm shelter, go HERE.
Then there is the business arrangement with Britts Distributing in nearby Tensas Parish. Britts Distributing is owned and operated by former Tensas Parish Sheriff Jeff Britt. Britt, while sheriff, was charged in a federal indictment with beating a handcuffed prisoner with his “hands, feet or a blackjack.” Britt was also charged in the same 1998 indictment with lying to the FBI about the incident. He pleaded guilty in 1999 to a lesser charge of malfeasance in office. A condition of his plea bargain was that he would resign as sheriff and he was ordered to make restitution of $21,568 in connection with yet another charge of misappropriation of funds.
In August 2018, then-Gov. John Bel Edwards took the unusual step of not only issuing Britt a full pardon and then named him to the board of the Louisiana Used Motor Vehicle Commission.
But Britt has been simultaneously operating two businesses from the same address in Monterey, Louisiana. The first, INMATE FINANCIAL SERVICES (IFS), allows inmates’ families to purchase commissary credits so that they in turn may purchase overpriced snacks, toiletries, and soft drinks from prisons’ commissaries. IFS touts the ability of families to purchase credits via computer, using standard credit cards. “You are no longer bound to automated phone systems or the hassle of drop boxes and facility personnel, or having to drive out of your way to make a deposit,” the IFS web page boasts.
The web page also says its service is provided “at no cost to the facility,” but does allude to “administrative fees” charged to inmates’ families who use the online service
But at the other end of the transaction, Britt also operates Britts Distribution. Britts Distribution does not have a web page per se, but it has little need for one: it has a captive audience (pun intended) in inmates who have no alternative but the prison commissary if they wish to purchase any of the aforementioned products. And Britts Distribution, like any other commissary vendor, charges prisoners outrageous prices for (often) stale snacks.
Britt also provides PFS and vendor services for prison commissaries in several surrounding parishes. It all evokes memories of Waylon Jennings singing the theme song for Dukes of Hazzard:
Just good ol’ boys
Never meanin’ no harm
Beats all you never saw…
Louisiana Voice 
