The New Orleans City Council on Thursday unanimously approved a zoning change that will allow the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office to use a temporary jail building to house dozens of incarcerated people with mental illnesses.

In what Councilman Jay H. Banks cast as a win-win, the measure will allow the Sheriff’s Office to continue operating a Perdido Street building known as the Temporary Detention Center for years, but will cap the overall jail complex population at 1,250 inmates.

Banks and other council members spent Wednesday working out a plan to create temporary housing for mental health inmates who will be kicked out of a state prison in April, while mollifying criminal-justice reform advocates fearful of a sneak expansion of the authorized jail population.

The measure approved on Thursday satisfied some Sheriff’s Office critics. However, it put off for another day the issue of permanent jail housing for people with mental illness.

New Orleans City Council searches for compromise ahead of vote on temporary jail building The New Orleans City Council is expected to vote Thursday on whether to allow the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office to house inmates in a tempor…

“I’m proud of this compromise because it gets us to where we need to get,” Banks said. “Not only did we not expand (the jail size), we reduced it. This is a win for the advocates that understand the bigger the jail, the worse the crime problem.”

The council must vote on the proposal once more to make its approval final.

Yet while Banks' plan won qualified support from groups like the Orleans Parish Prison Reform Coalition and the Vera Institute of Justice, a vocal contingent of public speakers opposed the idea of housing anyone with a mental health problem inside the jail.

Meanwhile, many voiced their opinion on a proposal that wasn’t on the council's agenda Thursday: a long-planned permanent facility for inmates with special needs.

The Sheriff’s Office and Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration are drawing up plans for a long-term facility to replace the Temporary Detention Center, which was constructed as a stopgap after Hurricane Katrina. Some advocates have called for a retrofit of part of the main lockup instead.

They claim that would save millions in annual operating costs, but jail officials say it would be impractical and would not solve the problem.

Sheriff Marlin Gusman and the jail’s court-appointed administrator, Darnley Hodge, praised the council vote in a joint statement late Thursday.

“We thank the City Council for unanimously acting to authorize use of the Temporary Detention Center as a short-term solution for mental health housing," they said. "We look forward to completion and occupancy of the city's special-needs facility, which will serve as a permanent facility to treat our most seriously mentally ill inmates.”

+17 As number of immigrants behind bars soars under Trump, Louisiana becomes detention hub The path that led Dixan Hernandez Naranjo to a small, drab courtroom in rural Allen Parish in August began months earlier in his native Cuba a…

The Sheriff’s Office has housed inmates inside the Temporary Detention Center for years. But in 2018, the Mid-City Neighborhood Organization filed a lawsuit alleging that practice violated a 2011 city ordinance that called for the temporary structure to be closed once the $150 million main jail, the Orleans Justice Center, opened in 2015.

Meanwhile, the state's Department of Public Safety and Corrections announced that it would no longer house male mental health inmates at a prison in St. Gabriel past April 2020, presenting the city with a dilemma on where to house them while complying with the jail’s federal court-ordered reform plan, called a consent decree.

While the lawsuit played out in Orleans Parish Civil District Court, the Sheriff’s Office requested a zoning change aimed at mooting the alleged ordinance violation by authorizing the Temporary Detention Center’s continued use. The agency said it also wanted to renovate part of the building to house the men returning from St. Gabriel.

The original proposal from the Sheriff’s Office would have formalized the Temporary Detention Center’s operation and changed the jail complex’s maximum capacity from 1,438 beds to 1,438 inmates, angering advocates who saw the latter move as an end-run around the city’s commitment to limiting the jail's size.

Jail officials say that the lockup’s population is limited to significantly less than the total number of beds because of the need to separate various groups of inmates who cannot be housed together, like members of rival gangs.

Banks’ measure caps the jail complex’s population at 1,250 people, which is 103 inmates more than the lockup’s population on Wednesday.

+8 New Orleans City Planning Commission rejects sheriff's plan for housing mentally ill inmates Amid an outcry from residents who dubbed it a covert plan to expand the city's jail population, the New Orleans City Planning Commission on Tu…

That number would prevent the agency from significantly increasing its population. Still, the council's vote grants the Sheriff’s Office the flexibility to house mental health inmates at the Temporary Detention Center along with up to 120 work-release inmates and 30 kitchen trusties.

The measure approved on Thursday states that the two wings of the Temporary Detention Center which will house male and female inmates with mental health problems must be demolished or decommissioned once a permanent home is found for that population.

Some advocates said they still hope the City Council will impose further safeguards to ensure that the Sheriff’s Office doesn’t house any state or federal inmates. Still, groups like the Orleans Parish Prison Reform Coalition, Voice of the Experienced and the Vera Institute of Justice praised the council's vote.

“There is critical work still to do to close the Temporary Detention Center and reduce the jail population, but today’s vote is an important step toward a city that doesn’t turn to incarceration as its way to solve problems like mental illness, houselessness and poverty,” said Sade Dumas, the executive director of the reform coalition.

Nonetheless, a sizable contingent of audience members opposed to the idea of housing anyone with a mental health problem inside the jail occasionally broke out in chants and jeers during the council meeting.

“Folks who have mental health issues don’t belong in prison in the first place,” said Nathalie Faulk, a member of the city’s Human Relations Commission Advisory Committee.

A temporary spike in arrests is no reason to undo juvenile reforms As reported recently in NOLA.com, the Orleans Parish Juvenile Court has instituted a new policy to detain children who are arrested with offen…

“We need to fix our crumbling infrastructure and address our broken education system,” said Michael Esealuka with the New Orleans Democratic Socialists of America. “We need you to shut down (the Temporary Detention Center). We need you to commit to ending the cash bail (system), because this is what our city residents are demanding.”

Councilman Jason Williams acknowledged the criticisms but said the larger questions about the mentally ill and the criminal justice system would come before the council again.

“It is so very accurate to say that you do not get good mental health care in jails. It’s just not the case,” he said.

Still, he added, “we are duty bound, we have a fiduciary obligation, the (federal) consent decree requires it, morality requires it, that we bring those folks back to the city they live in so they aren’t warehoused parishes away.”