NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) - Federal monitors have questioned whether an Australian academic whom Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson installed last year as warden of the city’s jail is qualified for the role under requirements of the consent decree.
“The OPSO is required to employ a professional corrections administrator who meets the requirements outlined in the consent judgment,” lead monitor Margo Frasier wrote in a report submitted Friday (Oct. 6) to U.S. District Judge Lance Africk.
“For the monitoring period, that position was held by Dr. Astrid Birgden, but no documentation has been provided that her experience complies with the requirements under the applicable provision of the consent judgment.”
The Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office has operated under federal oversight since 2013. Friday’s update was the monitors’ 18th report to Africk in that span, and the first covering a monitoring period (Oct. 1, 2022-March 31, 2023) when Hutson was solely in charge of the agency and facility.
Hutson defended her hire for warden in an statement released Monday (Oct. 9), describing Birgden as “an international expert” in corrections. But Hutson provided no substantiation that Birgden is qualified for the position, only that the monitors’ concern was new to her.
“While the monitors call into question my hiring of Dr. Astrid Birgden as our warden, citing the requirement to employ a ‘professional corrections administrator,’ I have never heard from monitors about their (sic) being an issue with Dr. Birgden, who is an international expert in corrections,” Hutson said in the statement.
The consent decree requires the Orleans Parish Sheriff to employ a full-time “professional corrections administrator” who “shall have at least” the following qualifications:
- A bachelor’s degree in criminal justice or other closely related field
- Five years of experience in supervising a large correctional facility
- Knowledge of and experience in applying modern correctional standards, maintained through regular participation in corrections-related conferences or other continuing education
According to an online biography, Birgden is a forensic/clinical psychologist who “develops policy, manages projects and delivers services in corrections, human services and the courts to serious offenders.”
A Birgden biography on a LinkedIn page says she holds a Ph.D. in forensic psychology from Charles Sturt University in Australia and a master’s degree in advanced mental disability law from New York Law School. Two days after this report was published, the OPSO sent Fox 8 copies of her transcripts.
There is no citation showing the “five years of experience supervising a large correctional facility” required by the consent decree. Instead, Birgden cites five years as foundation director of the Compulsory Drug Treatment Correctional Center in Sydney (which had a budget equivalent to $3.2 million in US dollars) and more than three years of experience as a “self-funded researcher” for New Orleans’ Office of the Independent Police Monitor, which Hutson ran from June 2010-June 2021.
Online resources indicate Birgden is a devotee of the “Good Lives Model of Offender Rehabilitation” (GLM), developed by New Zealand clinical psychologist Tony Ward, which holds at its core “the assumption that while offenders have obligations to respect other peoples’ entitlements to well-being and freedom, they are also entitled to the same considerations.” According to the GLM, “the best way to create a safer society is to assist offenders to adopt more fulfilling and socially integrated lifestyles.”
Other researchers say the GLM “has been consistently criticized for a lack of empirical evidence supporting both its key assumptions and intervention outcomes.”
An OPSO spokesperson said two days after the Fox 8 report that the Good Lives Model is not employed at the Orleans Parish jail “as it is not applicable to those who are not yet convicted.” She also said Birgden was declining interview requests because she preferred to stay “back behind the scenes.”
“Dr. Birgden agreed to work with Sheriff Hutson for an initial six-month period during her transition,” the spokesperson said. “But she has remained for 18 months with the understanding that she will soon return to her responsibilities in Australia.”
Birgden’s LinkedIn profile says she has held her position with OPSO since May 2022 -- the month Hutson took office -- though her role as warden wasn’t revealed publicly until August 2022.
The mention came in a statement issued by Hutson in response to criticism from Africk, New Orleans City Council members, the Orleans Public Defenders, jail safety advocates and relatives of inmates for a lack of transparency during the first four months of her administration. The statement mentioned Birgden, whose job title is Assistant Sheriff for Jail Operations, was “the warden of the Orleans Justice Center.”
The OPSO spokesperson told Fox 8, “A new Chief of Corrections is currently being sought and the successful candidate is expected to continue the change model designed by Dr. Birgden to meet the requirements of the consent decree, amongst other tasks.”
The monitor’s report hailed Hutson for creating a Compliance and Accountability Bureau within OPSO to get a better handle on where the jail is and is not meeting federal consent decree requirements. But the report said that under Hutson’s tenure, “progress has been sporadic. In some areas, there has been progress, and in some cases, there has been regression.”
The monitors said that ratings in this observation period improved in 11 provisions and regressed in 14.
“The lack of significant progression and, in some cases, regression is due to a failure to follow the policies and procedures that have been put in place,” the report said. “It has been exacerbated by the lack of staff, but many of the provisions are not reliant on security staffing.”
The report said that during the 2021 calendar year, the OPSO hired 97 new staff members but lost 177 to resignation, termination and retirement. In 2002, the OPSO hired 136 new staff members but lost 185. And during the first six months of 2023, OPSO hired 156 new staff members and lost 69.
Since Hutson assumed office, the OPSO has a net gain of 69 staff members, the report said.
“Inadequate staff in the housing areas of the facilities and the timely and thorough completion of use-of-force investigations continues to hamper OPSO’s ability to consistently comply with the consent judgment,” the monitors wrote. “Deputies are often reluctant to work overtime in OJC, as they can make more per hour working off-duty security details than they can working overtime in OJC.
“OPSO should consider prioritizing staffing the OJC over allowing deputies to work details.”
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