Orleans Parish Prison didn't just house thousands of criminals before Hurricane Katrina.  Criminal Sheriff Marlin Gusman also ran three drug treatment boot camps.

“I sent lots of people, several people to all three of those programs,” said former Judge Calvin Johnson.

As a Criminal Court judge, Johnson sent Orleans Parish criminals to the About Face, Blue Walters and Francois Alternative programs at the prison.

“Francois was used primarily by us to address issues that revolved around those on probation who would fail to abide by their conditions of probation,” said Judge Johnson.

When Judge Johnson sent inmates to the programs, either the City of New Orleans or the state Department of Corrections picked up the tab, about $2,000 for a 90-day stay.  Some inmates stayed up to a year.

However, Orleans Parish prison didn't just take Orleans Parish inmates for the three programs.  At the time of the storm, inmates like Gordon Holmes, Daniel Kimbrell and Andre Richard were a part of the About Face program.  All three were arrested, charged and convicted for crimes in St. Charles Parish.  St. Charles court records even show it.  Yet, Orleans Parish taxpayers paid for their drug treatment at Orleans Parish prison.

Holmes, Kimbrell and Richard were all billed to the city for August 2005, and other invoices confirm the city was billed for their entire time at parish prison.

Deputy City Attorney Nolan Lambert says for decades, the sheriff’s office has been paid based on a 1969 consent decree that was the result of a federal class-action lawsuit.

“In another parish, pursuant to a sheriff arrests them or another police department and Sheriff Gusman houses them in his jail, then no, I don't think the city is responsible for paying for that,” Lambert said.

New Orleans pays Gusman $22.39 per inmate per day, but only for certain inmates.

“We pay for the prisoners who are arrested pursuant to the local municipal ordinances," Lambert said.

He says the city pays for people arrested on state charges until they are convicted, then the state picks up the tab.

Holmes, Kimbrell and Richard weren't the only out-of-parish inmates charged to New Orleans.  Eyewitness News compared bills from May 2005 and August 2005, that Sheriff Gusman sent to the city and the state Department of Corrections, to a master list of inmates in Orleans Parish prison at the time of the storm.  That list shows what parishes many of the inmates came from.  WWL-TV found 45 more out-of-parish inmates that New Orleans taxpayers paid for, including some from Jefferson, Iberia, Lafayette and four other parishes.

When asked whether or not the city should be paying for inmates for other parishes, Lambert, the deputy city attorney, said simply “no.”

Further, at the time of the storm, the city of New Orleans was picking up the tab for 64 state inmates, on top of the 43 from other parishes.  In all, WWL found New Orleans taxpayers may have been improperly charged at least $200,000 over a ten-month period.

“If they're state inmates, the state should pay for them,” said Trey Boudreaux, former undersecretary of the state Department of Corrections, in a 2007 interview.

Boudreaux would only let WWL record his voice in an interview about post-Katrina problems with the sheriff’s office billing both the city and the state for inmates at Orleans Parish Prison.

“If that inmate is convicted, on that date he becomes a state inmate, the state starts paying for that inmate.  I don't know what the agreement is with the parish,” Boudreaux said at the time.

WWL requested an interview with the Department of Corrections for this story, e-mailing spokeswoman Pam Laborde about "whether a number of inmates in the respective programs were billed to the proper agency."

Laborde replied, "I see this as an OPP issue and not a DOC (Department of Corrections) issue.”

“When you reduce the number of people incarcerated, that means the per person cost goes up,” said Gusman.

Last week, Sheriff Gusman asked the New Orleans city council to increase the amount of money he gets per inmate.  After that meeting, Eyewitness News asked him how big a part the drug treatment boot camps played in his pre-Katrina population.

“To the best of my knowledge, those were programs that involved a few hundred inmates and not, our average daily population was about 5,800. It wasn't a large part,” Gusman said.

And while 107 billing problems may not seem like many when compared to the total pre-katrina prison population, WWL’s extensive research is simply one snapshot of a small period of time.  Eyewitness News found $200,000 that the city may have overpaid.

Despite repeated requests to sit down with the sheriff and go over these findings, Gusman would not do an on-camera interview about these specific issues.

“I'm always about finding what the truth is to the story.  Whenever you want to talk about the truth, I'm happy to talk about the truth.  I have nothing whatsoever to hide,” Gusman said.

That same day, Sheriff Gusman said in an e-mail "The only information received from Ms. Moore in her request for an interview was that it involved programs that have not been administered by this office since before Katrina.  We work diligently to do our best, but we need an opportunity to review relevant information in advance.

Remember, WWL’s comparisons involved bills the Sheriff's office sent out.

The drug treatment boot camps lasted anywhere from three months to a year, with so-called "classes" of inmates starting at different intervals throughout the year. 

Thousands of inmates have gone through the boot camps over the years, but according to Lambert, the deputy city attorney, the city has only checked to make sure the numbers on the invoices added up, not to see whether they were paying for the right inmates.

“To be quite honest with you, I'm sure we have some auditing issues and of course, from the Sheriff's standpoint, he wants to make sure that he gets paid from either the state or the federal government or the city government,” Lambert said.  “So we do rely upon, to a certain extent, the accuracy of those figures.”

Since Hurricane Katrina put an end to the drug treatment boot camps at Orleans Parish Prison, does Gusman plan to start them up again?

“We really need the right facilities to operate those programs.  We're trying to get into a position where we can get better facilities and get back into doing that,” he said.