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Advancing Justice in Orleans Parish
Sheriff Susan Hutson has gained national recognition for her innovative pilot program, which has become a model for addressing mental health in jails. The program aims to counter years of violence and neglect, fostering a sense of camaraderie instead.
Through her approach of addressing care, custody, control, collaboration, and community, Sheriff Hutson's first term as head of the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office has been highlighted by the expansion of the model mental health pod, launching a $1M reentry initiative, introducing innovative solutions like an anonymous ethics hotline and naloxone distribution for individuals leaving custody, as well as making significant strides in supporting our staff with pay raises, recruitment efforts, and enhanced mental health programs for deputies.
A Longstanding Commitment to Racial Justice
There is perhaps no greater demonstration of the police state under which Black Americans lived in the 1980s than the 1985 bombing by police in Philadelphia of the home of a group of Black communal activists known as MOVE. The subsequent fire was allowed to burn unattended by the fire department, killing six adults, five children and destroying 61 homes.
This was the milieu that incubated the activism of Susan’s freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania, where she attended student meetings to address the MOVE crisis and its aftermath. In subsequent years, she joined protests against South African apartheid, supported, as a matter of free speech, the exhibition of works by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, demonstrated against gender-based violence, and rallied against the anti-Black racism of the majority white fraternities and sororities that dominated Greek life at UPenn.
Before graduating with a degree in economics, Susan’s political attention turned toward the White House during the 1988 presidential campaign—her first as an eligible voter—of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson and the euphoria that surrounded the possible ascendancy of Black politics to the pinnacle of the country’s domestic agenda. She attended rallies in support of Jackson and can still remember, more than three decades later, Jackson’s theme song, “Run, Jessie, Run.”
Accountability Matters
Susan has an unwavering commitment to accountability and fairness. She believes that everyone, regardless of their socioeconomic status, race, gender, or background, should be held to the same high standards. Her reputation for integrity and fairness is rooted in this core principle: no one is above accountability. Susan's dedication to these values ensures that she will always act with transparency, responsibility, and a commitment to justice for all. Her consistent track record of standing up for what is right makes her someone we can rely on to lead with fairness and moral clarity.