VIDALIA — For some Concordia Parish inmates, the jailhouse might soon look a lot like their own house.

Seventh Judicial District District Attorney Brad Burget and Concordia Parish Sheriff Kenneth Hedrick approached the Concordia Parish Police Jury with a proposal Monday to contract with a company that will outfit some low-level pre-trial prisoners with electronic ankle monitors.

The company, AEMLA, will charge $5.50 a day for inmates outfitted with the monitors, which track their location by GPS. The parish would not have to buy the equipment.

“I did a pilot program on a guy a few months ago, and I can tell you right now where that rascal is,” Burget said.

“I could actually look with my phone and see where people are, and could actually set off alarms from here.”

The parish presently pays $5 a day to house inmates, but the indirect savings in inmate medical costs will far exceed the difference, Burget said, when medical bills can run between $10,000 and $15,000 a month.

But before someone is outfitted with a monitor, they will have to meet criteria that they’re not a danger to the community at large, Burget said.

“We see someone who has a medical problem, we are putting them on an ankle bracelet,” he said. “Someone commits a murder? We’re keeping them in jail.”

The district attorney said the other side of the program would be that inmates outfitted with the monitors would have to reimburse the cost of monitoring, and any damage to the equipment — which he characterized as “virtually indestructible” — would be charged to the offender.

Because the inmates would be tasked with paying the $165 a month themselves, Burget said, “If they can’t afford it, I don’t want to put more expense on them.”

Sheriff Hedrick said the parish jail can accommodate 48 inmates. Burget said the parish could start off requesting between 15 and 20 monitors.

But he also said having an inmate outfitted with a monitor would ultimately be a judge’s decision, and he and the sheriff would work with the judges to set a bond the inmates could meet before being fitted.

Police Juror Joe Parker said he thought the suggestion was a good idea, but he wanted to see numbers on the jail’s costs before moving forward.

The jury requested the sheriff and Secretary-Treasurer Kevin Friloux gather the information to present at a coming meeting before they decide.

In other news:

-The jury voted to advertise for bids for the installation of an elevator in the front of the courthouse so members of the public who cannot use stairs will not have to use the elevator in the jail lobby area to access the second floor of the courthouse.

-The jury voted to advertise for bids for a project that will improve several lift stations around the parish.

-The jury heard from Bill Flowers with Media3 cable service. Flowers attended the meeting at the jury’s request, where members had questions about service quality.

In some instances, the service was affected as the company worked to upgrade the system, Flowers said, but the company is working to fix aging cable infrastructure.

“The system itself was bad when we started on it,” he said. “It was built back in the 1970s. There are apartments here that were built in the 1970s, and the wires have deteriorated.”

If someone is having problems with their cable service, he said, they need to contact the company.

“If they don’t call us, we can’t fix it,” he said.