BATON ROUGE -- Over the past several days, WBRZ has received several calls and emails from concerned citizens saying female inmates at the EBR Parish Prison are allegedly being moved to the men's sections.

All of these claims also say that the conditions are "horrid" with allegations of mice and mold.

The city-parish, which is responsible for the maintenance of the facility, denies the claims about the female inmates. The EBR Sheriff's Office and EBR Metro Councilman Darryl Hurst agreed.

"Everything you're probably hearing about the incidents is not all true. What I heard is that they had to separate people for safety reasons and put them in two different parts of the jail," Hurst said.

The Sheriff's Office told WBRZ that it often shuffles inmates throughout the facility in order for repairs to be made to different sections or for disciplinary issues. It also said the women are never intermingled with the men.

However, both EBRSO and Hurst did say that claims that conditions are poor were true.

Hurst said that one thing that happened around four months ago was that a company said that it could no longer guarantee that the bars at the prison would stay locked.

"We had to shut down a wing and move them from a wing that we had just moved other inmates from because it wasn't safe," Hurst said.

A spokeswoman for EBRSO told WBRZ that it was "no secret a new prison facility is needed due to age."

Councilman Hurst has been pushing for a new facility and has even taken citizens on tours that show the conditions of the facility.

"In terms of the prison being deplorable, that answer is absolutely correct. They're sleeping in a place that I wouldn't want my dog to be," Hurst said.

"Our air conditioning went out about a year ago, a year and a half ago, where we had 100-degree heat in the prison for about a month or two because they couldn't find the parts. We had to search all around the country," he added.

The EBR Parish Prison Reform Coalition's Alexis Anderson said that it has always been tough to get anyone to take responsibility for the aging facility.

"Where is the track record from DPW of the work orders? Where are the procurement records? If you have an exterminator, somebody had to contract them. It is very easy to prove or disprove that these services are not only being maintained, but they're being adequately maintained," Anderson said.

Hurst and Anderson both say that a new prison is needed to ensure the health and safety of employees and the inmates.