BATON ROUGE, LA - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger should look elsewhere to find empty jail space to ease his state's prison overcrowding problem, Louisiana prison officials say.

Schwarzenegger announced earlier this month that he was hoping to arrange accommodations in Louisiana, Texas, Michigan and Indiana, states he identified as having room to spare.

"The prisons are in crisis, so we're doing everything we can to address the situation as soon as possible, in the safest way possible," Schwarzenegger's press secretary, Margita Thompson, said. "We need to look at how we deal with recidivism, and we need to look at overcrowding."

But with 5,000 Orleans Parish prisoners still scattered across Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina evacuations, there's little or no room anywhere in local or private prisons, said Richard Harbison, vice president of LSC Corrections, based in Lafayette.

"To my knowledge, there are very few, if any, beds any place," Harbison said.

LSC operates the Caldwell Parish Correctional Center in Grayson, the Tensas Parish Detention Center in Newellton and two prisons in Evangeline Parish. The Alabama Sentencing Commission says about 500 male inmates and 300 females are housed in the LSC facilities in Pine Prairie and Basile.

Clay Lee with Emerald Companies of Shreveport, operator of the West Carroll Detention Center, a private correctional facility in Epps, said he knows of no space that's available. Emerald is currently negotiating a contract with Alabama officials to house 600 inmates.

And with a Louisiana law prohibiting state-run facilities from housing any inmate convicted in another state, there's no room for California inmates in any state prisons, either, said Pam Laborde of the Department of Corrections.

Mike Ranatza, director of the Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, said the problem in California "seems to be a growing trend. Violent crime is up and what they are addressing in California is not going to be unique."

Because of the prison crisis, with twice as many inmates as the prison system is designed to handle, California officials are analyzing the system.

"There's a growing trend in this country to review all indicators and look at the full range of what's causing the problem," Ranatza said. “Louisiana won't be far behind because the crime problem is not going to go away."