NORFORK — Despite the passage of a corrections overhaul bill and a falling prison inmate population, state funding for the Department of Correction would increase by more than $25 million in the state fiscal year that begins next July under a proposal presented Thursday to the state Board of Corrections.
The Correction Department’s funding from general revenue would increase 8 percent, from $311.9 million in fiscal 2013, which begins next month, to $337 million in fiscal 2014, under the proposal.
The preliminary budgetproposal by the Correction Department includes $9.4 million to cover the cost of holiday and “straight-time” pay for corrections officers and $8.4 million to pay for the opening of space formore than 400 inmates that is now under construction or is already finished but not being used because of a lack of money.
The proposal also includes $2.5 million in increased food costs and $2.6 million for equipment purchases, including $750,000 for stabresistant vests for corrections officers. The proposal also includes $2.3 million to cover the increase in medical care for inmates.
Meanwhile, general revenue funding to the state Department of Community Correction, which supervises the state’s probationers and parolees, would increase more than 10 percent, from $71.2 million in fiscal 2013 to $78.8 million in 2014.
The department would use the money to hire 31 probation and parole officers, and restore positions that have been held vacant because of a lack of money.
The department would also hire 12 assistant area managers for its probation and parole officers, six administrative specialists, five substance abuse counselors and 20 workers at its minimumsecurity lockups for nonviolent offenders. General revenue comes mostly from sales taxes and income taxes.
The departments presented the proposed budgets on Thursday during a Board of Corrections retreat at Norfork River Resort in Baxter County.
Corrections Board Chairman Benny Magness said the board will likely vote on the request at a special meeting in early July.
The proposed budgets will then go to the Department of Finance and Administration and Gov. Mike Beebe for consideration in Beebe’s request to the Legislature.
Magness called the requests “realistic.”
“They’re not any more than the agencies really need,” he said.
The requests come as Arkansas’ prison inmate population has fallen from a peak of more than 16,400 in November 2010 to 14,849 as of Thursday.
Despite that drop, Correction Department Assistant Director Dina Tyler said the state still has 384 inmates who are in county jails because space to house them in state prisons isn’t available.
An additional 600 inmates are being housed in “temporary beds” that allow the prisons to hold more inmates than they were designed to house.
And, she noted, the Corrections Board continues to regularly invoke the Emergency Powers Act, which allows inmates to be released up to 90 days before their normal parole eligibility date.
The act can be invoked when the prison system has been at or above 98 percent of capacity for at least 30 days. It has been invoked every 90 days since November 1998.
“I think everybody would like us to reach a point where we don’t have to use the [Emergency Powers Act],” Tyler said.
Among the construction projects in the works are a 100-bed addition to the McPherson Unit for female inmates in Newport, a 200-bed addition to the North Central Unit in Calico Rock and a 67-bed addition to the Northwest Arkansas Work Release Center in Springdale.
An additional 84 beds at the Ouachita River Unit in Malvern are empty because the department does not have the money to operate them.
The department also hopes to eventually reopen the 459-bed Diagnostic Unit in Pine Bluff, which it closed in January because of a lack of money. The department’s budget proposal for fiscal 2014 and 2015 does not include moneyto reopen the unit, however.
Magness said the state is in a better position than it would have been without Act 570 of 2011, which has been credited with helping bring about the drop in the inmate population.
Among the law’s provisions were ones that shortened the sentences for many drug- and theft-related crimes and authorized the Community Correction Department to use short stints in jail as part of a range of “intermediate sanctions” to punish parole and probation violations.
Without the law, “we’d be in the planning stages of at least one new prison,” Magness said.
Tyler said the department expects the inmate population to eventually begin growing again, although at a slower pace than it would have without the law.
Magness appointed a committee earlier this year to study the idea of closing part or all of a prison and shifting the money used for its operation to provide housing for parolees.
He said Thursday that he expects the committee to present its recommendations at the board’s regular meeting next month. The budget requests for the Correction and Community Correction departments could be modified based on those recommendations, he said.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 06/22/2012