The state's biggest jail reopened its doors Thursday morning to all arrests, ending its second "closure" this year.
The Pulaski County jail has been closed since July 1 to most nonviolent and property crime offenders because it was over capacity because of a glut of state inmates. The jail reopened at 6 a.m. with a head count of 1,146 -- just 5 percent less than its 1,210 funding capacity -- down from 1,281 prisoners July 1, the first day of the second closure.
That closure, as well as the April 29 closure, which turned away all but the most serious offenders for 41 days, was prompted by a large number of state prisoners waiting on bed space in state facilities.
As of Thursday, the state's prison facilities housed 14,786 inmates, nearly 1,000 inmates more than its 13,894 bed capacity.
Even with the state's prison system more than 6 percent over capacity, there are another 2,254 state inmates being housed at county jails across the state. That has burdened county jail administrators such as Pulaski County Sheriff Doc Holladay with the task of holding state inmates in addition to their constitutionally defined function as a holding center for local arrests and pretrial inmates.
The backlog has gone down only slightly from the 2,369 inmates being held when the jail closed at the start of the month.
Holladay said that while there is no long-term solution to the large rosters of prisoners who need housing, he credits the state's decision to fund the opening of a 250-bed facility once used by the county in bringing his numbers down to a more manageable level.
"We're much better off now than we were previous to signing the agreement," Holladay said. "It was the key to us getting this facility reopened."
The agreement was a $1 lease of the county's old work center facility to the state, which opened Monday and will house low-level, low-risk offenders nearing their parole, Holladay said.
Under the agreement, the state will use half of those beds for inmates being held in Holladay's facility, though not directly.
The space freed up in state facilities by the low-risk inmates will be used by state prisoners, which will relieve some of the pressure faced by the Pulaski County jail.
As of Thursday, Department of Correction spokesman Shea Wilson said the Pulaski County facility is holding only 100 inmates, and they want to "slowly" increase it to 250 as they deal with the "startup issues" inherent in commandeering another agency's facility.
Last week, the Correction Department took 45 inmates from the county jail, which was at 1,176 by Monday morning, when the agency took another 45 inmates from the jail.
Correction Department officials are scheduled to pick up another 35 today, according to Holladay, who said he now feels the risks to deputies' and inmates' safety have been reduced enough to start admitting misdemeanor drug and theft offenders who otherwise would have been cited and told to appear in court.
The swell in the state prisons' rolls began last summer when Correction Department officials implemented more stringent parole and probation policies after an eight-time parole absconder, Darrell Dennis, was arrested and charged in the kidnapping and killing of a teenager in Little Rock.
Dennis' case, which resulted in several investigations, including one by state police at the request of the governor's office, coupled with an increase in new commitments to state prisons, resulted in a swell of offenders with no place to be held but local jails.
For example, Holladay's jail had, on average, 107 state prisoners in January 2013. By December, that figure nearly doubled to 213 and in the lead up to the jail's April closure it averaged 325 state inmates.
That figure, which doesn't include prisoners being held at the request of state parole officials, remained high Thursday, at 251 state inmates and another 148 on parole holds. But Holladay said they're trending in the right direction.
On July 1, the Correction Department received $6.3 million in new funding after a special legislative session earlier this summer to staff unused facilities to hold another 600 inmates.
So far, Wilson said, Correction Department officials have filled 354 of those spots, but her agency has bigger plans in mind.
On July 17, Correction Department Director Ray Hobbs told a legislative committee that his department would seek approval from the state Legislature in its 2015 session to build a new 1,000-inmate facility, one that could cost as much as $100 million for construction and an additional $25 million every year to operate.
Long-term answers for the backlog remain unclear, though, according to Holladay, who said discussions of overcrowding were a common thread at a recent Arkansas sheriffs convention, as was speculation about the 2015 legislative session.
So far, the jail has been closed for a combined 64 days this year. Holladay said he will continue to work with the state, but he won't put his deputies or those already housed in his facility at greater risk if numbers become too high again.
"Looking at the [new beds], you still have a statewide backlog of 2,300 like we had Tuesday; you can see there are still some issues that need resolved," Holladay said. "Whether that's additional beds, whether it's the parole system and tweaking it ... about everybody is concerned with what happens."
Metro on 07/25/2014