State board clears plan for prison

ENGLAND -- The Arkansas Board of Corrections approved on Friday a state Department of Correction recommendation to build a maximum-security prison that will cost on the high end of a previous $75 million to $100 million estimate for a new 1,000-inmate facility.

The department plans to seek legislative approval in the spring to finance a $95 million bond issue through a $2 increase in license plate fees. The current fee is $2.50; $1.50 goes to the Arkansas Development Finance Authority, and $1 goes to the state Department of Finance and Administration's Revenue Division to facilitate vehicle registrations.

Correction Department spokesman Shea Wilson said it was unclear whether the fee would be permanent. The prison would have an initial annual operating budget of $19 million.

The department's prison design committee met three times to discuss what type of prison the department should seek and settled on a maximum-security facility for "inmates who are constant management problems."

The facility would also have 200 single "punitive" cells for inmates deemed to be causing problems.

"The population trend that we're seeing ... people are coming in younger, staying longer and are more violent," Wilson said, noting a concern for safety inside the current prisons.

Communities can soon bid to be the site of the prison, which early estimates show could provide about 230 jobs at an average wage of $12.75 per hour. Those numbers will likely be revised in the request-for-proposal notices the department will send out.

Board member Buddy Chaddick said he believed that the cost of the prison could go down if the department were careful about the infrastructure costs wherever it selected the next site. Officials are looking for 400 acres with an airport nearby and a community college or other higher education institution.

He mentioned sites in Pine Bluff and Fort Smith that might be ideal and said he's already spoken with Fort Smith officials about the possibility of building a prison there.

"They were very excited," Chaddick said.

State officials have been discussing a new prison for months since tighter parole policies resulted in increasing state prison commitments and expectations that Arkansas' prison population will continue to rise. The prison population as of Friday was 17,485 inmates, Correction Department Director Ray Hobbs said.

Board of Corrections Chairman Benny Magness and Vice Chairman Mark Parker expressed concern Friday that the state Department of Community Correction, which oversees parolees and probationers, did not have more people on its 27,971-person probation list.

They contended that while they want to be tough on crime, they're concerned that prosecutors and judges are wary of sentencing people to probation and are instead sentencing them to the prison system, thereby contributing to higher prison populations.

"Judges are not using probation as effectively as they can," Parker said.

Magness said he wondered if the shortage of parole and probation officers was causing judges to worry that officers' focus is going to parolees and not to people on probation.

"So maybe they feel like they're not being supervised, so they're not putting people on it," he said.

After some board members said they were concerned about asking officials to be lighter on crime, the board approved a motion to talk to prosecutors, judges and others about why probation is not being used more.

"We're trying to say, 'What's wrong with our program, and how can we fix it?,'" board Secretary Janis Walmsley said.

The board also approved Friday the early release of 196 inmates within 90 days of their parole eligibility through the Emergency Powers Act.

In another bid to ease crowding, corrections officials have opened more than 300 beds in facilities across the state to hold state prisoners and will move toward opening all 604 beds for which the state Legislature designated $6.3 million in funds earlier this month.

The moves are part of an effort to alleviate crowding in the county jails that are holding state inmates awaiting prison beds.

Many of the 2,248 people on the Correction Department's backlog list are not actually in custody, officials said Friday. Another 6,000 people have absconded from parole or probation and are not on the backlog list, although they would be arrested upon contact with law enforcement for absconding.

"Hope you don't catch 'em," Chaddick said to laughter.

Metro on 07/26/2014

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