Prosecutors met with lawmakers and prison and parole representatives in a room of the Capitol cafeteria last Wednesday in an ongoing attempt to resolve disagreements on how to fix the state's swollen criminal justice system.
But no consensus was reached during the hurried luncheon. Prosecutors said they still dislike some provisions of the proposed omnibus package, Senate Bill 136. Still, its sponsor, Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson, R-Little Rock, said he's ready to push for a vote this week, possibly as soon as Tuesday.
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Groups interested in the legislation -- prosecutors, sheriffs, county judges, circuit judges and prison officials -- say they are trying to keep track of changes to the evolving bill, as well as add their language.
At least two groups -- the sheriffs and prosecutors associations -- are taking a neutral stance on the proposed legislation, according to their leaders. Support for the bill comes from county judges, the Department of Correction and Arkansas Community Correction.
The Judicial Council, which represents judges of circuit courts, the Court of Appeals and Supreme Court, is awaiting final drafts of the bill but generally supports the proposals, according to Pulaski County Circuit Judge Mary McGowan, who serves as a liaison for criminal justice issues.
Except for county judges, all the interested parties were represented on the Legislative Criminal Justice Oversight Task Force, of which Hutchinson is chairman. The task force worked with a research team for more than 1½ years on proposals aimed at halting the growth of people in custody in Arkansas' prison system.
The research group, the Council of State Governments Justice Center, determined that Arkansas had the fastest-growing prison population in the nation between 2012 and 2014. Some skeptics of the legislative package have questioned whether growth remains as pressing of an issue.
The task force's recommendations became the basis for SB136, titled the Criminal Justice Efficiency and Safety Act.
On Wednesday morning, hours before the bill was taken up in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Hutchinson released an amendment consolidating the results of previous negotiations. Fellow lawmakers on the committee, which is also led by Hutchinson, later balked at the idea of taking a quick vote that afternoon.
Throughout the day, Hutchinson and the bill's co-sponsor, Rep. Clarke Tucker, D-Little Rock, were seen talking with prosecutors in Capitol hallways and at the lunch meeting. The parties said they have lost count of the revisions made to the bill since then.
Speaking by phone on his way to Fayetteville on Friday morning, Hutchinson reflected that it had been "one of the more frustrating weeks of my legislative career."
Omnibus package
The 46-page legislation includes the policy framework for several programs in Gov. Asa Hutchinson's budget, including for training police officers on how to interact with the mentally ill, and crisis centers where mentally ill offenders can be sent for treatment. The governor is the uncle of Sen. Hutchinson.
The mental health proposals are generally noncontroversial among the stakeholders. The Arkansas Sheriffs' Association and the County Judges Association each cited the crisis stabilization units as key factors in their interests.
Other sections of the law have attracted more deliberation, including a proposal to send parole and probation violators to Arkansas Community Correction facilities instead of prison when they slip up on technical violations -- such as failing a drug test-- or commit a nonviolent misdemeanor.
While new felony arrests, violent or sexual misdemeanor charges and absconding would still be grounds for revocation and a return to prison, it would take three confinements for more minor violations before the offender could be sent back to prison.
Limiting revocations for minor offenses could free up as many as 1,650 prison beds in the future, according to the task force report.
But what constitutes a temporary confinement remains a point of contention between Sen. Hutchinson and the prosecutors.
Sen. Hutchinson said the intention was always that the confinements would be at community correction facilities and range from 45 days to 180 days. Clarifying language was added to the bill this past week.
Prosecutors objected to the clarification. Bob McMahon, the state's prosecutor coordinator, said the group wants other confinements -- such as a weekend lockup in the county jail -- to be counted as a strike toward revocation.
"We want to make sure we're comfortable with any procedure put in place with regard to probation because the prosecutors are the ones that are going to hear from the members of the community when they're upset about people that are committing crimes out there and how they're dealt with," McMahon said.
Sen. Hutchinson said he does not want to concede that point, arguing that it would result in fewer short-term lockups and that violators would go without the treatment and intervention options they could receive in community correction facilities.
The director of Arkansas Community Correction, Sheila Sharp, said she is on board with opening up her facilities to more technical violators. The Arkansas Department of Correction is also supportive of Sen. Hutchinson's bill, a spokesman said.
"We think can do a good job with them," Sharp said.
For now, the prosecutors remain neutral, McMahon said, pending the release of further alterations to the bill. Prosecutors have already received other concessions, including removing a requirement that judges stick to sentencing guidelines or have their cases be subject to appeal.
The request also was supported by the Judicial Council, said McGowan, chairman of the council's Special Committee on Criminal Justice.
McGowan praised Sen. Hutchinson and Tucker for sculpting the law around a variety of inputs, some of whom have conflicting viewpoints.
"With that comes the problem of each constituent group saying, 'Well, I've got a problem with this,'" McGowan said.
Fear of repeating past
During Wednesday's committee meeting, lawmakers raised the specter of repeating the perceived missteps of Act 570, a 2011 sentencing overhaul law that led to a drop in the state's prison population.
That changed in 2013, when Darrell Dennis, a parole absconder, murdered a Fayetteville teenager, prompting an investigation into why the parole system had allowed him to remain free.
Toughened sanctions against parole and probation violators led to an increase in the prison population, which in turn prompted the formation of the legislative task force.
Prosecutors and several of Sen. Hutchinson's colleagues on the committee have raised public safety concerns over the possibility of allowing technical violators more chances to remain out of prison.
"The best thing to reduce crime out there is to incarcerate people who are repeat offenders," Sen. Bryan King, R-Green Forrest, told the committee Wednesday.
Repeatedly describing the technical violators as "knuckleheads," Sen. Hutchinson said that under the current system, the Department of Correction is freeing more-serious offenders in order to make room for those less-serious ones. In other cases, he said, parole supervisors have to issue hollow revocation threats they cannot carry out because of overcrowding.
"It's our fault," Sen. Hutchinson said. "For 50 years, we've gone through this cycle where we just lock everybody up, let everybody out, lock everybody up, let them out. And it's high time we start using data, and making rational decisions and using models that have worked and putting thought into managing our system."
Ken Casady, a Saline County prosecutor who served on the task force and often was a critic of its proposals, said in an interview last week that he rejected the Justice Center's projections that the prison population would continue to climb at a rate similar to those of recent years. He referred to the changes affecting parole and probation violators.
"That and that alone caused the spike to say we're out of bounds," Casady said in an interview. The rates have not kept up since then, he said.
Figures by the Justice Center predict Arkansas' inmate population will grow to more than 21,000 by 2023.
No matter what changes are enacted, prison officials have contended that the state will need to add prison beds to accommodate a growing population of inmates. No plans have been announced to construct a new prison.
The prison capacity is 15,205. As of Friday, Arkansas' in-house prison population was 16,274, and the number of inmates backed up in county jails was 1,298.
A Section on 02/13/2017