A search for funds to help quell prison violence and keep units staffed was advanced this week by the Arkansas Board of Corrections.
A prisons spokesman said the board gave authority to Department of Correction Director Wendy Kelley to seek $6 million in funding for overtime pay and the construction of fortified walls at the recreation areas of four prisons.
The board met Monday in West Memphis. The agenda for the meeting included a $3.5 million bond request to replace the recreation yard pens at the East Arkansas, Tucker Maximum Security, Cummins and Varner units.
The pens at those facilities use chain-link fence, and prisoners at the Maximum Security Unit were able to separate the fencing to escape in a pair of violent attacks this summer, officials have said. Solomon Graves, a spokesman for the Department of Correction, said the new fencing will be made of concrete.
The board voted to allow Kelley to ask the Arkansas Development Finance Authority to take out a bond to pay for the project, Graves said. The bond itself will be repaid through the Prison Construction Trust Fund, which Graves said contains about $6.5 million.
The Prison Construction Trust Fund is financed through the sale of annual license plate vanity decals, according to state law.
The other funding step the board took Monday was to give Kelley permission to seek authorization from the Legislature to spend $2.5 million on overtime.
The prison system has already put more than $1 million into overtime pay since the start of the fiscal year on July 1, according to a letter Kelley sent to the Department of Finance and Administration in October.
The letter says additional overtime funds are needed to "continue operations in a safe and effective manner."
Faced with hundreds of staff vacancies -- which are most pronounced at the highest-security lockups, such as Varner -- the department has resorted to asking officers from lower-security prisons to work overtime.
Officers worked more than 6,651 hours of overtime during the most recent two-week pay period, which ended Oct. 21.
Officers at the Varner Unit worked the most overtime, totaling 1,977 hours, according to department statistics.
The Legislature has already approved funding to increase pay at some chronically understaffed prisons, but Kelley told lawmakers last month that many of the recruits chose to leave soon after being hired.
The department hired 68 guards in September, while 115 left work, according to a monthly report sent to the board.
Prison officials, including Kelley, have attributed the lack of security staff members to the high number of violent incidents at Arkansas prisons this summer.
Another anti-violence measure Kelley has proposed is converting up to 400 cells into lockdown units where unruly, frail or vulnerable inmates can be housed for up to 22 hours a day.
That proposal comes even as other states are abandoning the practice, sometimes referred to as solitary confinement.
The department has yet to release a cost estimation for the cell-conversion project.
Metro on 11/02/2017