TUCKER -- A month after being tapped to lead Arkansas' parole and probation services, Community Correction Director Jerry Bradshaw addressed the Board of Corrections for the first time Wednesday.
Bradshaw told the board, meeting at the state penitentiary in Tucker, that he is taking over a division that supervises more than 65,000 offenders on release, in treatment centers and in county jails -- an increase of nearly 4,000 since last year.
At the same time that the number of supervised offenders has increased, caseloads have fallen -- to about 92 cases per officer last month -- due to new hires and a restructuring of how cases are assigned.
Bradshaw, 52, became the third person to lead the state's largest correction-related agency in the past two years, when the Board of Corrections approved his promotion in November, a spokeswoman said.
The previous director, Kevin Murphy, served less than a year in the top role at the agency before announcing his retirement in September.
Murphy himself became the leader of the agency after Gov. Asa Hutchinson fired Murphy's predecessor, Sheila Sharp, in 2018 after she defied the governor's budget orders and requested 99 additional parole and probation officers to relieve caseloads.
Murphy led Arkansas Community Correction as it merged with the state prison agency under the umbrella agency called the Department of Corrections, part of Hutchinson's reorganization of state government this year. The head of the predecessor prison agency, Wendy Kelley, was tapped to become Hutchinson's secretary of corrections, overseeing both the Divisions of Correction and Community Correction, as well as the Parole Board.
A 27-year veteran of the agency, Bradshaw noted that his tenure started around the same time that HBO filmed its documentary, Gang War: Bangin' in Little Rock. Bradshaw moved up through the ranks from parole officer to head both Arkansas Community Correction's residential services and its parole and probation division.
"I have an understanding of our full operation," he said.
Shortly after Murphy took over as interim director of the agency in August 2018, he announced that the agency would re-examine how it calculates officer caseloads, which were as high as 147 cases per officer. Murphy said offenders would receive more supervision at the start of their sentence, with the frequency of check-ins decreasing as long as they did not violate the terms of their release.
Offenders who were back in prison or jail would also not be counted on officer caseloads, Murphy said at the time.
While those caseloads have dropped this year, the number of offenders on supervised release has risen, in part due to a 2017 law aimed at decreasing the state's prison population.
In a short interview Wednesday, Bradshaw said his "first and foremost" concern was public safety. Beyond that, he said his first month on the job dealt largely with the continued effects of government reorganization that merged the state's two offender-related agencies.
"At the moment, I'm just kind of getting a feel for the land and things that need our attention, you know, with transformation," Bradshaw said. "A lot has changed with the management structure, the office, so I'm taking notes on people's performance and seeing where we need to make those adjustments."
Bradshaw's salary as director of community correction will be $120,542 a year, according to the state's transparency website.
Metro on 12/12/2019