Low-level offenders hog bed space

Gov. Asa Hutchinson said talk of a new prison is unlikely for the agenda of next year’s legislative session. Those comments came on the heels of a presentation to the state Board of Corrections by JFA Associates, which projected Arkansas could have 22,781 inmates by 2016.

The firm provides independent analysis of prison populations and has tracked Arkansas’ numbers for several years. They have documented the steady incarceration climb and their findings have been shared through the years with legislative and other leaders who make decisions about prison needs. On Wednesday, the Department of Correction reported 16,336 inmates were housed in its facilities. The capacity is 15,157. There are 18,012 inmates under the department’s jurisdiction, but they are housed elsewhere – mostly in work programs or are backed up in county jails awaiting transfer to prison.

“I don’t anticipate” a renewed discussion over expanding prison facilities, Hutchinson told reporters last week. “Right now we’re managing our prison population well. We want to make sure public safety has the first priority. And budget second. At this point, I would not anticipate a need for future prison expansion budget dollars next year.”

Before the start of the 2015 regular legislative session, prison officials recommended that the state consider funding a new 1,000-bed facility. The hefty price tag was considered too much of a burden to the state, so the Band-Aid box was passed around in the form of money to pay for bed space at existing prisons and more parole officers for Arkansas Community Correction to help reduce parole violators returning to prison.

So, if the state doesn’t want to pay for a new prison facility something will have to be done on the front end and the back end. The middle man’s arms are full.

Hutchinson created the Criminal Justice Oversight Task Force last year — a mix of lawmakers, law enforcement officials, judges and mental health providers — to present proposals on reducing prison population. Also, Hutchinson has recommended that the state re-evaluate the way it sentences inmates and find a way to require judges or prosecutors to justify sentences that deviate from the guidelines of the Arkansas Sentencing Commission.

The shift now is from prison beds to increasing money for parole officers, relying more on probation instead of prison for lower-level offenders and funding mental health services and job skill development for offenders.

Community corrections holds the keys to decreasing prison population in Arkansas, according to ACC Deputy Director Dina Tyler.

“For ACC, it comes down to the need for more people and resources,” she said. “We believe investing more in community corrections would have a tremendous impact on the prison population. That’s the same belief held by researchers from the Council of State Governments Justice Center, who have been studying Arkansas’ situation. The governor, legislative leaders, ACC and ADC requested a study by CSG to gain insight into what’s been happening in this state. Arkansas was fortunate to receive a CSG grant to conduct the study.”

Tyler said several things have been learned from the CSG study and presented to the governor’s task force.

“So far, we’ve learned that too many lower-level offenders are being sent to prison instead of being placed on probation,” she said. “They were sentenced from areas on the state’s grid where prison is not a presumptive sentence. In addition, probation and parole revocations are too high. In fact, in 2015 the number of revocations actually outpaced the number of new commitments sent to ADC. In 2009, parole revocations accounted for 32 percent of prison admissions. Last year, 54 percent of admissions were parole violators. Nearly a third of those violators were sent for a technical violation.”

She said those groups are where the focus should lie. “We fully support the task force’s recommendation to tweak the sentencing grip so that more low level offenders are placed on probation. And we must provide the resources necessary to decrease the number of parole violators returning to prison, especially the technical violators.”

Tyler said there is a misperception that increasing the number of supervision officers will increase revocations. Not true, she said.

“Because the officers would have lower caseloads, they will be able to focus more sharply on each offender. That way, they can address more problems before they escalate. Right now, each ACC officer is supervising an average of 129 offenders, which is more than twice the national average. They have way more than they can say grace over, and investing more in additional officers would be money well-spent. The agency also needs more sanctions for offenders who start to veer off the straight and narrow. There is the Technical Violator Program, but it needs to be larger and encompass more types of violators. Parolees sent back to prison about a year. Those who go to TVP, stay 90 or 120 days. The cost is about the same, though TVP is a dollar or two less per day.”

All of these plans will take a little time to implement, but they will be up and running faster than bricks and mortar could be laid – and at a lesser cost. If Arkansas doesn’t want mass incarceration as its growth industry, these ideas are the only answer.

Shea Wilson is the former managing editor of the News-Times. Email her at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter.com @sheawilson7.

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