Judiciary Committee - Senate and House
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- October 2, 2026
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
0:00
we're going to call this meeting to order we like to start the day off
in prayer so if you'll stand i have asked representative john eubanks to lead us in prayer this morning please
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
0:27
bow with me in prayer dear heavenly father we're
thankful for this day and we're thankful for all the blessings that thou has bestowed upon us even the blessing of life father we're thankful for those that are in attendance today that have concerns for the well-being of thy children father we ask that thou will bless the proceedings here that the things that we hear and learn will be able to help us to administer the affairs of this state and be able to help those that are in need of our help. Father, we're thankful for thy son,
Jesus Christ, and we ask that all these things in the name of thy son, Jesus
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:10
Christ, amen. Thank you all for being here. Let me go over the ground rules real quick. You can see that we've got a lot of people on the agenda. The subject today is how do we reduce the number of prison beds we need. We will stay on that subject. We've got a lot to do between now and December.
I have stayed purposefully ignorant on the subject so that I do not have an agenda. We are gathering information so that the legislature will feel comfortable, hopefully come session, to act, whatever direction that may go. And like I said, I do not have any preferences. I'm not trying to lead you in any direction, just to gather facts so that we have some ideas of what we can do.
If you get off that subject, whether you're a presenter or whether you're a legislator, I'm going to rein you in. Because we will have other meetings where we can discuss other things the things that you may want to discuss We will get to but today is about how do we reduce the number of prison beds? Because we have so many I think a lot of these Presentations will be joined together, but because we have so many people we will be breaking for lunch Because we have so many people I will be limiting time the chair will be limiting time
whether we've got all of our questions asked or not. So let me tell you first, if you're here and you're a non-member, you are welcome always in my committees to ask questions. But you will be at the end of the line behind members, so know that. So if we don't get to somebody, it will be you. So just be offended now, and I'll apologize now. The same goes for members. If we get in the queue early, I'm one of the worst about waiting and getting left out.
so get in the queue early because there will be a time where we may just call time and move on regardless of how important the subject or the those the questions being asked the also if you have asked lots
of questions i'll be as fair as i can if you have asked lots of questions during the day even though you may queue in first and somebody else who has not asked any questions queues in they'll go to the top of the list so that we'll try to be fair and balanced uh and and get people in uh as much as we can uh we just got a lot to cover between now and january
and uh so we have uh everyone who has asked let
me be clear about this when i said i don't have an agenda everyone who was asked to present today is on this list uh we will have more in october that we couldn't get
to today or couldn't make it today and so i'm not going to tell you how great their ideas are or not that will be for us to determine as we go forward i think we will hear a lot of good things though i know that we will and so we are going to
go to uh representative dalby do you have any comments
Representative Carol Dalby
Unverified
4:26
uh only to say i want to thank you senator clark for bringing these issues before the committees and
i'm looking forward to the discussion today and i really appreciate you kind of driving this bus as
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
4:39
we go forward thank you the uh we're going to go to b consideration to approve uh the august 25th meetings we are going going to skip over this we are going to approve these minutes next month and so if we're going to
move right to c and the discussion of how to reduce the number of prison beds i may not stay in the order that you we have here uh but i am going to start out at the top uh and we i will be asking multiple people if we have room to come up uh if there uh appear to be on the same subject at all uh but in doing that you'll have more time to answer questions
uh if it's just one of you there's going to be a time limit if there's if there's two groups uh we'll have double the time uh for members to get their questions in so uh selena coleman hale founder arkansas restorative initiative uh and do you have anyone with you okay and uh marybeth hill event coordinator uh art archway institute um
are you a um well i'll let you tell me what you are we'll just start with the the two of you uh and we have exhibit uh these folks have exhibit c1 in your packet if
the two of you would uh turn your mics on and introduce yourselves for the
Speaker 14
6:40
to start i would thank you all for this discussion it's very important for everyone involved in our state in this process um of course this question about the capacity and bed space that we have in the overcrowding is very significant i'm speaking to you all from lived experience and i'll kind of tailor that into this discussion so as far as i've seen on september 1st of 2026
adc has recorded 16 804 people in the units that has been listed against our capacity so 109.4 with that being said something that i want to incorporate with this decision with this discussion is the cycle of recidivism involving bed capacity especially internally in the carceral system specifically speaking we can start at the risk needs assessment the individualized case plans
and things of that nature all of this is one pressurized cycle and what i mean by that is we can start with our overcrowding and you have staffing and movement pressure we all know that we are understaffed right now and there are different things that we can tackle there but that limits the movement and when that limits the movement you have canceled or delayed programming for individuals that are required to meet specific classes and courses for their release
Now, when that slower progression takes place, that is going to bleed into our residual bed space. And that's kind of what I want to talk about as well, because on the external pressure cycle, you equally have unstable housing, treatment, transportation. And that's where we bleed into the bed capacity increasing with your stipulations, your recidivism rates, your violations for new offenses. and I think that where I personally go with this is properly using the resources that we have
and not siloing ourselves. We have many boots on the ground and armies behind these people, including the state and our criminal justice system, that are ready to be hands on deck for people and reduce these number of beds. Some proportional data that I've cumulatively you know just conglomerated together essentially with the capacity for recovery to be counted into this and reduce bed capacity if we can firmly work on our programming and consistency and
documentation of why we have lockdowns how many why is that reducing it it can quite literally equate to reducing beds um on page five i specifically had integrated this math where if you have 40 people with 30 fewer days that you're talking about your programming your stipulations your requirements that you're supposed to meet including nature of crime and those stipulations that accounts for 1200 custody days now when you divide that by 365 days
with those proper requirements you're meeting 3.3 annualized bed equivalents and so those are small portions where we can use those resources and programming and movement and documentation to identify those problematic areas and carry out through the residual beds and determining if we truly need more. Okay, I will go next. I already introduced myself,
Speaker 24
10:28
but I will do that again. My name is Mary Beth Hill. I am here today because I have lived experience on both sides of the justice system.
I also want you guys to know that I am a person in long-term recovery. I am a mom, a daughter, a sister, a mentor, an employee. Most importantly, I am an advocate. I was given the opportunity to change successfully and reintegrate after incarceration and build a life that I once did not think that was possible. Most importantly, I know that a person's worst chapter does not define them, and it's not the end of their story. Today, I work for the Archway Institute and the National Peer Recovery Alliance. We work to strengthen recovery ecosystems by connecting people and communities to support, education, opportunities to build stable lives.
Peer support is the powerful entity behind it because sometimes we cannot, things that we can't be learned through a textbook, the understanding that someone who has been there and who has found a way out. That's why I'm asking you all today not to view prison bed expansion as the only answer to overcrowding. We also need to examine what happens before someone reaches those prison beds. We cannot incarcerate ourselves out of a public health crisis. My own experience has taught me that the most effective intervention was not one program.
It was the continuum of support. May 9th of 2017, I was indicted on federal drug trafficking charges. I was facing a future that I could not have even imagined, and it could have taken me into any direction. And instead, the judge offered me a conditional pretrial release. That opportunity changed the trajectory of my life. Those years that I spent on pretrial release allowed me to establish stability, develop healthy relationships and learn how to live differently. I was preparing for the life that I wanted instead of just simply waiting for my case to be resolved in a county jail.
Treatment gave me a place to start, support gave me a reason to continue, and accountability helped me to stay engaged. By the time that my case was resolved, I was not the same person where I had begun. I had already started the work of recovery and building a foundation for long-term change. There were services available to me while I was incarcerated, programs like a residential drug treatment program that I was mandated to take, and reentry services were offered to me once I was released. Each of those parts matter.
I want to be really clear that conditional pretrial release into treatment was a turning point. I was mandated to 30 days at Recovery Centers of Arkansas. I was also mandated to six months of recovery housing, all while taking IOP classes before my sentencing, and I was mandated to electronic monitoring and recovery housing once I was released. I want to also recognize that the Arkansas Department of Corrections is moving in the right direction. They are giving programming and peer support services,
giving people the opportunity to work on themselves while incarcerated matters. Programming, peer support, and reentry preparation are all part of the solution. But we also have to look at what happens before someone enters the prison system. That is where our counties have an enormous opportunity. People are sitting in county jails right now. Other cases are moving through the system. Some absolutely need to remain incarcerated and I'm not negating that fact. However, others could be safely and conditionally released into treatment, recovery support or other appropriate services
while awaiting their sentencing. Conditional pretrial release should be a part of this conversation because it was a part of mine. If someone can be safely monitored and held accountable in their community while receiving treatment and support, that may be a better use of our resources and our money rather than keeping them in a county jail bed. I also want to acknowledge that today Carrie Williams will be speaking to you about the federal system and how it works and electronic monitoring. Electronic monitoring can help create accountability while allowing appropriate individuals to remain in the community.
Also, being connected to our recovery community organizations like the Wolf Street Foundation, NEA Divine Intervention, those are two huge community recovery organizations in the state of Arkansas that can help provide these services as well. A person can connect to treatment instead of just sitting in a cell. And at the same time, a county jail bed could remain available for someone who truly needs to be there. What if we work together, knock down the silos, work together as a community to help these individuals heal from the root?
That's what it took for me. So I'm asking the committee to think beyond construction. How do we create enough treatment capacity? How do we create enough recovery and reentry housing like Next Step Recovery Housing and Hidden Creek reentry? How do we strengthen peer support? How do we build the county-level partnerships? And how do we create safe conditional pathways from jails into treatment? On May 9th of 2017, I made the decision to begin a different life.
Today, I stand here advocating for people who are still trying to find their way out. Let's work together to build a continuum. Let's strengthen our communities. And let's recognize the progress being made within our departments already to give our community a chance. I want you guys to understand that a person can recover. person can come home a person can become a productive member of society a person can become a mother a daughter a sister an employee because I am proof of that thank you questions from the committee hold on just a moment
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
16:20
let me cover very quickly the decorum for our meetings uh there's lots of times i would like to clap myself but we're not going
to we're not going to clap we're not going to boo we're not going to say anything unless you're have the floor so everybody understand that because i'm a real
nice guy but i'm also an old umpire and i will have you tossed quickly so just if you don't want to be removed no noise okay uh central
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
17:08
rice thank you thank you mr chair i thank you all for being here today miss hill uh what first congratulations on your turnaround and we we always uh celebrate that with people who've done it and there's a lot of people that try and fail and try and fail and
sometimes they finally make it uh could you i didn't catch when you were talking about changing the trajectory of your life were you in an area that allowed you to meet the conditions of having support around you to get to it i represent all the parts of 10 counties that are very rural yes sir the that's what i'm wanting to know is what your case was versus what my
Speaker 24
18:03
indicted through the federal system and through that system they have a process for pre-trial release for offenders who meet the criteria and I did meet that criteria I want to really reiterate that there are multiple different agencies who are rural like white county low note county who offer peer support services inside of their courts they offer peer support services inside of their jail facilities I know as I was walking in today I saw Justin Buck who is here with the Wall Street Foundation. I know that he
is currently working with rural communities to be able to offer those services. I firmly believe in the power of peer support and when I say that to you sir it's a person with lived experience who has walked the path of recovery or re-entry that is able to help those individuals navigate that path as well. And so we are what we call resource brokers. You know we work with all the peer support people across the state of arkansas working to find new resources to new treatment options working with faith-based re-entry clinical re-entry whatever those services might be to help those
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
19:05
individualized people okay thank you very much and again we appreciate getting to hear your success story thank you
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
19:19
sir senator tucker thank you mr chair i just wanted to echo what senator rice said, I really appreciate both of y'all being here today. Um, you've added a lot of value to this discussion for all the legislators who are here and it's a really important part of the discussion. So I appreciate it more than that. I just want to thank you for the work that you do every day because y'all are in the trenches and y'all have had opportunities and you've taken
advantage of them. And then you've turned that around to help countless other people accomplish the same thing. And, uh, there's, there's no words that can describe the value that that adds to our state as a whole, and I really want to thank you all for being here today, but more than that, I want to thank you for the
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
20:02
work that you do every day. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Representative Tosh. Thank you, Mr.
Chair. I'm over here. Mary Beth, thank you for bringing up the peer support-ish point.
I'm not sure if you're familiar with this, but this legislative body, I think it was a couple of sessions ago. As a matter of fact, I ran the legislation. Well, we changed the peer support program here in Arkansas because prior, the old legislation was that if you'd ever been convicted of a violent crime, then you were not allowed to serve as a peer support specialist in one of our drug rehab centers. And that law changed to be able to allow that. Were you familiar with that and realizing that this legislative body, at least we had moved forward with that, taking that step in the right direction, hopefully?
Speaker 28
20:49
I absolutely was aware of that. I was there the day that Asa Hutchinson signed it into legislation that
Speaker 24
20:55
was prior to my prison sentence, and I can't thank you guys enough for allowing us to have that opportunity. Okay.
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
21:01
Just wanted to make sure you was aware of it and that we had taken that initiative to try to do something about opening that up. For those that had actually made that journey through Drug Rehab Center to be able to come back, Because like you said a while ago, who better can relate to those individuals that are there than someone that has been there?
Representative Keith Brooks
Unverified
21:20
So thank you for bringing that point up. Thank you. Senator Simon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you both for being here. And I've got a question for each of you. And first of all, Ms. Hill, I commend you for turning your life
Speaker 68
21:39
around the way you've done. It's amazing. And I think you are the example of how the corrections system should work. I believe you use the word that appropriate individuals, we need to find a way for appropriate individuals to remain in the community.
My question is, in your opinion, how do we determine who those appropriate individuals are, and how do we determine who are the ones that are
Speaker 24
22:00
actually a threat to society? Absolutely. When I say that, I mean like people who are obviously convicted of violent charges, rape, murder, those are not people who are appropriate. You know, even, and I want to reiterate something, too, like I am a domestic violence survivor, so I think that those people need to be incorporated in who is not appropriate to be out on a pretrial conditional release. But anybody with petty theft crimes, even, you know, theft, that's a product of substance use disorder.
People who steal and who are doing things to make sure that they can fund their habits. If you look at somebody's prior record, and they have a lot of drug offenses, that is obviously somebody who is struggling with substance use disorder. My incarceration started, you know, from 18 until I eventually was indicted in 2017. And so, you know, I have a history of theft, of possession, of fleeing, of things that were, you know, all conducive to, you know, my substance use disorder.
Representative Keith Brooks
Unverified
22:57
Thank you. And Ms. Coleman, I'm a math person. I like numbers. So going back to your example on page 5, help me understand exactly where this math is coming from on the
Speaker 68
23:11
30 fewer days. Are you just saying if we were to reduce sentences, 30 fewer days,
Speaker 14
23:17
that we could save prison beds? I kind of stated that fragmented, so I apologize. Where I was going with that is we have a foundation of your good time. You have the disciplinary actions that take place.
it's a conglomeration of all things internally with those pressure cycles. So when we look at the stipulations that people are being placed under, they're going to the whole, what is their case management looking like? That's where that math came into play. So if you are having someone who has to go 30, 60, 90 days waiting until they can be released because of a certain stipulation or program requirement, et cetera, that's where that math
Speaker 78
23:55
would come from, just calculating those time frames. - Okay, thank you. Yes, sir.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
24:04
Representative Beatty. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm over here. I guess my question focuses more. I understand
your point of coming from after the crime has happened and you're in the system, ways to reduce and to allow folks early release or an opportunity of life outside of prison. But my question is, what do you think would be a deterrent to the crime happening on the very front end?
And do you have thoughts on that, how if we don't have crime, then we don't have incarcerated individuals? So do you have thoughts on that, how to prevent this on the front end to reduce the number of
Speaker 24
24:49
beds that we have? So I think it's important to note that the Archway Institute recently just worked with prevention, And we created something called the PREP Programming through AYORP Funding. It is a prevention training that puts a prevention specialist inside the school districts to really work with those kids who are at risk as a youth.
I think it's a continuum. We have to look at prevention, recovery, incarceration, and obviously reentry. If we can start funding the programs that we know that have evidence-based that work, Like peer support, you know, that is where we begin to see a shift in the way that Arkansas and our communities look. I know that right now Arkansas is leading, you know, one of the top leaders of incarceration in the United States. And we have to look at, you know, like the previous center stated, look at our rural communities.
How do we offer these services, not to just, you know, our metro areas, but how do we provide all of these
Speaker 28
25:46
services to every rural and county, you know, that's out there as well? I
Speaker 14
25:53
would also like to touch base on this. I said that I would circle around to my lived experience as well, and this is where it comes into play. At a young age, I grew up in abuse, an abusive home, and my dad actually went to prison. He is a pedophile. And throughout my childhood, I did not get, well, and I was also from Madison
County, rural area as well, that equates to that. And I did not have an understanding of the real world, economics, financial means. I was not taught that at a young age. And seeing my parents act as though money has grown on trees, I developed that same attitude and it was very poor. Now, with that being said my father got out of prison I was recruited to college volleyball in Kansas I lost my way I forged his checks I continued forging checks habitual offender I am a product of that
environment I have my own responsibility even at a young age but the teachings is where it happens and we are all teachers in life no matter what stage we're also all learners and I think that with the amount of people that are so excited about this discussion you have pastors you have non-profits that's where the deterrent comes into play because I was not fearful of the sentence and I'm being very brutally honest with you I was fearful of who am I what am I becoming how do I
help myself and where is this trajectory going and so those deterrents and those extensive sentences can do wonderful things for people. You do need a timeout. I did. I needed to face my fears and my demons. But I also had cognitive behavioral thinking where Ms. Denise Voss, Warden Inman, they all helped me understand my wrongs. And the cognitive behavioral thinking is where we begin. And just like Mary Beth said and all these other wonderful people, the deterrent is teaching and
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
27:52
learning differently. I appreciate you saying that because that's the one thing I have written right here on my note sheet to follow up is that deterrent is communicating the idea that the perceived cost is going to greatly outweigh the expected gains of the crime. It's exactly what we did with the Protect Act that you're going to get caught, you're going to get punished, you're going to lose your freedom you're going to lose your money you're going to lose your status and and
and then that's the consequence so i appreciate you saying that i appreciate you ladies coming today and and sharing your personal stories with us and i think collectively we as a group can address some of these issues and and and thank you for your thoughts and ideas thank you sir thank you senator tucker thank
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
28:45
you mr chair i'll be quick i just wanted to follow up on the question that Senator Simon asked you all about, how do we decide who we let out? Is it your experience that a validated risk assessment is something that can be helpful
in this situation where it's an evidence-based, researched process that determines the risk factors of an individual, and that way we really have objective criteria that we can use to make these kinds of decisions rather than just have one person make a decision based on how much they may or may not like a person as one category. And then another point is that we can establish some objective criteria, such as if you're employed for a certain length of time, if your drug tests are clean for a certain length of time,
then these can also be factors that can lead to a decision along those lines. And that way, they're not really arbitrary decisions, but they're informed, evidence-based, scientific decisions based both on the individual's performance and on the validated risk assessment of the individual. In your opinion, can those
Speaker 14
29:46
be helpful in making those kinds of decisions? I think significantly. I mean, I had my own risk assessments, and it was textbook following along my sentencing and then community supervision.
It was very helpful, and something that I've learned and as I'm learning in my criminal justice courses as I go back to school is paying attention to those needs in the risk assessment, what's going on, the body language, how they're interacting, how they're communicating, paying attention to those fundamental basics, that's the proper foundation. So absolutely, I do think that that's warranted and then stair-stepping everything too. I mean, it's all together, but you have to take it in slow motion as well. - Thank you. Go ahead, Ms. Ellen. - Yeah, and I agree with Selena as well.
Speaker 24
30:29
I think that the risk assessment is important, but I do also wanna reiterate that I think it is important that we do have resources like electronic monitoring and stuff like that to be able to monitor these individuals to make sure that they are where they're supposed to be I am a person who was on electronic monitoring for almost six months I still have the scar from it however it it really helped me in my journey you know for that accountability on how you know knowing that if I was to not be where I was supposed to be if I was some you know if I was late or anything I
knew that this monitor was monitoring me and that they were going
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
31:11
with as well okay thank you both center DS thank you mr. chair my question
kind of dances around I think what I've heard from some of the other questions and just would love your opinion on what you've seen when you look maybe at a roll-up of our total incarceration rates in Arkansas and maybe not I don't I
I don't really want to understand the, my question is not about understanding the most common offenses or crimes, but really on the preventative side of what you believe is leading to the incarceration rates. So, for example, would you say that you believe that the most common issue we're seeing is economic driven or is it drug offense driven? What are the precursors on the front end that are leading to the large scales of incarceration rates?
Speaker 14
32:03
On the front end, if that makes sense. Absolutely. So from my experience understanding, I would say that it begins, a little bit controversial for me personally and other people that I've worked with, economics. Because those hardships, for example, my mother forged hot checks to allow me to go to college volleyball.
My Ozark juniors traveling, she couldn't afford it because of what had happened with my father. I learned that nature from her, and I did it myself. And I firmly believe it begins with economics and an escape for things, and then it transitions into drug usage. It's a conglomeration of it all. Every individual is different. It depends on the precursors, what type of environment you're in, and that is very significant in watching how people have grown up and their environments because, unfortunately, you can't walk through a fire and not smell like smoke.
Speaker 28
33:05
It's the same principle. I'm a little different on that. Economics, I do believe, plays a part
Speaker 24
33:13
in it. However, even though Arkansas has made huge advancements in the last decade as far as recovery and re-entry are concerned, we still have a long way to go. There needs to be recovery community organizations all over the place. There needs to be places where people can go when they need to seek help. We also need to be working to fight the stigma behind it. My grandfather was a Southern Baptist preacher here in Arkansas,
and so with that being said, the stigma behind my substance use kept me from receiving the help that is necessary. We have to work better with education, with schools, like Selena said before, with churches, with non-profit agencies, and we need to be offering the services that are available, like in the downtown metro area, to
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
34:02
all places in Arkansas. So on the front end, what I'm hearing is if we're creating great trainings and workforce development programs
and helping solve some of the job and economic issues on the front end, it could lead to some reduced rates of incarceration and crime. I'm hearing some of those themes that those are tied in because there's a direct tie to when there's economic issues, no jobs, no trainings, it leads to drug usage and addictions. Absolutely. Thank you. Representative McCullough.
Representative Tippi McCullough
Unverified
34:41
thank you Mr. Chair thank you both for being here today I think my question is that there are some people that head to one of these transition houses and all they have are the clothes on their back they have no money they have no vehicle they have no family help because they may have burned those bridges or that might be why they're in there in the first place is because of family help um so i i want to ask a question about there the transition houses that are in the state
must run a huge range of services a huge range of what they have to offer a huge range of um conditions and everything so i kind of like to know maybe what your experience is or what you know about or what you've seen there are different ways to certify them there are some are acc some or national recovery and I'm wondering from your perspective is it luck that you get put in one that may be really great and all of them may have some good intentions but I can't imagine that all of
them are equal yeah you know with the money they have and with the places that they
Speaker 24
35:56
to that yeah I can I can definitely speak to that um like I said I was in recovery housing for almost six months but also through my work through the Archway Institute. We are actually a national nonprofit. Long short, we raised money to give it away. In Arkansas, in the past couple years alone, we have released $10,000 to different multiple recovery housing organizations, recovery community organizations, to help these indigent
individuals who are seeking recovery. We also work very closely with NAR, which is a national credential for recovery houses, and I encourage anybody who, you know, in this space that we work to operate under the NARS standards. You know, it's kind of an evidence-based standard for, you know, recovery residences on how they should operate. But one thing I would love to say, too, as well, that, you know, while we are talking about, you know, what do we do with this money in the prison is looking at these ACC, ADC reentry homes
and making sure that we are utilizing those homes. My Boyfriend is a product of Hidden Creek Reentry. It is a wonderful facility. I think you guys are going to hear from them today as well. but making sure that we are funding the facilities who are doing the work and then making sure that we are utilizing them to put people into these reentry facilities so that they are getting a full continuum of care
Representative Tippi McCullough
Unverified
37:12
to help them on their journey. Thank you. I did get to tour Wall Street, and someone who was a success story like yourself, what I think impressed upon me the most is that what she said is that she came into a clean, nice place.
There were no bars on the window. Everyone treated her with dignity. And it seems like maybe that that's the first step for someone who may not feel very
Speaker 108
37:34
dignified or may not feel like they deserve to be treated certain ways. Thank you very much.
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
37:44
Thank you so much. Representative Toss. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I'll be quick. I just want to make sure, listening to your testimony today, I want to make sure I understand. You're not saying that the reason that we have overcrowding in prison is based on policy decisions versus individuals that have actually committed crimes.
How would you answer that? Can you repeat that one more time, sir? Are you saying the overcrowding we have in prisons today is based on policy decisions versus, that's all I'm hearing is this policy or that policy versus individuals that have actually committed a crime. Why do we have overcrowding in prison? Is it policy decisions or individuals that have
Speaker 14
38:31
committed crimes? I think that the policy decisions, I apologize.
It is tough to say. come at a certain point but initially us as individuals just like you and I we hold responsibilities for ourselves so ultimately is the decisions that we make personally but the transition along the way is where those policies come into play and unfortunately some things can be put on paper but when it comes to operations that can be different especially with different generations that come through so it is a mixture of both but mostly it's a person's responsibility. I want to
Speaker 28
39:02
touch on that as well. I do think that there is a, it is a combination
Speaker 24
39:07
of both things. I don't want to misquote myself or no, but I know that there are a lot of individuals who end up going back to prison based off of technical violations. Um, and that's something that we need to be looking at as well. When you look at how the probation and parole landscape works, you know, you have lots of parolees, lots of probationers to one, you know, one probation officer and once again I will reiterate the power of peer support and having peers in these positions in each of these facilities number one to kind of take off the stress and you
know of having to find these treatment centers and find these places for them but if we could help at that level right whenever somebody's a technical violator and rather than sending them back into this system getting them the appropriate help that they need and I agree
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
39:52
with you and I'll make it quick that the ratio of our parole officers versus the number of parolees is is i agree with you is unacceptable there's no way they can truly uh supervise uh those individuals on parole with the number they have so i agree with that thank you for that comment
Representative Tara Shephard
Unverified
40:12
representative tara shepherd thank you mr chair quick follow-up to representative tasha's question in regards to, you stated, some things can be put on paper, but makes it problematic. So is there something that's currently occurring within ADC that's on paper that makes it problematic for an individual to be released?
Speaker 14
40:34
Yes, ma'am, and thank you for that question. I think, based upon my personal experience and also individuals that I've studied, talked with, et cetera, policies on paper sometimes can lead to open to interpretation.
depending upon the person reading them. You have training, you have your credentials, et cetera. But when it comes to the disciplinary patterns, don't get me wrong, I'm not negating that some people do act out. I've acted out before, and I will never negate that. However, what is put on paper is the determining factor for individuals incarcerated. So you also have to take into account the different volatility. have individuals who are maybe having a bad attitude with a correctional officer because
there is no air conditioning well they're going to get written up more than likely and that write-up potentially determines their programming how many disciplinaries do they have why were they given those disciplinaries and that is an equal factor there is responsibility for all individuals involved however it does bleed into that process and we have to have programming in those requirements for people to be released so documenting that and paying attention to those discrepancies is equally important within the process of it all quick follow
Representative Tara Shephard
Unverified
41:58
disciplined individuals with an ADC is a contributing factor to individuals staying longer than they should not
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
42:10
thank you the miss hill uh one of the things i've had in the back of my mind uh for months is the electronic monitoring and i don't think we have
any experts signed up today to talk about this so i'm going to go
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
42:32
that, but I would love to answer any questions you have. Well, thank you for informing me of that. Tell me about that experience and why it works or doesn't work. Yeah,
Speaker 28
42:44
so the way that the federal system works, that whenever you get out of
Speaker 24
42:50
incarceration, you are mandated to go to City of Faith Reentry Housing.
I was released post-COVID, but I believe they still do it to this day. I served almost five months inside City of Faith, and then for the rest of the time, on my BOP sentencing, I was issued an electronic monitor that would follow me everywhere I go. And so the way that that system works now carries a very good friend of mine, so I know that they have came leaps and bounds in electronic monitoring now where they can use their telephone services to actually monitor people. But back in 21, I'm sorry, whenever I was released from prison, you know, I would just have this electronic monitor on.
I had to call and let them know whenever I was home, whenever I was away. At any time, somebody from the electronic monitoring system could show up at my house just to make sure that I'm there and I didn't manage to take it off. You know, it was a very useful tool for me for that time to just add, you know, to that full continuum of care that I needed post-release. Were you
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
43:53
required to stay at home most of the time? What were the rules? Yeah, so once again, my
Speaker 24
43:58
rules are a little bit different now because we are not in the midst of COVID.
At the time, I was, you know, we weren't allowed to move around a lot just because of COVID. And we had to follow BOP guidelines as far as restrictions. I was allowed to go to work every day. So I was able to maintain a full-time job, go to work. I was allowed to do church, and I was allowed to go to my, there were special circumstances. i'd have to put in a request for like when my baby graduated from when he graduated um in his elementary school i was able to go and to watch them so um you know it it was a nuisance at times
right i mean it's a heavy thing on your leg however um it
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
44:44
be home to be a mother to my kids allowed you to be
home allowed you to work uh what since you had a problem with drug abuse yes right so how does this work how does ankle an ankle monitor ankle bracelet electronic monitor work uh and uh if your proclivity for using drugs is still there yeah
Speaker 28
45:11
so once again um you know
whenever I was able to give that opportunity to go to treatment before prison.
Speaker 24
45:18
And so I was clean almost two years before I was even sentenced. I went to prison clean, I came home clean. And it was because I was offered that full continuum of care throughout the whole process of my sentencing. So by the time that I was released and I was home and had the ankle monitor, I had already developed a multitude of tools and resources for my recovery use. But I also like to you know to add as far as the federal jurisdiction goes right they also
We had a code of phone, you know So there were times whenever you had a call every single day and at that time if you were mandated to drug
Speaker 28
45:55
test You had to show up for drug testing that day So that is another deterrent that they use,
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
46:01
you know as far as substance use issues go Representative Grutter
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
46:08
you're gonna be last Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for allowing me to participate in this discussion. I want to first thank you ladies for sharing your stories, how personal this is to you and how far you have come on your journeys. That's remarkable information.
I do have a question in regards to both of you. At what age were you when you started doing these things, committing these crimes, or were you introduced to these things that you're discussing? My substance use began at the age 10, and I
Speaker 28
46:39
say that because that's the first time I ever smoked a cigarette. By the time I was 13 years old, I was in full-blown active addiction. Thank
Speaker 14
46:51
you. For me personally, I was actually forging my mother's signatures for my school work
at a very young age, probably 10, 11 years old, and then I transitioned to forging my father's checks roughly about 18,
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
47:06
19. Okay, I have one follow-up, Mr. Chair, if that's okay. Sure. Do you feel like as you aged, you reached a maturity level where you felt like these things shouldn't be done? And do you know around what age that was? And I ask that question because my father always said to me when I was growing up,
if I can get you to 25 without getting in trouble, I think you'll mature more. And I do remember getting to a certain age, and I started to think differently. Yeah.
Speaker 28
47:40
So I became a mother at a very young age. I was 19 years old whenever I delivered
Speaker 24
47:46
my first child. I've always been very transparent in my recovery journey. I did not use while I was pregnant with him, but I did with my other two children. You know, and that is the disease of addiction. I know at the age of 18, 19 years old that what I was doing was wrong.
However, I did not have control over, like, once. That's what I want you guys to understand about the disease of addiction. I made the choice to put the drug inside of my body. After that point, all rational thought and choice was out the window. So, you know, now my days were filled with how do I get it and give me more. And because there was not a lot of available resources, I don't want to say my age, but that was 22 years ago, you know, that, you know, I didn't know where to turn. You know, there wasn't anywhere for me to turn at that point.
Speaker 14
48:43
that I had a problem. However, I didn't know how to fix it. For me personally, I knew right from wrong. I hadn't been introduced to any drugs or anything of that nature. It was very difficult for me, no different than a bad habit. You have to break those chains. And through my young age into 19, 20, 25, I had a victim mindset because of my childhood.
And it took me years to break that and understand my own responsibility. And although, yes, I knew right from wrong, I had positioned myself to where I couldn't even care for myself. And so as I got older and understood my thinking and my impulsive nature to being scared that I don't have enough money, let me go forge this. That's whenever I
Speaker 78
49:30
was able to make that change and overcome all that, roughly around 2021. Thank you.
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
49:40
Ms. Coleman-Hale, Ms. Hill, thank you all for being here. Thank you for your testimony and answering the questions. I want
to cover about three things very quickly as we get ready to go to the next one. First, I want to compliment you, and I want to compliment the members for keeping your questions brief and your speeches short, and you all for being very brief in your answers. I hope you have set a pattern for
the rest of the day. I am going to be skipping around in the agenda, so don't feel slotted if I skip over you.
And if I skip over you a lot of times, I'm going to do what I think makes most sense for this committee. And we have one of the things I love about Arkansas that I did not know until I was in the Senate is that we have laws that say that if the public comes and wants to address the committee, they can. We put a sign-up sheet. Having said that, I love it. Let me tell you that you've seen the agenda. And if you don't realize by looking at it, it's going to be a long day. If we can get to public, the people who have come and signed up, we will.
But we may not be able to. I want you to know that now. We will be on this same subject in October. So just be
aware that it will be late if we get to you at all. And so I want to be fair to you if you have to be somewhere
else need to do something else But if we can get to you we will I am going to jump Is Center Hutchinson here and are you ready? Okay, we're going to move to number 13 Jeremy Hutchinson director of strategic initiatives
unify us Senator, if you'll introduce yourself for the record. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Madam Chairman, and
Speaker 144
51:39
members of the committee. I'm Jeremy Hutchinson. As the chairman said, I'm with a group called Unify U.S. They're out of Washington, D.C., and we work on criminal justice issues at the capitol, nation's capitol, and then about 17 other Republican states, mostly southern states.
We are a conservative organization. Some of the founders came from the American Conservative Union, otherwise known as CPAC, Faith and Freedom Coalition, which is Ralph Reed's group, Trump's Department of Justice, his first term. And so we try to bring conservative and effective approaches to a lot of issues, but primarily focused on criminal justice reform. And I must commend the chairman of this committee
for trying to get this question answered. It's the right question to be asked. How do you reduce the need for additional prison beds while at the same time keeping your community safe? And we think we have a few ideas. I'll cover them at a very high level. We may be able to dive deeper as this committee's work continues, but there are some bills in the draft process right now that I hope you all get a chance to review
in the near future. The first idea I'll start with, in order of what could have the most immediate impact on the need for additional prison beds. The first is a different names, but earn time credit, and you all are to be commended, and the governor's office to be commended. You've certainly taken steps in that direction with the PROTECT Act and even in prior legislative sessions,
but I think there is a gap that it would make it better to fill in. And the best example, other states have done it, but the best example is actually President Trump in its first term passed the first step act um with huge bipartisan support um it wasn't unanimous but it was pretty close in both the house and the senate and the first step act says that you know certain non-violent um non-sex offenders can through taking classes and working and job
training and ged and productive activities is the official term they can earn credits toward one year off of their sentence which we're not proposing here in arkansas but the second leg of that is time toward early pre-release custody which is halfway house home confinement as the Ladies, who spoke before, home confinement has become, the technology is amazing and incredibly effective at securing individuals at a much reduced cost to the government, whether that be the federal or the state.
The First Step Act has had incredible success. The Bureau of Prisons has reduced their incarceration rate by, I believe it's 14%, 26,000 inmates, fewer than when this bill was enacted. They're closing prisons at the BOP level. and yet crime rates are going lower both violent and overall crime rates
so and the recidivism rate for those individuals who are able to participate in the first step act is nine percent there's even a subsection of that that was released during covid a massive release of non-violent offenders and that recidivism rate is less than one percent and so and again i credit y'all have already begun working in this area and we can get into the details if you want during
question and answer but making that a firm statutory where if you do this you're not subject to a pearl board designation you're going to get your time and it's reflected every month you do good this month you can look and see hey i've had 10 days or 15 days where i can go to pre-release home confinement or or transitional facility that type of
consistency and reliability is what motivates inmates to actually do the work needed to come out and and be a productive member of society the second proposal is a compassionate release a lot of states have some form of this arkansas does too though it's seldom if ever used it's very difficult to actually use it and we can talk more details if you desire but this proposal would say
if you're over the age of 60 and the Department of Corrections makes a determination that you're no longer a threat to society and they would have to establish rules to determine what that is but that you would be allowed to go to home confinement the benefit of this is first of all these are these are people who are no longer a threat to society I would suggest maybe sex offenders are not eligible for this because their crimes can be done even in
home confinement with a cell phone but beyond that it would save the Department of Corrections millions in health care costs because the most expensive health care cost is into life care and we have I believe 15% of our inmate population is over the age of 55 and that's growing so if we could designate even 500
people who no longer a threat when they go home to home confinement even which they're still incarcerated they're not their sentence isn't being relieved and if they screw up they can be hauled right back into the prison environment but they're still in custody they're still a custodian of the department of corrections but they can seek medical treatment through medicaid uh at least at the federal level permits it and uh that would they they receive you know as good a care as possible through the medicaid and it would save the department of corrections a fortune
and so that's the second option the third one is we'll not see the immediate returns but i believe it will see long-term returns as a clean slate initiative this also has been done by a lot of states republican states oklahoma missouri just did it last year um it basically says the the crimes that you all have already designated the arkansas it doesn't expand the list but the crimes that the arkansas legislature have already determined to be eligible for expungement
this would just make it automatic the problem right now is a lot of people don't know first of all that they could get their offenses expunged but even if they do they have to hire an attorney which very few people can afford go to court again and it's something that very very very few people actually take advantage of this would make it automatic the administrative off the courts it'd be implemented in 2030 so there'll be time for them to set up a system that
would make it automatic the beauty of expungement again this is only for the crimes that you all have already determined uh worthy to be expunged so no violent no sex offenses but um the reason most people recidivate is because they can't get a job and when you have an expungement you can check i'm not a convicted felon and you can get a job you can get an apartment you can get a bank account all the things that somebody who wants
to be productive needs in life you can now afford yourself of um and every time there's less recidivism there's less victims that means there's less crime and and as you all are keenly aware a lot of our population are due to recidivism people coming back for the second and third time and if you can interrupt that cycle by giving them an automatic expungement then you will in the long
term not only create less victims you'll create less need for additional prison space again i can go in deeper if y'all desire but i don't want to assume there's interest but i would appreciate y'all at least considering these when the drafts come out and consider it as part of this overall package to do as a chairman has suggested reduce the need for additional prison space thank you for allowing me to speak and willing to take any questions
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:01:33
Committee, I'm going to ask you to do something for me. We're going to have Senator Hutchinson back in October along with some experts on these subjects. We are preparing a couple of bills on the subject that are not ready, so they're not on the agenda today.
But if I could get someone to make
a motion to hear the ISP on two bills in October,
As we're looking at this subject, I would appreciate it so move Second any discussion Hearing none offer the motion signify by saying aye all opposed Thank you If you have questions for Center Hutchinson be sure and ask them, but again, he'll be back in October With help to really go in depth on these subjects that he's brought up Senator Hutchison, do you have any idea, and I'm told we're going to have an expert that can probably answer this question,
do you have any idea on the savings between being in prison, which I know is
between $70 and $80 a day in Arkansas, and electronic
monitoring? I don't know Arkansas
Speaker 144
1:02:57
per se. I can say the federal level, it's usually $5 a day. And that's probably more expensive because the feds, everything's more expensive. So even if we're
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:03:09
$10 a day, we're talking about a savings of $60 to $70 a day.
Speaker 144
1:03:15
Yeah, and let me just say the technology is unbelievable. I mean, I had friends who were on home confinement. I mean, you can get it down where they can't go into a certain bedroom. I mean, it's incredibly precise. And if they mow the lawn a little bit outside of their lawn, they get beeped, and somebody's coming after them. It's incredibly confining, but it's effective,
and it can save the state a lot of money. And then for those, one other point on the compassion release that I failed to make, If you have people with a very long sentence, realistically, even if they're eligible, they're not going to be paroled, and they give up hope, and there's no incentive for them to behave or to pursue self-improvement. If you even have hope, hey, despite your long sentence,
if you do everything right, someday maybe you can be determined to not be a threat and you can die at home with your family. That, at a certain point, is an incredible incentive and provides hope. So it has worked in other states. And, again, Arkansas has a method, but it's very complicated, and I don't know if it's ever been used.
There's not any public information that says it's ever been used. But it could reduce very quickly the number of – and free those beds up for people who are violent, who are sitting in our county jails right now, and need a bed at the Department of Corrections. And as was pointed
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:05:07
out earlier, where it's appropriate, because people who need to go to prison need to go to prison, Uh, but, but where it's appropriate, uh, children will have to be separated from parents
and the person can go to work and be productive and versus completely reversal of this is what you're costing the state a day, costing the state very little. Plus
Speaker 144
1:05:33
you're able, uh, or the proposal line referencing, they probably wouldn't go to work because they're aged and probably inferred but as was discussed by the previous witnesses as an alternative for certainly people struggling with
addiction or it it is a much better option because they have the support they need to battle that they also as you mentioned chairman can go to work if there's any fees or fines or restitution or victim restitution they can actually work and pay that off whereas if you send somebody to prison the kids suffer and probably start a cycle of future incarceration and the victims suffer because they're not going to get
recompensed while somebody's sitting in prison so for the right cases it is certainly a viable option but you're right that and I met some of them there are people who I hope never get out because they are um i shouldn't say they're irredeemable god can redeem anybody but from society's perspective it's a society needs to be protected
Representative Keith Brooks
Unverified
1:06:51
chair um i think you mentioned the recidivism rate for their home monitoring
people it's around nine percent did i hear that
Speaker 144
1:07:00
correct well you you heard it correctly but those the ones who went through the first step act program where there's job training there's skill development there's education those who participated in the productive activities and then were sent early to home confinement or a halfway house in the federal system their recidivism was nine percent okay do we have any way to compare that to what it was before that
Representative Keith Brooks
Unverified
1:07:27
and because here in arkansas we approach 50 percent recidivism and if we were to cut that down even i think just a little bit you're talking about over a thousand beds that we release 6 000 a year so you're talking about a reduction
Speaker 144
1:07:43
a significant reduction in beds needed you are exactly right and some would say well you know we we want make sure they serve their full sentence and they but realize every time somebody recidivates there's a new victim and that's what we're trying to avoid is more victims so if sending them to home
confinement a little early creates less victims then but to answer your question specifically let me find it okay it's 31% someone from 31% to 9% the same population that did not take we're not take able to take the first step act same
crime same security classifications were 31% and after the first setback it was dropped to 9% excellent I'm assuming that's a national average that's
Speaker 144
1:08:49
prisons in the federal system okay thanks represent debating mr. chair this is this
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:08:56
is more directed to the chair since since you
mentioned that we're going to be discussing isps that i assume are related
somewhat to electronic monitoring um my my concern is that the majority of the incarcerated in arkansas prisons are more along violent offenders and that the requirements on electronic monitoring are very different on the federal and state side so i would like specific information on the percentage of our incarcerated that are violent offenders that we could have at that next meeting along with the current pricing because I
know on the federal side those electronic monitoring it's somewhere 106 to 138 dollars a day I think is the the going rate so maybe to get some of that information for us as
Speaker 144
1:09:54
well before the next meeting we can do that well let me address the cost issue um you're right i don't know the makeup of our current arkansas incarcerated population as to who's considered violent who's not but that's a good question um the cost at the federal level home confinement is that amount um but that's not because of the monitoring
um the reason that cost is so high is because the bop and i've tried to suggest they not do this anymore they continue to pay for the health care cost of people on home confinement and inmates who've been receiving lackluster health care while incarcerated get out and they're tied to home confinement and one of the only few places they're allowed to go are to doctor's visits and so they go see every specialist every doctor they can and they bill it all to the bureau of
prisons which is why that home confinement cost is so high but the monitoring part of that is very small thanks for that question
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:10:58
and that answer that's helpful uh but we will it can
bring us information back yeah i'll have that answer for you by
the time we meet again okay all right senator thank you for being here
thank you committee thank you mr chairman seen in october Victoria Parsons Victoria Parsons here
okay then we'll move to Brittany Gilmore Brittany Gilmore not here okay then we'll move to jared harper and sharon garrett y'all would take
a seat turn your mics on and uh introduce yourselves uh and who you represent
Speaker 168
1:12:09
for the record jared harper executive director director of
Speaker 170
1:12:19
shackle free ministries i'm sharon garrett and i'm the executive director of safe haven ministries inc in clarksville arkansas and i'm also the president or the chairperson of the arkansas alliance of recovery Residences, which is the credentialing board for NAR in the state of Arkansas, which Marybeth
mentioned that that is a sober living facility license or credentialing to say this sober living home and program lives up to the national standards. Thank you for having us here today. Who would like to speak
Speaker 168
1:12:53
first? Yes, sir. Jared Harper. Again, I'm currently the executive director of shackle free ministries i retired in january of 2025 after 29 and a half years of local and federal law enforcement i retired last year as the assistant special agent in charge of the
drug enforcement administration here in the state of arkansas over 20 years also as an ordained minister so i thank you all for having me i'll start with we'll never arrest our way out of this epidemic that we're in. We'll never incarcerate our way out of this epidemic or institutionalize our way out of this drug epidemic. We're losing 195 Americans every day to overdose poisoning and at least one to two Arkansans every day to overdose poisoning. When people come out
of prison, many times they come out a better criminal. There will always be dope in prison. We've worked cases, contraband phones, offenders, utilizing those communication devices inside the prison. And I believe dope will always be available there if somebody wants it and has the money to buy it. Prison has a purpose for violent offenders. We've talked about that today. But I also believe long-term faith-based recovery gives purpose. And my wife and I have started Shackle Free Ministries.
We're the founders of this ministry. After 20 months, we've seen 284 men and women in recovery and addiction give their hearts and life to Jesus, who I believe is the true source of supply. I believe there's two things that matter. One is when a person is born, but it's also when someone finds purpose. If you want to keep from seeing the same people on the court docket, and I think long-term faith-based recovery has to be an option here in the state of Arkansas. You can't give a substance abuser 28 days of treatment and then send them back to the same environment.
same people, same places, or same things, or you're going to get the same result. I believe that, in my opinion, to reduce prisons, success supports sustained engagement, continuity of care, recovery housing, community involvement, church affiliations, things such as Celebrate Recovery, mentoring, and aftercare. Shackle Free Ministries works with pastors, recovery house directors, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges to seek court-ordered sentencing to long-term faith-based recovery.
In 21 months, I've talked to seven different prosecutors here in the state of Arkansas, and we've helped five men stay out of prison anywhere between three to 15 years was the recommendation of the court. They've all been court-ordered long-term faith-based recovery, and knock on wood, maintaining relationship with these five men, have all been maintain their sobriety, got jobs, got their kids back, have careers. Many of them work in recovery, and they have a purpose. They have a church that stands behind them. They have meetings every day that
they're held to. Many, I'd say about nine of the directors that Shackle Free partners with, and I say partner, they don't pay us. They let us in their doors to minister to their men and women in recovery. All came out of addiction, and now are running multi-million dollar recovery houses here in the state of Arkansas. I would ask the committee to research the Association of Christian Recovery Ministries. It's a national organization that has members in seven different states. There are 6,000 beds available nationally.
They have developed a certification process requiring certified programs to meet more than 200 standards. Those standards address areas including participant records, program evaluation, counseling, medication protocols, participant rights, grievance procedures, crisis planning, facilities, governance, finances, personnel, staff development, and admissions. There are 10 ACRM members that are currently going through this standardization process
to become certified members under ACRM. And there's currently 42 beds available in these faith-based recovery houses here in the state of Arkansas. So the question should not simply be, is this a faith-based or non-faith-based recovery program? The question should be, does this program meet measurable standards for safety, accountability, quality, and recovery? I'm also asking the committee to consider legislation requiring certified recovery programs to collect standardized outcome data.
If we're going to send people into these programs, we should know what happens to them afterward. I believe we should require recovery programs to track graduates at six months, one year, two years, and three years. I believe we should measure employment, measure stable housing, measure continued recovery, relapse, overdose, arrest, reincarceration, measure probation, and parole violations. I know the state measures recidivism, as it was mentioned earlier. I know they did a study in 2013 and 2018, ACC and ADC, and of about 11,500 people that went to prison, about half of those recidivated.
I know there's 16,700 probably inmates in our state institutions here in the state of Arkansas currently, and we're paying about $75 a day for each of those inmates. Arkansas already collects recidivism data. after people leave incarceration, Arkansas drug court system already uses standardized definitions and periodic data collection. We should bring that same commitment to measuring outcomes after residential recovery. I'm not asking the committee to believe me. I'm asking you to create a system
that allows us to prove what works. If a 28-day program produces lasting recovery, the data should show it. And I do not believe that 28 days, and I've talked to thousands of people, abusers, users of drugs, interviewed family members who we also minister to, whose kids have died from overdose. And 28 days is not working. I will tell you that it takes the brain about one year to recalculate itself before somebody even starts thinking clearly enough to live a sober and
maintain a sober life. If a six-month or one-year faith-based residential program produces lasting recovery, the data should show it. If one model works better for one population, another model works better for another population, we're speaking of rural and non-rural areas, the data should show that too. I would say let's stop making policy based solely on antidotes, assumptions, or competing philosophies. Let's establish standards, accountability, and collect the data. I respectfully believe outcomes will speak for themselves my understanding there's eight catchment areas in
the state of arkansas and about nine million dollars goes to one short term 28-day treatment facility in each of those eight areas my understanding may not be correct but maybe you could that's what i was able to find respectfully even my even my own son and i put this on the record who's suffered uh since he was 12 years old in addiction um he's now 29 years old short term 90 day 30 days and a fine 30 days in drug court does not work we are better together
we need prevention we need education we need recovery we need local and federal law enforcement working together together to save lives here
Speaker 170
1:20:40
in the state of Arkansas thank you Ms. Garrett? Yes, as I said earlier, I'm Sharon Garrett, and I founded and I run an organization in rural Arkansas, Johnson County, and I have ran a reentry home, an ACC transitional license home, and a NAR accredited sober living facility.
I also run a treatment program and a crisis center that deals with homelessness, and I am in the process of opening the first Women's Leadership Academy for people in long-term recovery in the state of Arkansas. The question before us today is how do we reduce the number of beds needed in the state? My brain reads that as how do we achieve a sufficient number of beds to serve the existing need?
And I think that I listened to the previous meeting. It was really interesting. I got a little kick out of Senator Beatty, Representative Beatty. I didn't know whether to be afraid of you or admire you, so I settled on a fearful admiration. So anyway, I'm going to try to behave myself today. But I think that we have obviously three choices if we're going to solve the bed crisis, And that is build more beds, decrease the demand, or a combination of both.
And so I can't speak to building more beds. That's not in my realm. But I think I can credibly speak to decreasing the demand as I have a substantial experience in dealing with the population of people that land in jail, that struggle with addiction, and land in prison and come out of prison. I actually have done quite a lot of that. I remember from the meeting, Chairperson Senator Clark, you said that you had three primary duties as a legislature, and that is to protect the citizens of Arkansas, to keep those who
work within the prison system safe, and lastly, to understand that the offenders are human beings, and we need to give them the appropriate level of resources and efforts to enact change at the individual level should the individual so choose. And so this is the age-old question of justice versus mercy. And so even in this same pursuit, God could not accomplish this without,
he couldn't make this balance without personal sacrifice. And I think that we can expect no less. I want to encourage this committee and all the citizens of Arkansas to adopt this same mindset that we would become bold pioneers in bringing innovative ideas which may come at a personal cost to ourselves but will achieve lasting impact upon the problem we are facing. I do not believe the answer is to only look to the government.
I believe we have to work together as a collective group of people bringing our resources to our communities to solve these problems. And in Clarksville, Arkansas, where I began in 2018, there was not one solitary resource for people struggling with addiction. I started in doing what I could. God met me there with many miracles and many like-minded people within my own community.
And today we have a recovery ecosystem or ecosystem that actually would rival a lot of other places because the challenges that face rural Arkansas are much different than the challenges that face the greater urban areas. So to that end, in order to solve the problem and the issues and the experience that I have learned is that you cannot think of this problem merely in terms of logistics. How many beds,
how much money, how much staff? If we are going to truly solve this problem, we have to connect the dots between the number of beds needed in the state for prison and the heart of men and women that are demanding those beds we have to connect we have to draw a line between mentality and behavior and i have done this long enough to know we can be successful at this and so there are two
different ways well there's many different ways but in my realm of what my expertise is i see three primary ways that we can reduce the need for beds by capturing the hearts of men and women demanding those beds. One being, let's get them before they ever go to prison, as we have talked about extensively this morning. The other is, of course, while they're in the prison system. I can't speak to that. And then lastly, the re-entry. Re-entry is very, very important. And so to do this, I want
to primarily focus on the first and the latter. The how do we keep people from going to prison uh to begin with well i agree that and we are currently in the very beginning stages i was called and asked by a person in our community that said hey we have uh 20 women sleeping on the floor of our jail of our county jail can you help us solve this problem sharon and so i put my brain to it and i pulled my team together and as we've heard here today we have developed a pre-trial
release program and to answer i believe it was uh mr tucker uh question you have to have a solid metric by which you screen so that you can make sure that the person that you are going to pull post bond hearing out of the prison out of the jail and into a long-term program you have to have a a metric and a screening process that can be agreed upon by the judge by the prosecuting attorney by the person providing the programming, by the jail.
So you have to have a collaborative effort within the community itself before you can make a process like this effective. And we are doing that. We're at the very beginning of it, so I cannot give you stats on it. Just getting everyone to agree has been a great accomplishment, and so we hope to see great things from that. But the idea of it is this. You catch someone at a strategic point. They have been arrested. They have had their bond hearing.
And now they are looking at setting between three months, nine months, 18 months, depending on the prison system's availability or the court's availability. They're setting in jail. And so if you can screen this individual, everyone come to an agreement, this individual is appropriate for this program, and the individual is also in agreement to do this, you can take this person and you can put them into a long-term program
to be learning the skills they didn't get, to be learning how to get a job, how to manage their money, develop a savings account. And this also joins the need to protect the citizens with the need to help the individual, which is the balance we all need to figure out to solve this problem. so as you because you're not surrendering this person of their own recognizance into the community you are surrendering this person into a program that is structured with supervision and
accountability and so this person has has been incentivized to work this program because their alternative is to sit in jail and if you are a person that has been arrested and you and you are working a program that could potentially keep you from going to prison, then you are going to be a little more incentivized than someone just walking in off the streets. So this is one of many possible programs that we could embrace in the state that would keep beds empty in the prison, where we
aren't constantly just funneling people through. We know, all of us know, that the problem we face with recidivism and the overcrowding of the jails and the system, it is most so often it is a generational problem. So if you can capture the mom, capture the dad before they go into prison, before they're a felon, which I so agree with Representative Hutchinson, that we need to have
some alternatives to making them felons. It makes it so challenging, which I will speak to in just a quick second regarding the re-entry. But we have got to have these programs because if I can save the mom or I can save the dad, then I have effectively saved their children. And if the mom comes out and gets a brand new life, then their children are going to get a brand new life. And I can speak to this personally. I have had over 800 women go through my program, okay? My program is
predominantly women at least my residential program and uh over half my staff are women that have come through my program and are still in sustained recovery three years later and they have gotten their children back and their children are superstars on the football team and their children are on the volleyball team at school and their children are in church and their children are accepted and they're not going through all of the trauma that happens when a parent ends up in prison. And so I strongly ask you to consider, you know, we have heard the definition
of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. And when I say bold pioneers, it's scary to change what we have done for years and years and years. But I don't think we would be here today if what we had done had worked. So I think we have to think broader and bigger, and we have to begin to try to balance justice with mercy, justice with how can we do things better. Out of the number of women that have come through my program,
99% of them, without fail, were children of people that struggled with addiction and incarceration and prison sentences. So it is a gift that keeps giving, but recovery and a new mindset are also a gift that keeps giving. The second way that I believe, if we can't capture them pre-going to prison, then I am a firm believer in re-entry. I believe re-entry can be a very powerful tool. However, I do not believe our current re-entry system is effective. I have
ran a recovery, a re-entry home, a 25-bed re-entry home for a year and a half, and I decided to walk away from doing re-entry, uh, this month, this last month. Um, and the reason I stopped is not because I don't believe in re-entry. It's because the, the, we have to change the way we do it for it to be effective. So I, this is just my two cents worth. Um, I have believed there are four reasons re-entry is, uh, maybe not as effective as it could be. The first being that it is merely
an extension of prison. In our quest to make sure that we don't let these criminals out and that they reoffend and harm the citizens of Arkansas, we have really created a system that is merely a prison outside of a prison. But the problem with this is that prison mentality doesn't breed good citizens. To change behavior, you have to change the heart and the mindset. What you believe affects your choices, which affects where you land. So if you want to capture the hearts and
minds of men and women coming into re-entry, you have to do it by presenting it in a more dignified and way that allows a little more freedom to live a real life and learn by real life experiences while you are in a protected environment and a highly accountable environment. I am not promoting we do not have accountability, but the current system is a prison outside of prison, and it traps many of them into the mentality of let me get out as soon as I can.
And it is not as conducive as it could be if we would approach it with a very different, have a very different approach. The second is that the reentry program is not long enough. You cannot change, if someone has been in prison for 10 years, 11 years, five months when they come out with the clothes on their back, no IDs, 10,000 warrants, a huge amount of fines, on and on and on, you've heard it all, five months is not enough to capture and change a mindset, which is what you have to do.
You have to capture their hearts and their minds and give them a reason to do something different. One year is not long enough. I'm going to share with you the statistics of Safe Haven. In sustained recovery, the percentage of sustained recovery in my 90-day program is about 30%. That tells me that 70% of the people that go through the 90-day ACC transitional living home, we will see again in the criminal justice system in sustained recovery of my re-entry home
it raised to about 40 percent but in my sustained recovery for the girls that buy in and choose to go into my graduate program which is my NAR accredited home and complete the one-year program i have 88 success of them say staying in sustained recovery that is a massive change and i also want to quote three different studies i'm going to their the names of them are this
long for the time for the sake of time i'm just going to say study one study two study three but i can supply you with these studies should you be interested in the first study long-term stay in sober living programming versus not, the return to use was 31% in those who stayed and 65% returned to use in those that did not. 3% returned to prison in those that stayed for the long term, 9% returned to prison in those that didn't. In study number two, the return to use in those
that stayed, 31%. Return to use in those that did not stay, 65%. 84% in the third study stayed clean, 46% went back to use. There is resounding, and SAMHSA is a great place if you want to get nationwide statistics, there is a direct correlation to the length that someone stays in a structured, accountable, sober living facility
with the supports and the resources they need, which I agree with Mary Beth, peer support is amazing. We want the continuum of care. We need treatment. We need that peer advocacy. We need the entire system to come around them. And by the time you do that for a year, you have created the space for them to change the way they think. And then the third thing that Jared hit on, this is true, I have been doing this work for 15 years.
If you want to capture and make lasting change, they have to have purpose. They have to see something beyond not using and not going to jail. This is scandalous, I know, but I say this to my girls all the time. If your number one goal is not to use, then why not? Because we have to have a greater purpose in our life. We have to give them the opportunity to see the greatness within them. And I am telling you, after over 800 women have gone through my program, there is greatness in these individuals that when you tap into it, they become the most giving, the hardest working, the most people that will go back and do the things that a lot of citizens won't just to rescue the ones that have been where they have been.
they have heart and that matters that matters in the work before us because i'm fluffy uh snowflakes will not change this problem gutsy hard-working people willing to sacrifice personally to make a change in our culture those are the workforce that we need and i challenge us to not let this incredible resource slip through our hands because that is uh that is how we solve this problem and then lastly this will not make the people uh in my uh recovery programs uh love me
more however it is true we cannot ignore the cost we've talked about the cost in many uh in many of these discussions and i understand chairperson clark that we i cannot get into this in detail today we are going to talk about this at another time however i would like to just give a very quick uh little synopsis give me 20 seconds the people in coming out of the system the people coming into the re-entry programs must share the cost of their return their journey of their recovery
journey because that is part of the consequences and as they share in the cost they develop accountability they develop buy-in i have girls that are not uh required to stay in the one year. But they come in and they capture the vision and they of their own free will choose to go into the long-term recovery and they are very successful. And they do that at their own cost. So I propose that one of the things we change within the state and the re-entry system
is that we stop paying for it all. Currently it costs $4,120.50 to send one person through rent our current re-entry program but if we would change where the state only pays eight pays a full $50 per day for 45 days and then nothing the resident the participant picks up the cost in the form of the community rate that anyone coming off the street would pay this would save the state one thousand
$8,870.50 per person that goes through the program. Now, let me just put this in a very quick comparison. If you're talking about 2,000 participants that come out of the prison, to keep 2,000 people in prison for one year is $51,100,000. The state currently would pay $8,241,000 for those same individuals to go into the reentry program as it stands.
Under my proposal, the state would pay $4,500,000. That is half what we currently pay. And if you will pay me, and I'm not even doing reentry currently, but I'm just using this as representative of other reentry homes. If you would pay us $50 a day for 45 days, that gives us time to stabilize, gain employment, and make the participant responsible for the remainder of their programming.
So I propose that we treat them with dignity, we make them stay longer, we inspire their vision, and we let them share in the cost of their journey, and we all win if we can do this. Okay members Very good presentations, but we
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:41:40
don't have a lot of time for questions. So if you're one in jump in quick Representative Tara Shepard Thank you, mr. Chair. Thank you
Representative Tara Shephard
Unverified
1:41:52
all for being here today and thank you for the presentation
Mr. Harper I first like to start you made a statement that we should prove what works and I agree with you totally Ms. Garrett, I think my question is more directed towards you. In regards to NARS, what was your title? I'm the chairperson of the board. And so really quickly, my colleague, Representative McCollum, kind of led to it earlier. Approximately how many programs are NARS certified currently in Arkansas?
Speaker 170
1:42:27
Do you know? This is the first year that R, that's our acronym for Arkansas Alliance, which is the affiliate of NAR, and we have just recently received our affiliate license. So we have, I want to say, 35 homes in the state and another 50 waiting on us to be able to get to them to get them certified. And
Representative Tara Shephard
Unverified
1:42:50
approximately how many homes are there total in a state, do you
Speaker 170
1:42:55
know? I can't say on how many homes across the state that are not NAR or are certified
or have not applied to be r certified i do know that there are a lot of sober living facility programs that are we are in ever increasing measure interested in getting r certified okay thank you
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:43:19
thank you mr chair representative badey thank you mr chair i appreciate both your comments my question is i hear a lot of folks that come back through um that are in long-term recovery do you find that there's a direct correlation with long-term recovery and
incarceration a longer term incarceration that those two are there's a correlation to
Speaker 170
1:43:42
that are you asking the longer the term in prison the more willingness to
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:43:49
do long term not not so much the willingness but the success rate of the long-term recovery of those that that are in long-term recovery
that it directly involved a longer-term incarceration.
Speaker 170
1:44:03
I have not found that to be true. What I have found to be true is whether or not you can capture the hearts and minds
of the individual which takes time. So I think there's a much stronger correlation between the amount of time they stay in that program rather than how long they've been in prison. Some of my ACC girls eight months. They've only been in, they were only in prison for eight months. I have another person who was a prostitute, murdered her brother. It was probably merited. Okay. I know I'm not supposed to say that, but anyway, but she ended up, she, she ended up being one of the best
people that ever came through my program and now works for me. So I don't really see a correlation to whether or not they're successful being so much how much time they had in prison. I will say, to be honest, age does have some to do with it. It's really hard to capture those 18- to 24-year-olds because they're not sure their way doesn't work yet. But as they get a little older, late 20s, all the way up
Speaker 179
1:45:08
through their 60s, they're a lot more ready to listen and go, my way doesn't work.
Speaker 168
1:45:15
I feel like she hit it the nail on the head when she said it's a heart change. When their heart meets Jesus'
Representative Carol Dalby
Unverified
1:45:27
heart, the game's over. Thank you both. Chairwoman Dalby. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Ms. Garrett, I'm up here. You were reading from a script and had
some facts and figures on it. Could you please make sure that that gets to our analysts so they can email that out to us? I would appreciate it. Thank you.
Representative Keith Brooks
Unverified
1:45:45
Senator Simon. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you both for being here. Ms. Garrett, I sat in your office and talked to you. I know you're passionate about this, and thank you for coming. I do hate to hear that you're no longer doing reentry because you're really good at it, and we need more of you, not less. You did share some facts and figures about the short-term program that they go through. I think 90 days you said you had
Speaker 179
1:46:15
about a 70% success rate. No, 30%.
If it's 90 days, 30%. 30% success or 30% recidivism? 30%
Representative Keith Brooks
Unverified
1:46:27
88. Which is 88% success. I mean, those are astonishing numbers. So one thing that we talked about last time was your definition of success. And I think that needs to be stated as well because your definition of success is much more strict than what the state defines as success. So can you expand a little bit or explain to the committee
what you mean whenever you say
Speaker 170
1:46:51
success? I believe true success is when you take someone from where they are and you bring their mentality up to a level to where their encodings, their gifts that they've been given are actually utilized to help society at large. So that looks like going from crisis to stabilization to recovery to purpose. So I don't believe that we, I think in Arkansas, we have done a very good job of going from,
we are currently, let's say, making headway, from going from crisis into stabilization into recovery. But right now, in many, many ways, we stop there. The individual can go forward, but as a collective group of people that have this goal in mind, we have not done this, which is why I'm starting the Safe Haven Women's Leadership Academy, which is to take women from recovery. Because what happens is when you're a felon in Clarksville, Arkansas, the absolute only job you can get is with Tyson.
And Tyson is, thank God for Tyson, we would be in real trouble without them. However, that is a very difficult job. The women work 10 hours a day, four days a week, sometimes five days a week, and the best they can hope for is to meet their car payment, get their house, if they move in with another person, and then God help them if the car breaks down. We have to propel them into professions. We have to give them higher levels so that they can move up the socioeconomic scale
and begin to not only provide and survive but to thrive, and you do that by creating purpose. So the academy is designed to remove the barriers where they do not have to pay program fees. They can come in. We navigate. We teach them how to be professionals. We teach them, you know, the one-year program is to teach them life skills. The next level is to teach them how to be professionals, how to dress, how to talk, how to say I have done instead of I done, and how to present themselves.
And then we want to help them navigate through the educational systems and other credentialing systems so that they can be propelled into a higher level of earning, not only just to make a better paycheck, but to find what they're great at, and then that's when the entire community benefits because they're out doing what they're amazing at, and then their kids are more likely to do the same thing. so I think the vision of success is to capture the gift set for the community at large and then
Speaker 179
1:49:27
future generations we want to change the trajectory of heritage that's the ultimate success thank you very
Representative Keith Brooks
Unverified
1:49:35
much so it's not just they didn't go back to prison they're actually they've got jobs they've got
Speaker 157
1:49:41
their families back they're contributing to society that's what you define success that's exactly right that's right thank you
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:49:52
represent debating again my questions more for the chair and planning for the next meeting um
you know i think these are are very productive
discussions that we're having and tie right back in with the um recidivism reduction act that we uh our chambers passed last session um my my concern and what i'm going to request is in the future meeting the folks that are going to speak to the committee that
we have a bio on those individuals as
well as a written opening statement I think that would would save some of the time in our meeting and then some of the information they're going to share we'll have that to carry
with us for consideration after the meeting so I'd ask the chair to maybe incorporate that in with with the folks that are going to testify
Speaker 205
1:50:44
and come before the committee in future meetings i think we can do that can't we colby i'll let
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:50:54
you know if colby fails thank you sir colby the new dad fails yeah working on no sleep the uh who we got up uh senator simon
Representative Keith Brooks
Unverified
1:51:04
thank you mr chair just just one quick question um for mr harvey something that you said early on was dope will always be in prison why is
Speaker 168
1:51:17
that and how can we stop that because criminals and and and dope dealers are some of the most creative people i've seen over 30 years of more than half my life i've worked in and around them and uh you know just from interviewing thousands of people um and and talking with even the people that we're trying to help get into recovery uh they've all
seen it in prison and it's available it's going to come in one way or the other either through guards it's going to come in during visitation it's going to come in through the mail they're just going to come in through drones I mean we all it's just the way of life when you know we work some of the biggest drug trafficking organizations in the world and when one cartel member gets knocked off there's another one that that is right there um ready to take take the
position of that next cartel leader um so in in my opinion um we can have the most strict prison in america it's still going to come through contra brand is still
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:52:25
going to come through i'm going to follow up on senator simon's
question because i have been dismayed this past month in the conversations that i've had with uh former inmates uh and re-entry folks
on this subject that i had no idea that drugs in prison were so prevalent some many
former inmates say it's easier to get in prison than it is outside of prison And they also said something else that particularly dismayed me is while we get lots of opinions from corrections people and experts, former inmates tell us that it's almost the biggest percentage is coming from employees.
It's coming from staff. And that seems to be something we ought to be able to stop. I don't know if it's stiffer penalties. I don't know, just being aware and investigations, but that just shouldn't be,
Speaker 172
1:53:28
should it? No, sir, and you're absolutely correct. The screening process for staff members and employees of prisons, I think, should be extremely, there should be a very big extensive background done.
And just like a special agent, they should have the same standards of employment and background investigation, et cetera, polygraph, whatever you want to use to get into those positions because those are the weak links that are – it's astonishing to hear just from the inmates, the people that I've come across over the years, of how readily available dope is in prison. Because I was assuming, that's how these conversations came up, I was
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:54:11
assuming that people coming into reentry were clean, and we can't assume that at all.
So, but here's, I do appreciate both your presentations. Former Education Secretary William Bennett under Ronald Reagan, I was at an education reform seminar, and he said
something profound, wise, and simple at the same time as profound and wise often is simple. He said, we have learned how to do great things in education. He said, we're doing great things with the Navajos, and I'm just repeating him,
because I have no idea what we're doing with the Navajo Indians. But he said, we're doing great things with the Navajo Indians. We're doing great things in the Appalachians. He said, the problem we have is rolling it out, and I have observed that in education. So as I listened intently and knowing that by
tomorrow I will forget much of what both of you said, so I appreciate Representative Beatty's comments, is you're impassioned, you've brought good ideas and things that I think that are probably facts to us,
then we have to then figure out what can we do to, as far as legislation, that would then allow and cause someone else to do the right things. In other words, how do we roll this out? How can we do more? And if we do more with ministries, and you all have said a lot, and others have,
and I think others will, and I had nothing to do with the agenda other than saying if you want to talk about this subject, come talk
about this subject. What you have said about faith-based is correct. I'm a preacher's kid, and as a senator, I don't care. I don't come to it. I always come to everything based on who I am and what I believe, but at the same
time, I'm a numbers guy, and the reason that I favor faith-based is because I've seen the numbers nationally
and and otherwise and it works better than anything else works and part of the problem in trying to roll things out is if we roll them out as programs it becomes government it becomes hiring whoever shows up versus who's impassioned to help somebody and then it ends
up not working it just ends up being another the program so do y'all have ideas one can we do more are the people out there
are the people out there to help people if we allowed more people to be helped as a state are there are the people out here to do that yes sir I in
Speaker 168
1:57:22
my career with DEA I've been in nine states. I've never seen recovery done better than in Arkansas. And I've never seen places like John 316 Ministries in Charlotte, Arkansas, and Renewal Ranch in Houston, Arkansas,
and Arm 180 out in DeWitt, Arkansas, and Safe Haven, and Next Step Recovery Housing in Clarksville, Arkansas. I've never seen things like that until I got to this state. And like I said earlier, nine direct, I have nine directors that I work with all the time in recovery that came out of addiction those are the people that are passionate enough and they'll put the boots on the ground to make things happen and people with the little lady that's sitting next to me that's passionate about these programs so yes to answer your question there are people and if we could somehow
get the chair or a law passed to say there's treatment facilities already out there that have this 88 percent success rate can we just say hey these are licensed treatment centers and can we start advocating to move money in their direction to get that money and allow those people to do what they're already doing. John 316 has already graduated 3,000 graduates in probably the last 20 years. And they have a proven path of success, just like Safe Haven, just like Next Step Recovery
Housing, where all five of those men that we were able to help turn their lives around. So I think we are spearheading and on the front lines of making something great happen here in Arkansas and I think you all are the are the ones with that that will make it happen let me
Speaker 170
1:59:04
can I add to that really quickly yes please do because I love your question it's very near and dear to my heart here's the thing resources we're doing this without the resources okay there's a lot of people
doing it well there's some that aren't thus I'm very passionate about the credentialing boards right you have avenues by which you can fund that are not government agencies that will turn this into another program you have R you have Akram these people we cared enough to start it on our own right and so we care about the standards we don't want the flop houses we do want to reduce recidivism i personally care that my jail is overcrowded and my my county is stressed right
and so i'm doing something about it with a group of other people that we care if you take the resources and you decentralize them and you bring them to the communities where the communities are understand their problems and they are meeting they're they're already working to solve their own problems and you help them with resources funneled through uh responsible uh governing bodies i believe that that is one very real
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
2:00:22
the state okay so uh mr harper you uh mentioned some things that we needed to do as far as measuring uh would and i'm putting you on the spot but uh if we need to do it and it needs to be legislation uh would you be willing to uh work with an attorney at blr to to craft some of that
legislation absolutely okay well get with me offline and we'll make that happen i can't tell you know unless you have the other people in re-entry agreeing with you it may not go anywhere so so we'll have to do more than just write it uh but we'll have and again we'll have to find out if your ideas are the right ideas but but that that'll give us a place to start and other than you walking out and me forgetting uh if you'll get with me offline we'll uh we'll start working
we'll get you with them to start working in my stead uh on legislation and uh and someone else may want to carry it, but we'll get
Speaker 168
2:01:34
it written. I'd be honored to do that. And when you're talking about the Association of the Christian Recovery Ministries, that's 206 standards that these recovery ministries have to have. And you're going to weed out people automatically that aren't going to be able to maintain those standards. And those are the organizations that we need to be the boots on the ground to get this thing
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
2:01:54
going. That sounds like that would be very important. Senator Johnson, Mark Johnson.
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
2:01:59
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate you allowing me to participate, although I'm not a
member of the Judiciary Committee. Mr. Harper, you've clicked a lot of things in my mind, and I won't belabor all of them. The chairman would cut me off if I did. But one thing that has come clear is that where we are right now, and the Protect Act was the beginning of that, and I absolutely supported it. But we seem to have a societal intolerance for crime.
It's like we've coddled you criminals too long and we're going to get tougher and have more mandatory sentences and we're going to build more jails so we'll have room to lock everybody up, which may or may not be the solution, which is why we're here today. And I applaud the fact that the chairman is drilling down deep on this. But you touched on the drugs in prison issue and what I would just call corruption within the corrections bureaucracy.
Maybe I'm asking if we should be throwing the book not at the first-time criminals and the people that have had the kinds of problems that our first two witnesses told us about in their lives, but maybe throw the book at people who are government employees that are making a very good living and eventually getting a huge pension for being part of the problem. As my dad once said, you know, if a judge or a prosecutor or a police officer is caught breaking a law,
he ought to get double punishment instead of what is other in the law. Would you see that as at least a partial solution to this where we don't ignore the fact that there's some institutional corruption, probably at all kinds of levels? The drug thing, I never thought about until this recent thing happened in Arkansas where they were taking books away from inmates because people were soaking them in the drugs and they were somehow able to get the drugs out of the paper. Would you see maybe part of our aim being at some institutional corruption that allows some of these many problems you point out to exist?
Speaker 168
2:04:22
Yes, sir. I think you could develop a whole task force. And I raised my hand over 30 years ago to protect and serve. I knew that I was going to be held to a higher standard, and I should be held to a higher standard, just like every government employee. And so what I would say is you could develop a task force and you could keep them busy around the clock to stop the corruption, stop the dope coming into the prison and all the other contraband phones and everything else that ends up in prison that shouldn't be there. So 100% yes, resounding yes, that we could stay busy on that.
And I don't know that it should not be, it should be a priority that we should be staying
Speaker 172
2:05:01
busy at keeping the corruption out of the institutions and prisons. Okay.
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
2:05:07
Thank you very much, Mr. Harper. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
2:05:11
Representative McCullough, you're going to be
Representative Tippi McCullough
Unverified
2:05:15
last. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So some of the places you're talking about, are these places that are certified or places that could be licensed, or are they?
Speaker 170
2:05:27
Yes, we have several licensed facilities, both with Akram and with NAR. Akram is specific to faith-based. NAR is a broader, you can be of faith or you cannot. It's a national standard for, but yes, we have several already across the state that are NAR certified. And I'm not sure
Speaker 168
2:05:50
on Akram how many. So there's 42 members currently, several that are applying for accreditation.
Shackle Free Ministries is one of those as well, still applying because we know we're not where we need to be. It's just my wife and I. So we are trying to do all the things to get ourselves in a position to be accredited. And that's insurance. That's all the things. And we are smaller ministries such as ours. The regulations and standards obviously won't be as as stringent, but it is a very stringent protocols and regulations that you have to meet in order to become. And you're inspected just like a headquarters inspection.
If you know anything about inspections, you're inspected on a yearly basis. And if you're not cutting the mustard,
Representative Tippi McCullough
Unverified
2:06:39
here right now, I wanted to ask a question and I could ask this probably of anybody today. But there's a practice that's come to my attention called labor trafficking. And to give you an example, somebody pulling up, asking people who are in these recovery centers or transition houses, they don't have any transportation, well, I've got a truck, I can take you, and you can work for me,
and I'll pay you like $8 an hour and then work somebody for 12 hours. And still they're almost killing themselves and still can't get out of the position they're in because they're not able to make enough money to do that, but they're kind of at the mercy of that kind
Speaker 170
2:07:19
of situation, too. Do you guys know anything about that? These kind of things happen, but they're generally, I would say safely, they're not accredited homes. Things like that may happen, but not in actually reputable programs.
Representative Tippi McCullough
Unverified
2:07:33
And when you say that, do you mean like the nationally accredited ones? Are you talking about the ACC ones?
Speaker 170
2:07:41
I can't speak to what happens across the board in ACC. I know what their rules say, and you're not allowed to do that. For example, there's a lot of strict rules. NAR and Akram both have more strict rules than even ACC. But ACC has guidelines you're supposed to follow which protect from that kind of thing.
For example, in my ACC home and in my reentry home, I was required to transport my residents to everything that they needed, including their work. And they had to get honest, like legitimate jobs, full-time jobs, consistent jobs. They had to work a minimum of 42 and a half hours per week. So in these licensed homes, that is not supposed to happen. don't i know fairly well most of the nor accredited homes and i don't believe any of that kind of
stuff is going on in those homes i can't speak to akram and i can't speak to what all
Representative Tippi McCullough
Unverified
2:08:44
is going across the board to acc i understand that just i just feel like there's so many out there that's really hard to tell if everybody's following the rules rules like
Speaker 170
2:08:59
they should but thank you they're not yeah exactly thank you but a real quick point to that is if we do tie resources to credentialing we and we incentivize more and more homes to want
to be certified which would then force them to be brought up to the standards
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
2:09:19
of good care I hate rules
however I'm in a job where that's what you do because it's necessary and the I think some of the things that Mr.
Harper pointed out about measuring again assuming in a perfect world that measurements will be done correctly and even once you put the rules in
place uh but i think the biggest thing uh is is always results uh how you do it doesn't matter so much to me i i as we get ready to recess for lunch uh one of my favorite quotes uh and i'm not going to quote it exactly uh or even close was from napoleon and he was asked how he promoted uh officers to general uh and he said i promote the lucky ones and by that he meant the ones who
win he it wasn't it didn't look at how they train their men how they what their strategies or tactics were he promoted those who won uh and we need to promote the things that have shown themselves to work uh and try to find a way to do more and again saying that's easy uh doing it is something else altogether and i don't know how many beds we can save i mean ultimately we're talking about lives but but again but we also have to deal with dollars and cents so you know
how many beds can we save because there is a core of people that we're not talking about because that's not what we're here to
talk about, of people who belong there but need to stay there. And I don't know how big that is and how big the group is that can be helped and how much quicker we can help them and how
much better we can help them. But that's what we, whatever it is, if it was only 100 people, that's 100 beds.
It's also 100 lives, which is, if I'm
not talking as a senator, is even more important. But we've got a duty to not take any more taxpayer money to do something than we need to. And if we can do it more successfully, that's what we need to do. So we appreciate the ideas. We've had some great contributions this morning, great discussions. We've got a lot more people with a lot more to contribute this afternoon. Appreciate y'all being here. It is 12.15. We will gavel back in at 1.15. We are in recess.
Unknown speaker
2:11:57
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There we go.
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
3:13:57
electronics decided to give our members another minute
grace period okay we're back to number three Victoria
Parsons are you in the room come forward
all right and exhibit c2 will be
applicable before y'all get started let me clear up some things one the go back to what I said this morning there is to be no talking unless you've got the floor and if you're not up in these seats or up here you don't have the floor the let me clear up especially I talked about public comment and we have some people
signed up I'm not sure how many because some
of you on the agenda misunderstood and signed up what I said that we might not get to those who signed up from the public that was the public if you're on the agenda we are we have ever planned of getting to you and cutting people off if we
have to to get to you so with that we have Victoria Parsons and okay if
the two of you would introduce yourselves for the record and who you're with who you represent now y'all having
the same problem we were having so we'll give our members a little bit more grace period.
Speaker 237
3:16:20
can you hear me now okay um well my name is victoria and um i'm a citizen of white county what's your last name parsons okay yep so um i just wanted to first start out and say i'm so thankful to god for um the ability to be here today um to be able to speak to you guys um it's really a blessing and an honor
um thank you committee members for allowing me to be here as well um before i get into my proposal that i put together i just kind of want to make a quick mention of why i'm here um i personally have never been incarcerated i've never been to jail i've never been in any kind of trouble. I think the only thing I've ever experienced is maybe a speeding ticket. So I put this together and started working on this because I've been on the other side of
incarceration. I've been the one that walks through those doors and gets to see your loved one incarcerated. And I've seen the environment that they're in and what incarceration not only does to the prisoners but to the families that are also serving alongside with them I've put probably a year's worth of time into this proposal I feel like it's not only a way to free up bed
space but it's a way to improve the prison system as a whole so you know we don't have to choose between accountability and compassion I believe that we can have both and I think to understand how we got here, we need to kind of take it back a little bit. So in 1995, Arkansas passed a law that we commonly call the 70% law. For certain serious offenses, a person had to serve at least 70% of their sentence before they could become eligible for parole. So that policy has now been
affecting the correctional system for about 30 years. And I want to be clear, I'm not saying that this one thing is what's caused the backup um or the overcrowding but um i am saying that we need to say see how that it contributed so uh when people remain incarcerated longer um you know year after year decade after decade i mean the bed space it adds up right so um arkansas revisited this issue and i say it was back in 2005 the law changed that those 70 percent requirements for
certain methamphetamine offenses so those individuals were allowed to earn good time and they served 50% of the original sentence and this change was part of the legislation that addressed the prison overcrowding and the increased incarceration rates at the time more than 20 years ago Mike Huckabee was governor and he spoke about mercy and hope in our justice system and this was in 2001 it was regarding the the system overcrowding that we were experiencing at the time. And he said, without any consideration of mercy, there is no
true justice. If we take hope away, any sense of optimism we may have destroys the soul of the very individual that we hope to change. And I think that there's a lot of truth in that, because I do believe that people absolutely have to be held accountable for what they do. But accountability and hope do not have to be opposites. And that's what my proposal is really about. And I want to show you guys what our system currently looks like. I know that you guys should all have copies of the proposal that I put out. So in the first set is just the summary and I'm just kind of
touching base on page two. Right now we currently have 19,869 individuals incarcerated. This is off of the Board of Corrections workbook that they put out every year or every month. August numbers is what my proposal is based off of i do realize they've put out september since then um but i had these printed up before then so um i think it has increased about 73 by 73 from august numbers to september numbers um we are looking at 2351 of those individuals currently september numbers
that are in county backup we have things called your rated capacity listed capacity operated capacity and basically what i've learned through all of that is we want to go off the operated capacity that's what they have um they put a bunch of different beds in places they can and bunk beds where they can they've just stuffed people where they can at this point So we're looking at 16,809 individuals that are operating in bed space right now.
We're 118.2% over capacity as we speak. Now, I had a snapshot in some stuff that I had worked up. It's not currently in here, but I'm just going to quick mention. It's the snapshot of that whole workbook. It's the whole summary. Basically, it divides all of the people who are incarcerated right now by violent versus nonviolent crimes and how many of those have been eligible for parole for their past year and how many of those have been eligible for the past five years, and they have gone past their TE date.
As of right now, there's 7,614 of those individuals that have been eligible for the past year and past their TE date. There are 1,125 of those individuals who have been eligible for the past five years. So I kind of dug a little deeper and went into what we're looking at in parole hearings. I compared last year to this year. As of last year, we were on average releasing about 631 individuals per parole session.
As of right now, this year, we're averaging 399. with August of last year they only released 302 and they reviewed 1132 cases so we got to kind of look at well we're going up for parole here what is the reasons that people are not being released are they not you know meeting the required classes I mean we've heard all of this already I know that there's over 3,000 people on a wait list as of right now waiting for the types of classes and things that they need to take in order to proceed pass their parole so that's that's an
issue that can be addressed with the board of corrections i believe but i kind of want to get into the meat and bones of my proposal because i know we don't have a whole lot of time so on page three i kind of just addressed three different ways that we can make this into a legislative decision here. So first we have option A and that's to refocus on those 70 percenters. I don't think that that is something that you know we can say
shouldn't be considered because it has been before. We can focus on certain class Y cases and let them earn good time. I would exclude all sexual offenses. I don't think that anyone would be on board with that but as far as I want to give an example so we might have a convicted aggravated robbery or a first degree murder and they weren't the primary actor but they were an accomplice or secondary participant Arkansas doesn't do accessory charges so someone could
essentially just be in the wrong place at the wrong time didn't know someone had a gun or whatnot, and they're convicted of the same crime. They signed a plea deal at the age of, you know, under 21. They were young at the time of the occurrence. They were on drugs. There's several different things that could put these people in these classes, and they accepted these things, and they've actually shown good behavior. They've been incarcerated for over 15 years um they've shown good behavior they've been rehabilitated so in option a um i'm i'm not saying
that we would automatically release these people but i am suggesting that um we could make someone eligible to earn good time um under that same decree that they had done before that that they've served that 50 just like the methamphetamine charges um that they could be eligible for the good time as well. So that's kind of where I'm hitting, you know, especially if somebody committed a terrible mistake at 18, 19, 20 years old. They were a secondary participant and now they've served 15 plus years. They've clearly spent those years demonstrating that they're no longer the same
person who entered that prison. I believe it's reasonable for policymakers to at least ask whether our system should have a way to recognize that change. And I did compare that workbook. There are 1,480 qualifying candidates in that scenario. In option B that we have underneath that, that would focus on an individualized review. As I said, in my proposal, I make that at a 15-year mark. Now, if you turn to page, I think it's on page six, there is an actual illustrative score-based review model.
I think that was mentioned earlier on in the session, something like having a review-based model. Alabama actually does this now, and they work in tangent with their ORAS scores. And Arkansas already implements ORAS. That's an Ohio risk assessment score. And that is what puts an individual inmate in their risk category. Are they a low-risk, moderate-risk, high-risk individual? Okay, and then it gives them different tests and programs, I'm sorry, different programs and things that they can take before they have to be eligible for parole, right?
So if we can do what Alabama is doing, implement this review model along with the ORAS score, the ORAS score would initially determine, okay, do we need to bring them up for review? And then they meet this score model. What Alabama is currently doing is if you meet a score of a 0 to 7, you would be eligible for the review. If you score 8 or higher, you're not eligible for the review. Under this option here, you're looking at 1,833 qualifying individuals.
Now, I will say, I heard someone mention PrEP earlier in a program. Alabama did implement their PrEP program, and I do have statistics on that. It is based off the review chart, whereas scores and all of that. And so from 2022 to 2024, they reported an 86% decrease. They went from 30% to 4% through their PrEP program. So I believe that that is something that we could definitely implement, and it would work great. now me personally i would love to do both options um i believe you know implementing both of these
would be essential for bed space it saves money it does all of the things that um people are asking for um in today's hearing that i've heard so far um there are 441 people that overlap in that category so they qualify for a and b so you can't essentially total those two together so there's actually 2,872 that would be eligible for both. If you look on page eight and nine of my spreadsheet, I kind of spread this out for you guys and give you a couple different scenarios.
I tried to be conservative because we know that not all these people are going to qualify, right? I mean, there's disciplinary, so there's a lot of different things that can go into a factor here so i worked up a plan 25 planning case 718 individuals um that is would be qualifying to free up the bed space there okay and that would save us 19.51 million dollars over
the course of one year now where i get those numbers that's you know arkansas reports 74 and 46 cents a day to house an inmate um so you're basically tallying that up then um you know multiplying that by 365 and then that gives you the number per inmate per year and then you times that by 718 and that's where you get that number these numbers are not definitive they're just projections okay so um 40 that's where I would like to lean more towards um that's why I feel more hopeful um that's 1149 beds that we could free up just just in this scenario alone that's
not um bringing in the the empower act that's not um you know trying to get more people through parole process that is just this plan alone and that would save 31.23 million per year if 100 percent ceiling we hit that 100 percent ceiling that's 78 million a year okay now i did a fiscal impact um i know adc or not adc but the correction system in general um their fiscal year they received six hundred and twenty eight point eight million dollars for the entire year is what their
allotment they've already got fiscal year 2027 out and they're 674.7 million so they've already increased next year's projection by 45.9 million so if we can take this proposal and implement it in some form or fashion I've listed below you know if we build the new prison obviously there's the projections is in the red and then in the green we have what we could save over the course of 10 years only on a 25 percent basis that saves us 195.14 million now I'm not saying that
or I want to address the Arkansas protect act at this point because I don't want any of you thinking you know well we make room now well what keeps us from being overcrowded again later right i mean that's a general question so i know in 2025 we enacted the protect arkansas act and some of those individuals will serve their 85 percent sentence and some will serve the 100 percent um so i think that we can learn from that 70 law here um i'm not saying again that it caused
all the issues and but obviously keeping people incarcerated longer without meaningful ways to earn a review or show rehabilitation adds unwanted pressure to the system over time. So what I'm asking for is breathing room right now. It gives us a chance to look at the people who are already sitting in those beds. Then we can determine who truly needs to remain there and who may be safe for a review for release. That gives Arkansas time to save money,
plan better, and get a more honest picture of how the prison space is actually needed moving forward. And this proposal can not only apply to just the prison system now, but if we choose option B or that combination where we can allow that review process, it can apply to that 85% and 100% later on down the road. After they've served that 15-year marker, they do the work, they stay out of trouble, they complete their programs, they show the rehabilitation. Then they, too, can earn the option for review, right?
It doesn't mean they're automatically going home. It just means, hey, we're going to give you something to look forward to. We're going to give you an incentive to do better. And then if we hold those people accountable, we also give rehabilitation a purpose. At the same time, we're being smarter about bed space. We're being smarter about our money. And Arkansas is going to need the next, you know, what are we going to need in the next 10, 20, or 30 years from now, right? So, um, I'm almost finished. If you draw your attention to, um, page 11, um, we have that
rehabilitation programming and reducing recidivism. I just kind of put together a model for you guys to kind of look at, um, if we were to do the 10, 25, 40% projections that I, um, alluded to earlier, what we could use that money for, right? So, um, if we're in that, um, 25% there. Um, we have officer safety retention. It's, I know at one point border corrections was
on a hiring freeze. I don't know if they still are, but it was pretty recently. Um, they, they do not have enough staff to keep these inmates. Um, uh, I would say in check, but it's not really, um, um, um, but anyways, so, um, anyway, I have several different things. There's program capacity re-entry and community programs data and evaluations um and then keeping things in to reserve because you know what arkansas is growing by two percent each year um we've got
um i think the the online it says uh two percent all the way through 2035 and our population is going to grow by two percent so i'm not saying we'll never need a new prison I will never need to add on or need to make changes but this is a way to kind of help make that for now but in closing I'm I'm just going to ask you know that the end of the day that I know none of this is simple okay and I'm not asking anyone to forget the crime or the
victims or stop holding people accountable I'm just asking for us to look at what what's better is there something better is there a better way to do this and I truly believe that there is and after enough time has passed we'd be willing to look at that person again whether that comes through those 70 percent cases or a review after 15 years or both there will still be safeguards in place and a review won't mean release again but it's just a chance to see who they are today and not only for the worst thing that they did many years ago I spent so long working on this
because I truly believe that accountability and redemption can cause us together and we remember what someone did. We can remember what someone did. We can protect the public and still leave room for people to become better than the person that they once were. I'd like to leave you all with this and I just ask that you remember that you were all young once too. Most of us would not want the rest of our lives defined by the worst decision or the worst moment that we ever had and some people do terrible things and they absolutely have to be held accountable for them
but if we can truly change after many years have passed and they put in the work and they're no longer that person I believe that there should be a way to recognize that and that's all that I'm asking you to consider today. I know that Brittany's here she kind of had a way to touch on different rehabilitations and programmings and the things that some of that money could be put back into and a little bit of statistics that she has um but as far as i go that that's
all i have in my proposal i have the summary um that's your first set second part's going to be the full proposal with a lot more juice and then i um took the liberty of just making up a draft of what legislative uh terms would look like and put it into an actual example bill um for for you to look at but i thank you all so much for giving me the time to speak and hearing me out and if you have any questions i'm open to that as well
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
3:36:50
okay miss gilmore would you introduce yourself
Speaker 244
3:36:53
and who you represent yes my name is britney gilmore and i represent um jesse lewis choose love corrections as well as breaking the tie step on um i am from severe county arkansas and I am here today also speaking from lived experiences. So as we're discussing, I just want to say a little bit about what Jesse Lewis Choose Love does. So Jesse Lewis was killed in Sandy Hook whenever the Sandy Hook school shooting happened,
and his family does have roots here in Arkansas. Instead of his mom getting angry and blaming everybody around for what happened to her son, she put that time, effort, and money back into figuring out why. So what person missed Adam Lanza? What person didn't ask him why? What did he not have? So I think that one thing that we have to look at in Arkansas that we don't look at, and that is the culture. And I'm not saying that it is the color of your skin tone culture.
Culture is different no matter how many ways you look at it. There's very many forms of culture. It's not based on your skin color. So what we have and what we're operating on is we're supposed to have Arkansas Department of Corrections, but right now that 72% recidivism rate are people that were on probation and parole. They have not committed a new crime. So therefore, obviously, Department of Corrections is not doing very well correcting people, and we just have to be honest with ourselves with that. But how do we do it?
because we have people that we are asking questions of. And today is very good, and we are all very appreciative of it because we don't go to the dentist for a broken bone. So we're coming to people that have never had lived experience asking them how do we fix something that they've never even been inside of. And I think that that's what we have to take and what we have to look. We have to look back at the culture of it, and we have to start allowing these people to have voices at the table because we are investing a lot of money right now in policy.
very little money in people and if Arkansas wants to grow we have to start investing in the people of Arkansas so in order how do we do that so prevention is cheaper than recovery I promise you that and that starts with our youth in Sevier County we operate a secondary program it's called you matter that program is not funded by any tax dollars currently and it has support it has had some state supportive help, but what we do is being in a small rural area without a whole
lot of resources. We give our juveniles a chance in the court system to learn from a different culture. So our judge gives them six weeks. In six weeks, we teach them, we go into the homes, we figure out what environment they are, because if we're working with somebody and then putting them back in the same environment, that is not helping them at all. So we have to actually go outside of our offices we have to go outside of the school hallways and we have to go into these kids and actually kind of understand where they're coming from why are they hurting because um in my
opinion there's no such thing as a bad kid and I know a lot of people want to say well that's crazy but no if we're kids I say contaminated emotions become contained emotions so when kids don't know how to emotionally express themselves they blow up with it's just like what happened with adam lanza whenever he went in a sandy hook and opened fire on those students that's major we we don't have that major right now but we are looking at that we are looking at a lot of young kids in
arkansas right now that are carrying guns that are acting out and for all we know it's simply because they don't have anybody investing in them at home but we have not stopped to ask that question in the general assembly this past year I think the legislation um DYS made a statement about we were we we had a disconnect with our juveniles and to my knowledge there was nothing proposed by the time that we gaveled out at the end of legislative session of how we reconnect with those juveniles and since then I think in Arkansas within the last and this is just a number
that I'm throwing out there. So I'd say within the last six to nine months, at least 10 juveniles have probably been charged with violent crimes. How many of those could have been prevented if we would have invested the money in the people and not the policy? Because Arkansas is very rural in a lot of areas. When you're investing in policy, you're putting a blanket over the entire state that southern counties like myself and Sevier County, we can't uphold that. We don't have those resources to support a policy that may be able to be supportive here so if we have to we have to take a step back we have to
stop worrying about what the policy entails and understand that there are different levels that we need to look at and that is with each individual representative that's coming to the table that the people are putting here in their place getting out in the communities of those districts that you serve and asking them what do they need because everybody sitting in one room cannot tell us what one area needs and want to blanket the entire Arkansas so we miss that so when we ask how can we prevent overcrowding that's easy and that is investing in the people we start in the juveniles
we give them working programs and working systems that work currently right now we our juvenile probation officer has on average three to 15 minutes with each child no meaningful programs are going on in juvenile probation. There's nothing telling them that this may be the end game. I can probably find about 250 people within the SNAP before I walked to my car here that would volunteer to sit with those men if they were allowed a day. They'd volunteer to go into those juvenile facilities
and ask those kids, do you see where I'm at today and what I could have been if I would have listened to the people that were speaking to me? But whenever you speak over them, They don't want to listen, and that's where we're at right now. So I say that how do we stop the beds? We have to start investing in our juvenile justice system, and we have to understand that not every community has the same resources to link together.
Speaker 249
3:43:31
Y'all ready to take questions? Yes. senator blake johnson miss parsons what do you do in the real world i'm an insurance agent so the only you know there's got to be motivation to put this kind of
Speaker 236
3:44:02
work into something i think it's um the love that i have for my family members that are incarcerated right now
I mean, I never knew, I don't come from, I don't live in a rural area. I've been privileged my whole life. I really never knew it was this bad. So going in the last two years and seeing your family members struggle and hurt and your loved ones tell you what it's like it just it made me feel like I need to do something
I felt called to it I felt like God told me like this is what you need to do you need to work on this you need to and so far he's given me all
Speaker 237
3:44:51
the tools I need to you know put the effort and research and um data and you know it's it's all come together and um I didn't know the first thing about politics i don't um still don't know a lot um but i i you know went through the channels and asked a lot of people and you know i just feel blessed to be able to be in front of you guys
Speaker 240
3:45:14
today to at least present it and get it started because i want i want to be
Speaker 249
3:45:21
able to help i want to be able to make a difference well from the review i looked at your stuff and it looks pretty detailed and there's been a lot of work done on it and appreciate you uh sharing that yes sir and the passion that you have for what you're doing uh miss is it miss gilmore so you talked about a lot about programming and this thing's not going to be solved by government and a lot of what's
happening in society, it don't matter if it's three minutes or what. It's the family. And whatever we can do to support the families of the state and have two-person families, that's what a lot of changes happened since the 50s, 40s, whatever. You can say whatever you want to. The two-person household family structure is is going to solve a lot of this where no matter what we do as a
government can't solve the you said 24 you know there's 24 hours in a day and three minutes government there's no programming no matter what we spend can replace what they can get the family and the faith and you know whatever whatever we do has to be centered around supporting the family to make this thing successful for the future of the children so appreciate both of you
Speaker 244
3:47:05
coming so we currently have two programs that um do kind of encapsulate the families um one is family-centered treatment with DHS we are under we are in the second year of over 11 million dollar pilot program, and that is where you have the family-centered treatment service workers that are going in and getting a snapshot of what the entire family looks like and what the entire family needs. I know of two families that have had success stories where
whenever they went into family-centered treatment services, the child was truant in school and not attending and probably not going to graduate on time, and the mom was in active drug addiction. The mom went through the Residential Substance Abuse Treatment Center at Sevier County Jail while the daughter went through the Family Center Treatment You Matter program, and now they're both doing good. The daughter did graduate on time. The mom has two years clean time, and the daughter is going to college. So that program that DHS already offers is something that is already started, but it will take money in the next General Assembly to be put back into that program.
will have to be funded um and then we had 18 million dollars that was in arkansas better dads which was a program that was actually going into our county jails and our prison system that were teaching some of these young men how to be dads because if you never had something then you can't be that and um if we we do realize that arkansas suffers from not enough two family households so um that program was cut and i would just say that we should in this upcoming general assembly we should look at what we need to do to bring that back because I do think that there was
some success being done with that there and I do know that the Southern Baptist Association was kind of matching those programs to kind of offset that and and push that through and they were also training those men to go in to be able to do that and that was cut but I think if we review it we can find the money to put it back because that's where it's going to have
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
3:49:11
to be done at represent to tosh uh you're going to be the
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
3:49:15
last question thank you mr chair i'm over here thank y'all for being here today and i appreciate your comments concerning
juveniles and you know as a legislative body what we need to be doing to be able to address those issues i'm just curious i uh i
know we we we passed legislation you know that has uh directly dealt with some of the issues that you brought up i'm not sure that you're familiar with that legislation and maybe you are are you familiar with act uh 988 which dealt with the uh juvenile sentencing factors are you have you been able to research that and look at that and see the impact
that that would have hopefully a positive impact uh for the juveniles and also act 692 which uh So that bill was the extended juvenile jurisdiction. Have you had an opportunity to review that and take a look at that particular piece of legislation as it relates to the concerns that you brought before us today? I have reviewed the
Speaker 244
3:50:19
first one, and I think that that would be good going into it. I am not familiar with the second bill that you stated
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
3:50:28
with the juvenile changes. Okay, I'll give you that. If you want to
jot it down and look it up, it's Act 692 of 2023. It started out as Senate Bill 406. It's Extended Juvenile Jurisdiction. It just expands the circumstances in which Extended Juvenile Jurisdiction can be sought for certain juvenile offenses, which you kind of alluded to a while ago. It affects whether some young offenders remain within a juvenile rehabilitative framework.
move into an adult system so i thought of that statute when as i was listening to your discussion i want to make sure you was aware of it in the event you're not it gives you you can look it up and see uh see if we um how that applies and see if there's something we need to do to make that even a better piece of legislation if you feel like it's not where it needs to be now so i appreciate your time thank you for listening and just to
Speaker 244
3:51:34
explained that maybe i wasn't clear in my explanation i was more so saying like um i'm from a very very rural community where most of our kids that are getting in trouble in juvenile court are getting in trouble for truancy and maybe they busted out a glass window or some stuff like that and whenever we are looking at those coming into alexander or even going to clarksville those kids are coming from Pulaski or coming from Fort Smith that kind of have more they might have stole a car they might did something a little bit more serious than what those kids did and we were
noticing that our kids were learning new tricks at juvenile and bringing them back to a little rural county that already was having had a weak system so that is what I was meaning by that okay not so much as if it was juvenile
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
3:52:19
or adult okay well that helps explain it then so I still think you should look at that statute.
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
3:52:26
I think it might be of interest to you. Thank
you, sir. Thank you. Thank y'all for being here today. Thank you for your testimony. I am looking to bring several of the re-entry folks up at the same time. Carrie Williams, that says re-entry in
name so i'm assuming y'all re-entry uh paul chapman is that re-entry partially uh the let me move on down uh michael johnson is
that re-entry do we need another chair
if y'all would go ahead while we're getting another chair start on the left my right and
introduce yourselves and who you represent Alan Winkler City of Faith okay and you're with
one of these others we're a
reentry facility okay I don't see you on the agenda is why
Speaker 271
3:53:48
I'm asking I'm with Carrie okay that's what I want to make
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
3:53:53
sure I'm Carrie's boss okay next Carrie Williams director of
Speaker 273
3:53:57
special services of City of Faith okay I'm Paul Chapman I'm the executive director at restore hope and this is Janet camp with restore hope
Speaker 276
3:54:10
also. Okay. And I am Michael Johninson. I am the executive director of Compassion and Action
Reentry, which is a faith-based organization. Okay. Y'all decide who's
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
3:54:19
going to start and tell us what
you want us to hear that will help us reduce prison beds in Arkansas. absolutely uh i believe do we have the
Speaker 266
3:54:30
powerpoint that we prepared is it up or do you guys have copies of it we're good either way
Speaker 279
3:54:46
yeah yeah we just yeah it should be a full screen all right cool
Carrie Williams
Unverified
3:54:56
uh so thank you for letting us come and speak uh so real quickly city of faith we've been in existence for 45 years we've been in arkansas for 30 years we operate the only federal re-entry center in arkansas we have other locations in louisiana as well as carrie's department which works with district and circuit courts what we're presenting today is we've done this very successfully in the federal framework for a long time we have partners in several states
that are excuse me doing this at the state level with excellence recidivism in the teens versus ours in the not teens uh and so we just kind of want to walk through this as it's working in other states maybe we can do some research there it's working in our facility we we have a 92 success rate many people successfully get out of our program and we have very few people that are coming back uh so just kind of hang with us there a second so arkansas is already making the investment in prisons you know we're spending 450 million dollars a year uh in adc all these figures were
collected from government websites uh roughly 75 a day per person uh per offender in our programs and over 16 almost 17 000 people incarcerated including a family member of mine so the whole idea is we're already investing in these individuals but we're not investing on the back end we're putting them in prison but we're giving them no programs on the back end um so when a person gets out of prison uh or when you're in prison if we've all ever seen shawshank redemption and whenever brooks gets out he doesn't know how to exist and what happens to brooks it ends poorly for him
and we want to stop that from happening and so when you're in prison it's structured there's supervision there's routine uh you have services everything you need is met for you including your clothing and then you get out major environment change sensory overload if you've ever watched someone come out of prison uh it is and they see a smartphone for the first time it is it's a sight to behold uh they they go through what's called post-incarceration syndrome very similar to ps ptsd when they get out into the community they then have to navigate and figure out employment
housing transportation family finances technology i mean everything we do today i mean this this is fancy this technology this this would blow their minds uh so after release so the bureau of justice statistics released this study in 2018 they followed 400 000 offenders across 30 states and they found that within three years 68 of those individuals went back or were rearrested after six years almost 80 percent after nine years 83 percent uh so how does arkansas stack up with
that so we're depending upon whose study you're looking at i think we range between 45 and 57 percent recidivism my own brother did time and went back two more times so i've seen it myself and he released me when I was 20. 50% are re-incarcerated. 62% of those people who are re-incarcerated are individuals who are on parole violations, and they're only there because they didn't get a job or get a driver's license or pay some fines. These aren't major offenses. These aren't robbing someone or capital offenses. So this is what the federal government model looks
like. It is a structured environment. There's supervision, there's accountability. Everything we do is facial recognition. I believe, as Mary Beth said earlier, our electronic monitoring, it is a cell phone. We have an app, we have a phone, we have an ankle monitor. We have all kinds of really cool toys that these individuals carry, and it brings back their humanity. Whenever we see somebody with an ankle monitor, we immediately think they're a murderer. They probably just didn't pay their taxes. And so we want to humanize them. We want them to be able to go into the community and get jobs that any of us would have and our individuals do have jobs that any one of
us have. There's constant drug and alcohol testing like I said electronic monitoring there's activity we let them go out into the community and volunteer we do thousands of hours a year in our host cities of volunteer work we want to give back we want to make these tax liabilities taxpayers we want to make them good citizens and then we excuse me we help them with employment i think i've got some statistics in here it talks about an employed offender and they're likely to recidivate we also meet their basic needs such as food and clothing
we do employment counseling we have employment connections we hosted a job fair last week in little rock and had over 450 people show up looking for jobs didn't know if they're offenders we didn't ask if you need a job let's get you a job let's make our city and our state stronger they do one-on-one case management there's mental health treatment cognitive behavioral substance use life skills financial training we rebuild their community ties a lot of our individuals will go back to these rural counties we service all 75 counties in arkansas if you can think of an
offender you they probably came through our program if they were on the federal side we help them figure out transition housing we we have supervised activities where their families can come in we do family reunification we did a trunk retreat last year invited all the offenders kids to come in so they could see mom and dad in a in a costume because that's something they haven't seen in a long time. So what does the evidence show? So a person who transitions through a community correction center or residential re-entry center, whatever we want to call it, only about 24% of those people will recidivate, meaning 76% of those will not re-offend within
three years. If they have a direct release, and so again this is nationwide, 52% of those people will recidivate. And I use my brother as a prime example. He released to me, I was 20 he was 23 he released to me it's a terrible plan uh so what is let's talk about employment full-time employment uh so of the oh gosh several several thousand people in resident federal re-entry facilities throughout the country 90 92 of those individuals are working
if we look at people who were direct release only about 33 to 40 percent so let's talk about what what that means in tax dollars. So assuming you make minimum wage in Arkansas, you are contributing about $1,500, $1,600 in state and local sales tax. Federally, you're contributing about $1,700 in taxes. The cost for a non-working post-conviction offender costs the state of Arkansas, roughly $2,500 to $5,000 in our government-supplied services. So tax liability,
taxpayer. So let's look at what other states are doing. The states that are really excelling at this. So number one, I believe, is Virginia. Virginia has their recidivism, I think, around 17%. Oregon is, let's see, they've had 33% reduction in total arrests achieved in their county-level reentry initiatives. Ohio is right around 20%, and I believe Carrie and I have made great connections with some individuals in Ohio who have built these programs
and are just so excited and so willing to come share with Arkansas what they've done for the last 40 years, and it's working. So let's look at the Ohio model specifically. So they spend about $87.7 million a year in their re-entry facilities. That is not counting their prisons. That is two separate programs. They're halfway houses, their re-entry facilities, same thing. And then they have these community-based correctional facilities, or CBCFs.
Those act as a diversion program. Those are the two primary things that they're funding, as well as to end homelessness in Ohio. All of those things are coming out of that $87 million. So Arkansas has about a little over 3 million people. Ohio has 284% more than that. They have about 45,000 offenders. We have 20,000. That's a difference of 135%. So you can see proportionally, we have a lot of people locked up in comparison to states that are doing better than us. Arkansas, so our recidivism rate, somewhere between 45% and 57% over three years.
Ohio is down to somewhere around 17%, 18%, 22%. so what they're doing is they are licensing these private or non-profit community residential providers they're contracting beds and services and these organizations are providing treatment electronic monitoring employment housing and so this is kind of what I would envision this looks like and I didn't come up with this this is what we've been doing for 45 years this is what the Bureau of Prisons has been doing for about 66 years. The person's in prison, then we do an R&R,
risk and needs assessment. They go by tons of different names. I think I heard that ORAS mentioned earlier, it is the gold standard. I know personally the gentleman that created it and the team that he assembled to do it, it is a wonderful, wonderful assessment. And the thing that Ohio does when you get incarcerated, when you go through pre-trial, you have an assessment. That assessment travels with you through your entire time you were in the system so everyone knows what happened in 2005 what do we need to work on in 2026 so from there that dictates where you go are you a person
that needs to stay locked up forever are you a person who maybe made a mistake when you were 18 and we need to try to fix your life now before you go back into the system like my brother did several times so you would do maybe tier one 90 days in a re-entry facility tier two you get expanded privileges you're still there you're still serving your time you just get to go home on weekend you get to i don't know go to church go to walmart tier three we send you home on home confinement how about we practice what release looks like and then tier four we hand off back
to probation and parole they're actively involved the whole time but then that person goes on to probation and parole i've rented to several state offenders in my own real estate venture and that was rough that was rough they were these individuals were not prepared to be in the community all right so example tier one uh you you live at the residential center you have a complete assessment you develop a case plan we figure out what do you need do you need mental health do you need career counseling you know we get doctors lawyers politicians uh anybody you can
think of we've had them and not all of them need the same thing with people with no education so we're going to start a different path for them than the individual who who has a plumbing certificate. In the community, we begin our employment search. We work with different employers. Like I said, we had 40 employers in Central Arkansas come and help 450 people in Central Arkansas find work last week. And so we have these great and wonderful connections with employers who believe in second chances. They've all read the book, Untapped Talent. Highly recommend you all read it. And then we build a transportation plan. We're fortunate
in little rock to have a really good bus system in our rural areas we don't have that arkansas is a rural state and so we have to figure out what does that look like how are you going to get a to b when they get out of post-release they're not going to have a facility taking them around how about we train them to figure out their own transportation later on then we do programming like i said life skills financial relapse prevention and then we do that permanent transition into housing family connections education and stable employment like we saw a second ago stable employment will lead to a lower recidivism rate tier three or two sorry tier two
you get to go and we can pass the social passes we're working with your family we're bringing the family back in if you think about a soldier that returns to war they've been gone for 18 months moms had to be mom and dad the whole time prison system's the exact same way except you're not you're not volunteering to fight for our country so it's a little bit harder transition when you left your son was five you come back they're a teenager they don't know who you are we've got to fix that we've got to repair that and then they get to have expanded activities they get a little bit more independence and the whole time they have gps monitoring on them and and i don't i think i
heard the figure earlier uh from mr hutchinson about electronic monitoring it doesn't cost that much it is it is a very very low price to do electronic monitoring and so then speaking of electronic monitoring we put you out on home confinement you you you get tired of us we call them wake you up constantly you have to take selfies and prove that you are where you are our cell phones are tracking us we use that exact same technology to make sure our residents are where they're supposed to be we're accountable to the entire state of arkansas and the state of louisiana making sure that we are keeping these men and women accountable
we go see them they come see us we do drug testing they do programming twice monthly we're going to go out and see them we're going to go see them at work these like i said these electronic monitoring devices it's amazing what they can do and then tier tier four we're handing them back off to probation and parole we're putting them back in the community we're making them responsible citizens and they they now go out and and live their lives uh so a couple key things and this is why we think that the federal side of this has
been so successful uh i believe in our current re-entry program the facility has to provide transportation man i don't know if y'all looked at gas prices lately that's a tall order to swallow insurance on a facility vehicle like this is astronomical and these individuals we're not doing them a service by us always hauling them around they need to learn how to drive again we need to make that available we need to make sure that we are allowing them to have cell phones we allow our guys to have cell phones how else how else do you get a job how else do you connect
with your kids you walk up and down our dorms and you will see men and women every single night facetiming with their kids talk just think about that not seeing your kids and now you have the ability to do that from your palm it's amazing it's so life-touching to get to see that and then what if they're out in in traffic and they have an emergency they're due back at 4 p.m they hit 6 30 in the afternoon if you've ever done 6 30 in the afternoon it's it's awful you're gonna be late you need to call the facility from your hands-free device and let them know I'm coming
I promise I'll be there and we can look them up on GPS and then they have the responsibility to be to be citizens we've trained them we've made them prepared to re-enter our society and start their independence the other thing is a medical the Bureau of Prisons does offer free medical to their individuals uh with the idea that that we we assist them in getting their own insurance whenever they get out and so by the time they hit our home confinement they're completely self-sufficient in their insurance and their medical uh and then so we we coordinate all that
care we make sure that they make these appointments these doctors appointments these mental health appointments uh if they need help planning how to get somewhere we help them install the bus app we help them map routes we hold their hand until they no longer need to hold our hand so this is what it would look like for arkansas uh we would take uh you would contract with facilities and and ask them to do this continuum of care uh you take 100 beds and this is just simple math take 100 beds uh times uh 90 days in in the facility we can flip these beds every six
every six months i believe i heard earlier the dollar figure fifty dollars a day i think in reality you're probably a lot closer to 60 65 a day to fund a program in today's economic situation still a lot cheaper than 75 and you can turn these beds twice minimum twice in one year versus a prison bed that's going to stay full for the entire year so prison bed costs 27 000 a year these beds would cost significantly less i mean maybe eight thousand dollars a year just freezing math when they go to home confinement you reduce the rate we're stepping down the oras has so much
proven science that that makes sense and works and so in closing kind of what we're looking at the BOP state of Ohio state of Virginia state of Oregon countless countless other states are doing this they're contracting with providers to offer this I think I heard someone say the experts in the room well these are your experts in the room these are the right ones to ask to do this and then you would we need to implement an R&R an assessment that travels with the person we all agree from system to system to system this is the thing we use
this is our gold standard this is how we know how this person transitions so we go from incarceration to structured transition community responsibility handed off to probation and parole and eventually community independence that's all I got who's next I'll just
Erry Williams
Unverified
4:11:42
again thank you for allowing us to be here my name is Carrie Williams and I worked with Arkansas Community Corrections for 28 years and I retired from the state of Arkansas in 2022. So you heard a little bit about the
re-entry programs that was currently created. I was privileged to be part of Act 1190 in 2015 and at that point we were trying to you know project the whole state forward and how do we move re-entry and then it just kind of got smothered. We tried to model the state re-entry programs after city of faith because they do give the individuals real re-entry freedom they come to us they're put on a monitor and then they go to work they can drive a car they can take their kids
to the movies and they are still considered inmates and part of the label that arkansas was still putting in the restrictions and i hate to hear that miss garrett's getting out of that because she is one of the best ones that we had licensed in 2018 was there is a lot of restrictions on the facilities and the individuals just feel like they're going from incarceration to like a work release. They're still technically incarcerated. They can't go to Walmart. You know, they can't, they can't go out with evenings with their families. I'm not sure what monitoring system
the state of Arkansas still uses, but we did transition from the ankle device to a mobile and an app. We also provide hundreds of online courses that are available. We've contracted with some of the state local courts and jurisdictions for post-release and some pre-release to be on the monitor. They can continue to work and be at home. So he mentioned a little bit about an R&R. That was one of the big things that I have always been a proponent of is to have an assessment from day one, whether you want it day one of incarceration or day one of arrest,
and that needs to follow that individual through a re-entry program to their transition out, whether it's directly home whether it's home confinement whether it's to a transitional house and to the community and we have tons of resources and you're going to hear some of the great ones here with Paul and his team and then the other one is the I heard you talk about some legislation to structure these licensed transitional houses with NAR or whatever audit tool you choose to use there definitely needs to be some we closed down several transitional houses while I was with the
state just because they weren't providing what they said they were providing on their application so we might lose some beds and you may say how's that going to save Arkansas but you're going to have more credentialed and you're going to have better beds because some of the ones that we have now actually are doing more damage than good the individuals get an application apply they don't really know where they're going they're going to the first house that accepts them so what are they getting when they get there so that's two of the big things that I see was yes we need an
assessment that's going to follow an individual and we need the licensed reenter and transitional facilities to be a little bit more accountable or accredited so to speak
Speaker 273
4:14:52
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm Paul Chapman. I'm with Restore Hope. We started about 10 years ago. I was the missions pastor at Fellowship Bible Church. We had a wonderful relationship with corrections and foster care. And about 10 years ago, we were having a real problem
with the number of Arkansans that we had in prison. We had finished about a four-year run of double-digit increase in the number of folks that we incarcerated, and the number of children in foster care was about the same growth curve. And so we were dealing with those twin crises. And at Fellowship, we had invested a lot in both child welfare and in prison over a number of years and had many of our members and some staff directly engaged in
partnerships to try to help recidivism. But it became apparent in about 2015 that we were not going to be able to, regardless of how much money or effort we could put at it, that we were not going to be able to grow a program or a series of programs large enough to deal with the issues. So we took a step back, and we started working with the governor's office at that time on an idea called Collective Impact. Could we come up with a model and a set of tools that included technology to provide to communities
so that communities could actually partner together and be really aware of what was going on, both at a community level, across several different factors, and at an individual level that needs access or is engaged in multiple different siloed organizations or agencies. And so it took us several years, and we built the first one of those models in Fort Smith, Arkansas. And now it's in just over 20 counties in Arkansas, and we're trying to work to get it across the state.
And using that collaborative model, these tools provided to communities to be able to help them help their own citizens, in the last 12 months, as of this morning, there were 4,607 Arkansans that were in crisis, multiple areas of crisis, who needed help. And just over 1,100 of them, as of this morning, had moved out of crisis and on to full-time work. We call that kind of crisis to career. That's what these local alliances will organize to do, is to try to provide the services and to realize which services are actually needed.
As Alan said earlier, that's an individual journey depending upon the assessment and the situation that each person is in. But this help is in every one of our communities, or it's close to it, in our smaller communities. We just need to be able to coordinate our actions and then find out through our efforts, so what? What happened to the individual and what's happening in our communities? And so we have a collaborative case management software called HopeHub that provides all of that intelligence.
It's also HIPAA, FERPA, COPA compliant that allows multiple, on average, 10 different agency providers, whether they'd be nonprofit or agency, state or local government. personnel to be able to talk on behalf of one person to try to help them get out of the trouble they're in and move on so with all that as preface I wanted to come here today and suggest to you that one of the things that we found through our data gathering over the years is that district
courts are very very important I think in being able to both find people who are on their way to catching a felony and possible incarceration at the state, but also the number of people that are getting out of prison, returning to the community that have outstanding issues in district court is very, very large. It's the majority that we can find so far. It's above 50%. So district courts are where we're prosecuting a lot of our misdemeanor crimes.
In Arkansas, if you get a speeding ticket and you don't show up and you don't pay, You'll get a failure to appear and a failure to pay. And in about 30 days after getting one of those, then we will suspend your driver's license to issue a warrant for your arrest. The number of people that are living lives that need some engagement are pretty large. That 4,607 people that we've served in the last 12 months, Arkansans,
about 30% of them have an outstanding district court issue, Which means that district court and working with district court judges is a place that we can find people who are on their way to getting in much more severe trouble, harming themselves and possibly their family and maybe some others, and then requiring interventions that are a lot more expensive, like putting their kids into foster care and them inside of one of our facilities.
Both of those acts, making someone a ward of the state, makes it much more complex than when we're trying to, if you're a child, to go on and grow into an adult or when you're coming back into the community, which most folks in our presence do. So we have partnered with the Attorney General a few years ago and a few district court judges to be able to run some programs, which we have data on.
And we'd love to share with you and with any of you that are interested, we can have a meeting and show you the dashboards and answer any of your questions and do any follow-ups. But I will tell you that the coordination of all the different actors that are needed or required to be involved in someone's life who's in multiple areas of crisis is something that does yield good. If we take a child into foster care in Arkansas with the goal of placing that child back with the guardian taken from them, we're only successful 43% of the time.
but as of this morning when the dashboard updated of everyone that had a foster care case that has been closed now and that was had a support team that reunification rate was 73 percent so 43 to 73 percent with another just over 16 percent placed with relative and the fact that i'm able to tell you that today we have statistics outcome statistics on people in Arkansas is is really
something given where we were 10 years ago where we might wait for a quarterly report or an annual report to try to figure out at a large level what what was really going on so that we can tell what's going on is a big deal and if we can actually measure it then we can start to attempt to manage it to try things and see if it's working or not number two is I want I want to get back to the the district court and I want Janet to share with you what she is doing she's overseeing both
the district court program that we call the smart justice program and the 1033 re-entry pilot program which is uh almost a year in action and both of those things have um have displayed one is we need the coordination and number two is district courts we have to be engaged in district court provides a great opportunity to try to divert someone to get them into help some will accept that help and then that's it for them they're on they've got they're clear legally they're helping
address their issues. They're getting employment and we don't need any more interventions as a state. For those that don't, we need to, inside of prison, we need to be able to actually partner together and find out what it what's outstanding and what do those judges want and demand from those individuals. We can do that before they're released. Janet. Good afternoon. Thank you for having me. If it's okay, I'd like
Speaker 296
4:23:15
to start with the work that we are doing in the district courts under the smart justice initiative remind us who you are and who you
represent sure janet camp i'm with restore hope i'm the director of judicial services you should have a handout in your packet that just briefly identifies the various points across both of these initiatives excuse me
Speaker 296
4:23:39
senator clark so when we look at the need for prison bed space we look at the sequential intercept model, which is a national recognized model, and how we can intervene in different points along somebody's involvement in the criminal justice system to make the biggest
impact. And so for both of the initiatives that I'm going to talk about today, we see ourselves on both the front end of that with the district court work and on the back end of that with Governor Sanders 1033 re-entry program. Within the smart justice arena, we are working with a small group of pilot courts around the state that are implementing these services within their court, and it is more simple than maybe I can describe it. We place a case manager within the district court that can help an individual that comes before the court
that has an identified need across any of the 13 social determinants of health to get access or connection to existing resources in their community. So the navigators working in those courts know about the existing resources in their community. Oftentimes, there are resources that may not be available in their exact county, but we can partner with an adjacent county or virtually partner. We do that quite often with mental health counseling in some of the more desert areas of the state. But that navigator works to connect individuals with a provider as a coordinator, works with a provider across all of those social determinants of health that you see listed there on the front page.
It's a very straightforward eligibility criteria for this program, so it's not nearly as cumbersome as some of the other court programs that you may see. We ask that they are an adult, that they voluntarily agree to participate in case management services, and that they have been referred by one of the judicial partners, whether that is the judge or the prosecuting attorney. Across those, I have a couple of statistics that I could point out to you, but I would also echo Paul. We'd love to actually get into the dashboards with you and show more of these in depth.
This funding, as Paul mentioned, comes from Attorney General Griffin. So this has been about a two-year pilot program. We have so far served 536 participants. Of those 536 participants, 449 have actively engaged in case management, meaning they have continued to engage throughout that initial six-month voluntary commitment. so 84% of those have engaged. At intake, their employment rates have been about 39.8%. Current employment rates are right at 60%, and employment retention rates are right around 90%,
so we are able to help individuals get connected with employment, and then you'll see the number at the top of your other handout. That's averaging about $7,300 a year annually for an individual's income increase within their household is how it's calculated. So we consider that on the preventative side of that sequential intercept model. Within a preventative measure I'll shift over to the governor's 1033 re-entry initiative which is on the tail end of the model.
This is in the first year of this pilot program and so far we've served 97 individuals that have come through the work that we are doing. It is a collaborative effort across many state agencies and the University of Arkansas Pulaski Tech. We are using the Hope Hub software to collaborate and communicate about these participants that are going through. These individuals are housed at the Department of Corrections Central Arkansas Community Correction Center, just right here in Little Rock. They initially come into our program. We onboard them, sign all of the required consent so that we can onboard all of the partner agencies.
On average, we have about 16 active agencies that are all engaged with the work of these 97 men that are going through this work. It extends into five cohorts. So within one cohort, there are 20 gentlemen. They are in class and receiving case management services for 12 weeks. And then there's a graduation ceremony that is put on by Pulaski Tech to acknowledge the different credentials that they obtain. They obtain a credential with OSHA certification.
They obtain a credential for a future fit course that is offered through Pulaski Tech and their career readiness certification. But the goal in all of that is all of the state agencies breaking down those silos so that we can work together to address the needs of the participants. So we have partnerships with the Department of Health, the Department of Education, the Department of Finance and Administration, who has been remarkable and they really have been a remarkable partnership to address the outstanding driver's license issues that plague both the smart justice participants and the 1033
participants. I would be remiss to leave out our district court judges that are helping us along the way with those driver's license issues that come into play. We have partnerships with Department of Commerce, Department of Corrections, and Community Corrections obviously. Within that, and so I'm hesitant to give you too much data about this information because it is a relatively new program. But we are seeing remarkable outcomes for those individuals who engage in pre-release planning prior to their release from the Department of Corrections
and the correlation between the offender violation scores that they are receiving three months post-release from the Department. So I will give you a couple of these. There are a couple groups that we are not at that three-month post-release mark. For Cohort 1 and 2, which averaged a release date of February 18, 2026, 92% of those have obtained employment. Cohort 3 and 4, the average release date was May 16, 2026.
Their employment is around the same, 58%. cohort 5 and 6 average release date was July 17th of 2026 and their employment rate is 98%. Across all of these, those that have engaged in pre-release planning and ongoing case management engagement with our primary providers working in the communities that they are paroling out to, we see a substantial decrease in the number of OBG points that they are acquiring. So 75.6%
lower for those who have participated in pre-release assessments amongst those that have not. If you're not familiar with OBG points, I can give you just a rundown, but I would love to come back and have our partners from the Department of Corrections explain that in more detail because there are variables across what points can accumulate based on the severity of a violation but but for anyone that has ever acquired a obg point across these groups
we're looking at 34 of those individuals that have been released the average obg point is three three three percent or three i'm sorry three points those that did not are averaging 12 12 points which is a substantial difference across across those and then if if we actually get down into the the dashboard data for you you would see that those that have acquired obg points are often the result of additional felony offenses so those that are not engaged in pre-release planning and
case management are then going on to commit additional criminal offenses upon release and while they're on parole part of the components for both of these initiatives is we operate service within restore hope called legal resolution and each month we help individuals across all initiatives so through the 100 families initiative that you may be familiar with the smart justice initiative and with the 1033 initiative we are working with the department of finance and administration and their driver services division to assess and review individuals driver's license
and then we go into to work with those individual courts and mitigate outstanding issues just in the month of september our team was able to review 390 driver's license suspensions and of those we were able to help 86 people reinstate their driver's license by meeting the criteria that are identified by driver services we also do a few other things within legal resolution which i can just briefly mention but we also provide assistance with record sealing so in the month
of september we assisted with 11 petitions to seal and then of those on the 1033 re-entry work We were able to help those gentlemen coming out of the Department of Corrections. So 20 gentlemen coming out of the Department of Corrections that still had outstanding warrants and holds 12 of those. We were able to help get the cases resolved one way or another. That may be by virtual appearance and have a disposition. That may be a null process and dismissal of the case. Or it could be the resolution of an outstanding warrant by service.
Speaker 276
4:32:51
Okay. Mr. Johninson. Thank you. Very good. My name is Michael Johninson. Good afternoon, chairman and members of the committee. I am the executive director of Compassion in Action Reentry. We are a faith-based organization, and we do apply the holistic approach, which is complete care, all-inclusive service, and addressing the entire person's issues and needs.
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak with you today about two issues. I come to find that there are really three issues now that affect individuals, families, communities, and public safety across Arkansas. reentry and recidivism and reducing beds in the Arkansas Department of Correction when I was asked to speak about the subject I wanted to make sure I approached it with accurate Arkansas specific information though as I stated
later the addendum was the big picture is reducing bed space in our prison system. I believe we are still on the right track because to accomplish the big picture, reentry and the reduction of recidivism is what will make the big picture attainable. Because this conversation is bigger than statistics, a whole lot of numbers have already been given. I don't want to repeat the same numbers that has already for the sake of time.
But behind every statistic is a person. Behind that person is a family. And it's already been noted that behind those families are our communities. So today I want to talk about what the numbers tell us and what I have seen on the ground through Compassion in Action reentry and why I believe Arkansas needs to continue strengthening and connecting between incarceration, supervision,
treatment and community-based re-entry. Let me begin by making an important distinction. Re-entry and recidivism are related, but they are not the same thing. Re-entry is the process of returning to the community where recidivism does the measuring of those re-entering. Every person, I believe, when we start talking about reducing bed space, I believe every person that has a charge of a violent charge.
Number one, I don't believe that every charge is a violent charge. I'll give you an example. A young man, young woman trying to support their habit goes into the store. they steal something to support that habit, they run away. A simple theft turns because they ran into a robbery charge. Robbery is considered a violent charge. There are other instances that charges does not necessarily mean that they are
violent. But when they appear before the parole board, this is what they see, the violent charge. I'm saying this because there are people that actually have those type of charges that are considered violent. That doesn't make that person violent, I don't believe. I believe that person does just as the ladies before me spoke of what they do when they're trying to support their addiction. Addiction is stronger than most people really take a closer look at.
But now I want to go a step further. We've got to talk about those numbers. Now, what does those numbers tell us? That's what's important. Those numbers should get our attention. And in getting our attention, they should cause us to ask a more important question. What happens between the prison gate and the point where someone either succeeds or comes back to prison?
Because release is not the end of the process. In many ways, it's the beginning. Here's the challenge. Arkansas has a large community supervision population. As of December the 31st, 2024, I've noticed no one mentioned this, so I'll give you these numbers. We have approximately, according to the report of ADC, 70,859 people across the supervision categories,
including parole, probation, specialty courts, suspended imposition of sentence, and other supervisory statutes. That is a tremendous number of people living in our community under some form of correction supervision. And that means reentry is not a small issue. It's a statewide issue. It's an employment issue. It's a housing issue. It's a behavioral health issue. It's a family issue.
It's public safety issue. And it is an economic issue. Arkansas already recognizes the community supervision is supposed to do more than simply monitor people. The ADC says that community supervision services mission includes public safety, restitution, and rehabilitating people into productive members of our community. supervision officers address risk and needs through referrals to counseling and programming,
drug testing, enforcement, and supervision conditions. That is important because it means the state recognizes that accountability and rehabilitation have to work together. Arkansas's own research gives us some insights through the data that is already presented. That same research found that those certain groups, the younger group, 18 to 24, are more likely to reoffend.
At the same time, the analysis found that education attainment and release offense were not statistically associated with recidivism in that particular model. What that tells me is that we cannot look at reentry through only one lens. There is no single reason that every person succeeds, just as there is no single reason that every person fails. People come home with different histories, different risks, different strengths, different families, different educational backgrounds, different employment histories, and behavioral health needs.
That means our response cannot be one size fits all. supervision is important but supervision cannot do everything I want to be clear about something I have a tremendous respect for the men and women who work in corrections and community supervision this is not about blaming probation officers parole officer or correctional facilities in fact the ADC has recognized that community supervision involves case load management treatment
for referrals, programming, and local resource development, but an officer cannot be everything to everybody. A supervision officer cannot be a therapist, cannot be an employer, a housing provider, a mentor, transportation provider, a pastor, a family counselor, or a case manager. The question should not be, what can the government do by itself? The question should be, how can government and the community work together to give people a realistic opportunity to succeed while maintaining accountability and protecting public safety?
Behavioral health deserves a serious place in this conversation. Compassion in Action has been working with men and women through the prison that comes out or not going through the prison system per se, but Compassion in Action has worked with every court from district, circuit, and federal court level.
95% of the people that are in Compassion in Action were court-ordered through one of those courts. And it's because they have seen the results of the people that they court-ordered into Compassion in Action. Now, the ADC already recognizes mental health. In fact, they have given some numbers that says that they have already diagnosed 72% of women with mental health issues, 55% of men incarcerated with mental health issues.
That's a serious issue when you start looking at reducing bed space. There are people that incarceration is not going to ever assist because of their mental health needs and their mental health issues. Yes, we need accountability, but we also need access to the services that make successful accountability possible. This is where compassion and action comes in.
I am not here today to suggest that Compassion in Action can solve all Arkansas reentry problems. There are other like models out there. No single organization can solve all Arkansas reentry problems. I am here to tell you what we are seeing on the ground and to offer Compassion in Action as one example of the type of community partnership that can complement the state's work. To date, of those who complete compassion in action, we have a 96% success rate.
That's meaning only a 4% people have reentered the prison system. That's doing work because of what we do with the holistic approach. the whole person, the mind, the soul, and the body. Because if you have one person and their addiction problem, they still messed up in the head. We have to deal with the whole person in order to deal with the whole issue.
And this is why Compassion in Action has been successful in turning men and women out into the communities where they are working every day. They have a relationship with God. They are actually in church, places that they never even ventured they'd ever be. I had two men that were college grads a few years ago. One was on the dean's list at Shorter College. These are the things that help people realize, as has already been said, they have purpose.
They believe that incarceration was only a chapter of the book. Not the entire book of their life because they have learned that they get to write the next chapter, but they get to write the next chapter by applying the goals that they would like to accomplish in their lives. This is where we walk with them to help them accomplish their goals, not the goals of Compassion in Action other than the principles that we apply. Compassion in Action, as stated, is a faith-based program.
And as the person comes home, we make sure that they have employment. I have job partners that will hire them because, as already been said, people are not just going to quickly hire you over a person who has no record. So I go out and knock on doors and provide them with people that will work, that will work when they're there, that will be there when they're supposed to be there. And they don't have to look for them when they're there because they learn how to go the extra mile.
Don't just blend in like a tree in the forest and do what everybody else is doing. They are taught how to give an honest day's work for honest day's pay. Now, we know that some of these people, they may need education. They may need help developing life skills. They may need mentoring. They may need help rebuilding family relationships. They may need transportation. They may need housing resources. They may need behavioral help and substance use services.
And they may need someone who will walk with them long enough for those pieces to come together. We want people to return to society prepared to live responsibly, work and contribute, and remain connected to their communities. A holistic approach does not mean that the same approach is for everyone. One of the things I believe strongly is that we cannot use, again, one size fits all, even in that area. Because every person has different needs.
One individual may need assistance with employment. Literacy. That's one of the things that need to be back into the prison system. Can't read or write. How are they expected to get a parole if that's on their purpose to be released that they have to get a GED while they're there? That's never going to happen. We have to make it realistic because at some point I did do literacy at the Barbara-Ester unit,
but it was lost funding. I teach two days a week at the Barbara Esther unit, life skills, teach them about another program that we lost, which was Better Dads. These men were eating it up because, as has already been said, if you didn't have a father in your home, how are you going to know the importance of how a father develops that child, how the balance works? And these men were proud to know that they had a big role in their child's life.
Now, so the conversation happening here is not separate from what Arkansas has already identified as important. It is as important in this same conversation we need the community at the table. If we are serious about reducing recidivism, organizations that are actually working with returning citizens need a meaningful place also at the table in order to realistically reduce bed space in our Arkansas prisons. That includes faith-based organizations, non-profits, employers, behavioral
help providers, educators, housing providers, families, and it includes people with lived experience. I do have lived experience. This is something that lets everybody know that That it is all possible when you make a decision to allow God in your life to control your life and allow him to be everything that you say you want to become, but you're not going to be it without.
Even David said, created me a clean heart, because you can't create it in your own self a clean heart. Only God can do that. What I am asking the committee to consider, I would respectfully ask that Arkansas continues to look at reentry as an ongoing rather than a single event. Look at what happens before release, look at the transition from incarceration to supervision, look at what happens during the first month in the community, look at employment, housing, transportation, behavioral health, substance use treatment, mentoring,
and look at the community organizations already doing the work. In closing, members of the committee, I began by saying that these are more than statistics. I want to end with this as well. When we talk about 49.6% three-year recidivism rate, we're talking about thousands of individuals, we're talking about thousands of human beings, we're talking about mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters and neighbors, potential employees, business owners, mentors, parents, productive members of our community.
The goal of re-interest should not simply be to release someone. The goal should be to give that person a realistic opportunity to successfully remain in the community while maintaining accountability and protecting public safety. Compassion in Action is committed to being a part of that effort. We are not asking the state to believe that one program can solve a statewide problem. we are asking for partnership we are asking for collaboration let's not just
talk about re-entry let's build it that's all
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
4:51:28
I have thank you thank y'all for being here the representative toss thank you mr.
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
4:51:34
excuse me thank you mr. chair I just want to make a I'll be brief just a couple of points that one I I heard the district courts mentioned quite a bit, and I think y'all alluded to that. And I guess you're familiar with the bill that we passed during the last session, the postponement of judgment.
I know you're familiar with that. I just want to say something briefly at this point. And I really appreciate all the testimony we've heard today. So many people have sat at that table, and I've heard a lot, and I just heard you say that behind every statistic is a person, behind every person is a family, and then you listed who these individuals that were incarcerated, that it being neighbors and mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, the list goes on.
But I'll tell you one thing, and I guess it bothered me a little bit, that I've not heard any discussion about today at all. And that's the victims. And, you know, as you said, those incarcerated behind every statistic is a person. Well, behind every statistic that has become a victim is also a person. Correct. And behind that person is also a family. And as legislators and as former law enforcement officers and, you know, the courts, we're constantly hearing from victims and victims' families that we've not addressed that.
And I just want to put this out here. We've not addressed the fact that, you know, sometimes their voice is not heard. And I'm not saying I know you are here and you've done a great job today. Every presenter has, and it's really been interesting. But somewhere along the way, the victim's voice, I hadn't heard that anybody for them today myself. And so I guess I just kind of want to speak up for them a little bit
and make sure that we never lose sight that somebody was the victim of a crime. And we always need to remember that, and we hear that from the victims. I know I do, and other legislators do, and the judicial system does as to why is that individual being released from prison after the horrific crime that they committed against a loved one or, you know, whether it be the victim or the victim's family.
So I just thought I'd mention that, and since I hadn't heard anything today, and thank you all for indulging me to listen to what I had to say. Mr. Chairman, thank you. I just want to make that brief
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
4:54:29
comment Thank you Center Simon Thank you,
Representative Keith Brooks
Unverified
4:54:34
mr. Chair and thank you all for being here To me, it's apparent based on the numbers that everybody shared that reentry proper reentry works and we need to make sure that we
And we need to make sure that we have proper reentry that that has been made very clear to me and mr chair i would like to ask vl or if we could get a list of all of the re-entry facilities in the state that are receiving public funding i
Representative Keith Brooks
Unverified
4:55:02
get that for the members of the committee okay thank you very much and um and what the work that y'all do i truly believe it saves lives it doesn't just keep people out of prison it keeps potentially another innocent person from being victimized so thank you all for the work that you do
so i do want to ask you about the electronic monitoring yes sir just a little bit more detail about that so i know the technology that we have available today is vastly different than it was even 10 years ago um you mentioned ankle monitors and now they're just using cell phones or cell phone like devices what is to keep them from just leaving the cell phone at home or the device at home and then going out and wreaking havoc yes sir and we
Erry Williams
Unverified
4:55:46
get that question a lot and when i
started with city of faith i started as a case manager and then transitioned into this as to what we could do to help give back to the courts to help relieve some of the jail overcrowding and city of faith transitioned from the ankle monitor traditional like you heard marybeth say that she had left a scar on her leg to a mobile device it is just like the cell phone that you and i carry around it can be locked down um it is 100 facial recognition always on gps and we have a dashboard um that we could present to anybody to show that we have around the clock supervision so they don't
know as far as leaving it at home they don't know when they're going to get a check-in if they don't respond to that check-in phone won't stop number one if they haven't responded within five minutes of the first alert then it goes to the call center the call center will call them try to make contact then it goes to the next level through a call tree so we haven't had that if they leave their phone they can't turn it off they can't turn it down and they can't turn off their tracking they can't access the internet on it so it's good for both sides whether you've got domestic violence
offenders or you've got sex offenders it can be locked down to where it's just they can call or text their case manager and that's all they can do and yeah we're right now in seven courts that they're using as pre and post release they're putting the individual on the monitor the individual is paying for it and if it's a high risk because even if they set a $250,000 bond and an individual comes up with $25,000 somebody's going to want to know why they're in the community
so one of the conditions they're making in Pope County is they're going to be on this electronic monitor like I said the individual's paying for it and if they're high risk we have a connect which is a bluetooth device that we can also connect to the individual it's a lot smaller it's about the size of a smart watch and they get out of bluetooth range from the mobile then it goes off the call center is alerted and then the next person in the call tree is also alerted um we do have an app for the low risk individuals that they can download for the ones
that live in our we have 120 bed residential facility in little rock that you're all welcome to come visit and those individuals have their own phone and they have an app always on gps if they try to take it off their phone we're notified if they try to turn their location off we're notified i mean from everything and our case managers can monitor everything that they do from the dashboard and from an app a supervisor app that they have on their phone so they can be out in the field or they can be you know on lunch break and they're going to get an alert that
this individual is out of their zones we set restrictions zones just the same way with with every tool that we use we do have the victim notification option so if you do have a victim of a domestic or a sexual offense then they can be as well alerted when that individual gets within their space or gets out of a space that they're not allowed to be at So like a geo-fence,
Speaker 309
4:58:53
kind of like a geo-fence around a certain area. So if they enter that area, then an alert goes off and notifies the call center?
Erry Williams
Unverified
4:59:02
Yes, sir. Or whoever wants to be in the call tree. It could go to 911 if it's a domestic or a sexual offense. It could go straight to 911 so that they can send officers to their location. And anybody that's on, you know, that's supervising has access to the dashboard. Okay.
Representative Keith Brooks
Unverified
4:59:18
so so they get dinged and uh and then they have to it's facial recognition so then they have to prove where they are and if
Speaker 315
4:59:25
it does not recognize them then it will not let them take the
Erry Williams
Unverified
4:59:31
photo okay so we get an alert it'll say no match and the call center calls them contacts them and says
this is a no match you need to retake your photo so if it's dark like they get an alert set 11 o'clock at night because their work history and it doesn't recognize them because they're in a dark room it will keep going off until they retake it to where it identifies them as
Speaker 68
4:59:52
the individual okay and everybody that's under your supervision you have a dashboard that you can see real time at all times
Erry Williams
Unverified
4:59:59
where they are yes sir and we have 88 if i'm not mistaken on home confinement right now across the state of arkansas that are using the mobile device they are still
considered inmates because they haven't been released from their bop time to probation so they once they meet that eligibility date they go live at their home they go to work every day they drive they they go grocery store you know they have to have a pass which they put in on the smartphone and that gives the case manager permission to approve it if it's not re-entry focused like somebody said I think it was Mary Beth got to go to her kids graduation kindergarten graduation with the use of this ankle monitor and we've had several been able to walk their
daughters you know across the homecoming field is homecoming queen with this technology okay better to do that
Speaker 309
5:00:46
with a cell phone than an ankle monitor yeah and everybody
Erry Williams
Unverified
5:00:49
takes selfies so yes sir it's been very successful and then we have the portable alcohol monitoring that is also facial recognition it's always on gps tracking we use it a lot in one of the district courts for duis they're put on this some up to a year some up to six months and it's random as well they get alert they got to stop they they got to open the app and it um it has to identify them they blow
it also records it and sends it to the case manager or the probation officer with the district court okay
Representative Keith Brooks
Unverified
5:01:24
i guess the last question is what's going to prevent them from forgetting to charge their phone is that just like a missed check-in or forgetting to charge
Erry Williams
Unverified
5:01:31
their device we can uh the system can run just about every report you want but you can do like a case manager can pull up a map of everybody on their caseload and anybody in red it's going to tell you that they're either one out of zone or two their battery is low and then the call center will call them and tell them
they need to plug up their phone if it gets
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
5:01:54
below 20 percent all right thank you mr. chair yeah thank you all for being here uh thank you
for your testimony and thank you for what you do we're gonna we have at least
one more that represents reentry facilities Jim Bell is there anybody else that on the agenda that represents reentry I'm sorry
okay I've got Jim Bell and anika Dixon and sir okay I don't okay you're came to speak from the public we don't have you on the agenda so we'll get to you if we can I've got Jim Bell
and anika Dixon if y'all could introduce yourselves I turn your mics on, introduce yourself, and who you represent.
Speaker 321
5:02:57
Thank you. I'm Anika Dixon representing
SheBuild as the founder and executive director. Okay. And I'm
Speaker 323
5:03:04
Jim Bell. I'm on the board of directors at the Wolf Street Foundation, and I own what's called Hidden Creek Reentry Facility. Okay. Who
Speaker 321
5:03:17
I can go first. SheBuild understands that the legislator is looking at the bigger question of how Arkansas can reduce the number of prison beds it needs in the future. We believe one important part of that conversation is what happens after
someone leaves prison. If women return home without stable housing, employment, transportation, life skills, and a support system, the transition becomes much harder. Shebio works in that space, helping women prepare for release, rebuilding their lives, and becoming stable, productive members of their community. We are not saying reentry alone solves the prison bed issue. We're saying that if Arkansas wants fewer people returning to incarceration, successful community reentry has to be a part of the infrastructure.
According to Arkansas Department of Correction, As of September 1st, there were approximately 1,347 women incarcerated. When we go back to the statistics from 2010 to 2024, that's an increase of 42.2%. So how is she billed understanding a part of this conversation? We're understanding that the larger conversation before the House and Senate committee is not simply about reentry.
the larger question is, how can Arkansas reduce the number of prison beds it needs in the future while creating safer communities and better outcomes for individuals returning home? We believe that the question requires looking beyond what happens inside the correctional facility and paying closer attention to what happens before, during, and after a woman returns to the community. SheBuild focuses on just that transition. Our position is if a woman is going to return to Arkansas communities,
we need to build a better job preparing her to succeed once she gets home. Where does SheBuild fit into this? Our work includes re-entry preparation and empowerment, employment and career readiness, financial literacy and money management, housing stability and independent-slash-shared-housing opportunities, transportation support, life skills and decision-making, mentoring and positive support systems, family and personal stability, connection to community resources,
and continued encouragement and accountability after release. Our Let's Restart program is designed to help women begin thinking beyond just getting out of prison or completing their basic sentence. We want them to think, what does my life look like when I get home? And what am I going to do differently this time? Our message to Arkansas policymakers, if Arkansas wants to reduce the number of prison beds it needs over time, we believe the state must invest in the things that may help people stay out of prison after they return home.
This means just practical questions for the women we're working with. Where does she live? How will she get to work? How will she support herself? Does she have an identification card in the documents she needs? Does she have employment skills? Does she understand how to manage a paycheck, a bank account, transportation, and household expenses? Does she have positive people around her? Does she have somewhere safe to go? Who is going to help her when she encounters the first major obstacle after her release?
Those questions may sound simple, but they can determine whether a person successfully transitions back into community or eventually becomes a part of the cycle that brings them back into the criminal system. SheBuild's role is not to replace the state. SheBuild does not suggest that nonprofit organizations can solve Arkansas prison bed issues by themselves. We do believe that this requires a partnership among corrections, courts, policymaker, law enforcement, employers, housing providers, behavioral health, and social service organizations, family, faith, communities, and community-based organizations.
But non-profit can provide something government systems often cannot provide as effectively. The consistent personal community-based relationships that continue after a woman walks out of the prison gate. That relationship matters, and we have seen that with SheBeagle. What we would like policymakers to consider, as Arkansas discusses the future prison bed it needs, We encourage policymakers to also examine the infrastructure necessary to make successful reentry possible.
This includes investments in pre-release preparation, community-based reentry organizations that can help women before and after release, transitional and stable housing for women returning to the community, employment and workforce partnerships willing to provide legitimate opportunities to justice-impacted individuals, transportation solutions particularly for individuals returning to communities where public transportation is limited because we do have to thank the state that we're in life skills and financial literacy programming that prepares
individuals for the practical responsibility of independent living post-release mentoring and the accountability rather than ending support the day the individual leaves the facility measurement of outcomes including employment housing stability and successful completion of re-entry programs and return to incarceration. How does this bigger picture look? SheBuild believes that the conversation should not simply be how many prison beds do we need. We should also ask what would Arkansas have to build in our community so that fewer beds are needed in the future.
That is where organizations like SheBuild have a role. We are willing to be a part of the conversation, not because we believe we have every answer, but because we are working directly with women we are trying to restart their lives we see the challenge up close we also see the potential and we believe arkansas has the opportunity to build a stronger bridge between incarceration and successful community living she bill wants to help build that bridge our goal is simple prepare women to return equip women to rebuild support women to remain stable and to help create
communities where a successful re-entry is possible. I've also had an opportunity to work with, part of our partnership is Girl Scouts. I'm not sure how many of us have thought about the age between 13 and 16. Last year I had an opportunity to meet five of these future leaders who had, they had been angry, they had been fighting. So if they made one more bad choice, they were going to go to the juvenile facility and so part of our partnerships with situations
such as that is looking at answering the question okay how do we stop that before they end up going to McPherson prison or our other female facility so thank you for this opportunity and I open the floor to any questions. Mr. Bell. Yes
Speaker 323
5:10:40
several years ago I want to say about 18 years ago I got involved in the volunteer business at prisons. That's before I became the owner of Hidden Creek or before I got on the board of Wall Street. And what I noticed in the original volunteer work,
the biggest problem that I kept seeing is that people in prison kept paroling out to small town Arkansas to live with their mother. Now we all know the result. The only people that they knew in small town Arkansas was their criminal friends, their alcoholic friends, their addict friends, and a few relatives. So they kept getting the same thing they got before, which is they ended up back in prison. So I was on the board of directors of a place called Quapaw House in Hot Springs. We were
the largest substance abuse facility in the state. And we started getting involved with trying to help people coming out of prison and I realized that some of the biggest things that we could do is try to number one get these people a job number two without transportation they were doomed and I kept seeing all these people today that keep leaving the prison system with no transportation I think it's a hundred dollar check they don't have a driver's license they don't have an ID
they don't have a social security card they don't have a birth certificate now their chances are pretty slim so here we are down at Hidden Creek with a re-entry facility we do all of those things I just mentioned they don't leave there without birth certificate, ID, social security card and an automobile if they leave without an automobile we know they're probably going to fail because they don't have transportation So what happens in the reentry facilities, the way it's done here, is that every month
we are basically saving their paycheck until they get out. So when they get out, and I want to say 30 days before they get out, we start trying to help them find an automobile, and it's sitting out there in the parking lot, so that when they graduate, they can get in their car and drive off. Now, remember, the rules of reentry require the reentry people, the inmates, for 21 days to come to our facility and get acclimated,
and that's driver's license, birth certificates, you name it. Then on the 22nd day, we put them to work. We've had such great success with the employers that finding a job is easy. I keep hearing people say, oh, these poor inmates can't get a job. That's erroneous. We have employers say, please send us more people because, one, they're going to get there every day we take them. We're going to bring them back every day. They're drug tested twice a week. They can't have a cell phone.
They can't drive. So they're dependable employees, many of which get raises before they leave our facility. Now, keep in mind, our recidivism rate the last time it was checked is 23%, which is a little better than half the recidivism rate for the ADC as a whole. I think what I see happening, and I wish we could change, is that there are some policies that, an example,
the ADC requires our people to pay cash for an automobile to leave our facility. And we said, why do that? Let me tell you the answer. Well, because if they get a loan from a bank and they go back to prison, the bank's going to get mad and blame our program. And I said, folks, I was a banker for 40 years. That's not the way it works. A bank makes his decision whether he's going to loan somebody money, and if he loans one of our inmates money to buy a car and it goes back,
they're not going to blame us or the system because we suggest that those same inmates pay about 50 percent down so it does two things it saves some of their money which they need when they move out and it helps them establish credit so we're trying to get them started on what i call a normal lifestyle which involves credit some money in your pocket transportation now while they're in our facility they go to church they go to AA meetings they go to NA meetings I'm going to read you some of the
things that go with what we do we have GED assistance for those who don't have a GED they get a wage certificate they get parenting and budgeting classes those are required anger management classes intensive outpatient drug counseling mental health treatment PTSD trauma, shorter college enrollment for those that are interested. After 21 days, each of them have a job.
Now, unfortunately, all those things are not available in the prison system as we know it. So since this reentry program, when it was designed, it is for people that are 18 months from getting out anyway. So you can look on a computer, and it'll tell you 500 names of people that should get out in 18 months. Now, that does not mean those 500 people are going to leave, but that's where the test should start.
Somebody ought to get on a computer and say, out of these 500 people, which ones would make logical clients for this program? Because two things happen. One, they get out of prison right then and come to a reentry facility. And the rules are that if they stay with us six months, the last 12 months of their sentence goes away. So we save the state $26,000 per inmate. So if somebody were to go on the computer and pick inmates that fit that program for one month,
they could fill up every reentry facility in no time. There are only 207 beds right now in reentry. There ought to be 1,000. They ought to be all over the state. I have friends that say, show me how to do this, and I'll open one in Jonesboro. I'll open one in Fayetteville. 50 beds, 60 bed units. The key is the correction system, or you guys, have got to make it where people that do that get paid for what they do.
As of yesterday, our facility had nine empty beds. That's inexcusable. Shouldn't happen. We only get paid if the beds are filled. So the system has got to work in order for people to do what we do. So the logic, from my standpoint, I mean, I'm looking at it as I'm a real estate investor. I own a building. Now, a real estate investor who owns a building is responsible for getting people to come to him and pay rent.
We can't. All we can do is look at the corrections people and say, please fill the beds and please send us our money every month. Logically, if you want people to do what we do, if we have 60 beds, they ought to send a check at the first of the month for $60,000. That's $1,000 an inmate. It costs $2,200 to keep an inmate in the ADC, $1,000 versus $2,200.
It ought to be everybody's job in the ADC is get these people out of here, get them into reentry, and save the state money. Once that happens, it eliminates, again, one year of this person's sentence if he succeeds for six months, which we make them do. Do some of them fail? You betcha, but not very many. And what happens is the employers talk about this program works, please send us more people.
That's the way this program should work. This should be set up in various places where there has to be a need for employment. If you don't have that, you should not do this program. It's for places like, I'm going to say, Jonesboro, Fort Smith, where there's plenty of employment available, and employers will come after these folks. Number one, there is what's called a federal tax credit. They get $400 a month for six months to hire our people.
That's one of my biggest selling points to employers. And I've had some of them say, well, send me 10 of those guys. I'll get a $24,000 gift. You got it. And most people don't even know that exists. So there's all kinds of angles to this. If the system were just improved a little bit, there are people that should and would be doing this in various towns across the state, and our recidivism rate would do this, and our need for beds would go down. Because remember, whoever does this owns the real estate.
I own the building. The state doesn't have a penny in it. Whereas if you're building a building, wherever it is, you're going to spend about $200,000 a bed to do it. Ours are zero. And there are people that I know that would do this if the system were set up where inmates will come and they will get a check. That's all I got. Representative Toss. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
5:20:50
You said something there, Ms. Tilde. Do you
think these employers are hiring these inmates out of your program because they think they're really the most qualified person for the job or are they doing it for the $100, $400 tax credit? Because you said that was your best selling point as far as getting these inmates out into the workforce, and that was your quote, not mine, when you said that's my best selling point. So help me to understand, are the employers doing it for the credit, or are they doing it for another reason?
Speaker 323
5:21:27
Well, it depends. I have some that don't even get the tax credit. I used that in the beginning because when this first started, we did not know how to go get employers to hire folks. So we used that as the first thing. That was the bait. And when we saw it worked, we continued to use it. But I have employers that,
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
5:21:48
they don't mess with that. They just want the people. So it's a mixture. So some of them actually take the inmates and don't file for the $400 tax credit, as you said?
That's correct. What would you say the percentage of those employers were? I don't know
Speaker 323
5:22:03
that, and I've never questioned that, and therefore I'd be guessing. I don't know. I understand. well for instance an example is my church fellowship who started this in the first place they're hiring four of our employees we're a church they don't have any tax write-off they're hiring the people because they know they're going to be there they've interviewed them they decide who they want and they're hiring them no tax credit involved okay i'm glad you
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
5:22:30
explained that because that concerned me a little bit because i could kind of picture uh two individuals applying for that same job and one of them was coming out of the correctional facilities and the other one had you know abided by society's rules and not ever done anything wrong and then the employer because they were getting a four hundred dollar tax credit they chose the inmate or the person had been in the correctional facility and the person had done everything that they were supposed to do in life obeying their parents and staying out of trouble they got left behind so i just wanted to make sure we wasn't creating unlevel playing field
and that's why i asked the question how many of them are actually taking them because they feel like the qualified person for the job are they doing it for the tax break and you answered the question thank you representative
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
5:23:22
baby thank you mr chair uh jim always a pleasure to to see you and to hear about the work that you're doing there. My question is, how's it working now? How are your beds? Are you at capacity? Are things working better than they were?
I know that there's always room for improvement, but just the current status on your operations there. Well, they did for
Speaker 323
5:23:44
a while after you and some folks came out there. They filled the beds. But as of yesterday, we had nine empty beds.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
5:23:52
Nine? Nine. And what's your total capacity? 60 is the total,
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
5:23:58
yesterday. You've got 51 in there now. So we've got nine beds because I know someone at DOC is listening to this. So we'll see if we can get those nine filled.
But I do appreciate what you do. I see the value in that program. So I appreciate that. While I was out of the room, I heard some of the conversation. I think it may have been Senator Simon that had requested any of the funding for these different groups that have spoken today. So I'm going to request to the chair that, again, putting all this work back on staff, but that each of these folks that have testified today,
that if they receive any state funding, the total amount of that funding and from what program and what agency administers those funds that go to these groups. I would like that for the next meeting as well. And then just one question for Ms. Dixon. The program that you presented to us, how many folks do you have in that program, and how is your agency funded or your group funded?
Speaker 321
5:25:11
So participants, we average about 27 per month. initially it was average about 10 per month and so we are grant based um along with financial contributions from the community are those
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
5:25:25
folks that are justice involved or uh and i don't use that word that often but i figured that was the vernacular for the room um are those justice involved folks or are those folks that you're you're giving um job training and those type of
skill sets too are these mostly folks that have been involved with um with incarceration
Speaker 321
5:25:47
yes they are just as impacted women that are coming from McPherson prison along with Pulaski County because our organization is within Pulaski and Saline County okay thank you very much thank you
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
5:25:58
thank y'all both for being here thank you
Speaker 323
5:26:01
from a math standpoint something I want to make clear that I probably didn't explain right now we get about eight hundred dollars a month per inmate and for the last several years we said please inflation is what it is that's why it started 14 years ago
it hadn't changed and we said give us a couple hundred bucks a month just to cover gas increases nobody's done a thing it's just sat there still 800 a month so if anybody can help on that that again is a necessity to make these programs work it has to be where you can at least make things profitable or people go I'm not going to do this and considering the amount of money saved compared to what it costs to be in the ADC this ought to be simple a simple mathematical
conclusion $1,000 versus $2,200. Representative McCullough. Thank you Mr. Chair. Thank
Representative Tippi McCullough
Unverified
5:26:58
you both for being here today. Jim you mentioned something about mental health resources and I'm not sure we talked much about this today, but do you receive anyone that already has some type of mental health treatment plan that gets out and comes to you guys? And if they do, do you allow in your facility for them to take, if there's medication involved, do you allow that? Or do you know how that works in
Speaker 323
5:27:23
any of the other facilities? I can't answer that one. I know that people do come to the facility that have medication yes and we have uh counselors there for mental health okay and
Speaker 346
5:27:39
they're allowed to take their medication okay all right thank you
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
5:27:47
center ross thank you i had already hit my button mr bell uh touched on one thing i was going to point out
In my 18 years down here as a business person, I've assured myself I don't want to ever be in business with the government. And it's because what Mr. Bell just pointed out, you can have a large investment on the best program in the world and politics change. And you said it, 14 years, they have not had an increase. and look at what's happened just recently with inflation.
Program after program after program. Now, the programs don't work. I'm for getting rid of them or changing them. But I worked on assisted living, trying to help them. That was a priority of an administration back years ago. It's failed by the wayside, and they're struggling. And then we have youth services that did some critical things for youth in trouble, and they got funding, didn't get increased and cut and all. So what I'm saying this far is this legislature
and the people that are watching this live stream and the ones that go back and watch it after that, if we're not serious about funding a program, you're just putting a patch on a bad tire and it's not going to hold. You've got to step up and say we're going to change this And we've got to make the Department of Corrections work with it where the program will work. Sometimes I'm not – I try to be supportive of the Department of Corrections,
but sometimes I don't know if they want to help. They're struggling to do every day. But these programs have to be funded and then have to have the outcomes to keep them going. It's going to take money, and it's going to take long-term commitment, And we can only do that about two years at a time, our four-year executive branch commitment. And then sometimes it changes. And businesses can't change their models like that if it's not a short payout. Am I right, Mr. Boe? Mm-hmm. That is correct.
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
5:30:03
Thank you. Thank you. I will concur with Senator Rice. I have always
felt like much of what we do ought to be indexed to inflation. I guess if it were indexed to inflation, every year we would be trying to figure out how we're going to pay for what we'd already decided to do and not be able to come up with fun new programs. But
I appreciate you giving me something to sink my teeth into.
You said we could have, you think, up to 1,000 reentry beds, and we've got a little
Speaker 323
5:30:46
over 200? Keep in mind, every time you have a reentry bed, that eliminates the need for two ADC beds. You know why? Why? Five months, five months, two inmates, with two months left over. So you have an inmate that comes in for five months. He graduates. You put another one in. So you're taking two inmates per bed per year with two months left over.
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
5:31:13
And there's that many that would be eligible. In my opinion, there's thousands. Because keep in mind you're nine short right now. So is that because we don't have people eligible?
I'm going to try to stay out of that lane. That's impossible. No, no,
no, no, no, no. Think about it. You know a lot more than I do about what the eligibility is for being
released into a reentry system. How many people do we have approximately eligible to be released into a reentry facility?
Speaker 332
5:31:47
There's no statistic that I've seen that would tell me that. But what
Speaker 323
5:31:52
I do know, typically in order to leave the system and go to reentry, they want them to be a level one or a class one inmate. Makes sense. I know that in one prison that I know of that happens to have some AA meetings, there are several ones sitting there
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
5:32:17
that fit. So there are numbers, more than nine, on the computer, that should be eligible.
But obviously you think there's 1,000 eligible if you think we could have 800 more beds. Sure.
Speaker 323
5:32:31
Well, every month, about 500 people parole out of the system, maybe 600. And as has
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
5:32:38
been pointed out earlier, they have a
much better outcome if they go through a reentry than if they
go straight out. So if we've only got 200 beds, then we can't possibly be handling the 500 or 600 per month that are leaving anyway.
Rod, if we got ahead of things and had them, because, you know, we've heard a lot about the great things that people are doing, but the question was,
how do we reduce beds? And so you're telling me that we've got 500 to 600 people paroling out of the system. Yes, sir. And so if the reentry program is five months, five months, that is 3,000 people over a five-month period, because it would take five months for them to go through the program.
So we don't have just 1,000 available. We've got 3,000. 3,000 are leaving the system in five months. If we go with 600 times five months, we've got 3,000 leaving the system that would do better in a reentry program, would be cheaper had they been in a reentry program. You're entirely correct. They would do better. They would be cheaper, and we've got 200 bids. Right. And I'm sounding
critical, and I'm not trying to be critical.
I'm just saying, you know, a lot above going off and saying, duh, this would seem to make lots of sense. And, now, I was confused earlier when the gentleman
said that their cost was $65 to $75, where I know you've been getting $27, which you say is not enough, but let's say it was 40-45 versus 80, that's a tremendous savings at the same time.
Even if we were giving you
50% more, we'd still be saving about 50%. Oh, of course. Right? Yes. So reentry facilities make lots of sense that we should be doing a
lot more of it. And you think that the potential is out there? Well, obviously, back in 2000. About the
Speaker 330
5:34:54
potential, I've been talking about prisoners. Now I'm talking
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
5:34:57
about the potential of people to actually do it and do a good job. You mean these?
Speaker 323
5:35:05
People like you. Yes, there are people like me that from a real estate investment standpoint would do this. You know, back years ago, he's gone, Jeremy Hutchinson had what's called Act 1190. The number one item on Act 1190 was that we need 4,000 re-entry beds. It never happened. That was 4,000. That was back in 2014, and there was a panel that worked on that for months,
and they had a list of 15 things. Number one, 4,000 re-entry beds. And they started with 500, and it shrunk to 200 because they won't fill the beds, and they won't pay any extra money. So people said, I give up.
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
5:35:51
well maybe we can help that miss uh dixon you turned your light on so you had comment on
Speaker 321
5:35:57
that because and then we're going to senator tucker okay the female re-entry there are more beds
Speaker 325
5:36:01
needed there are women that are sitting in prison because there are not enough beds good to know
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
5:36:15
is directly with what you were just discussing with Mr. Bell I can't see so lean up to my mic but I've had that conversation with the Department of Corrections I know Mr. Bell has numerous times about how many people are eligible for these re-entry facilities and the person at the department who answers that question will tell explain to you why there are not eligible inmates for these re-entry facilities in his defense he's
not the one deciding those criteria other people are maybe it's the legislature maybe it's the board of corrections maybe it's somebody else but it's it's not him but i'll give you an example the 309 program which you may be familiar with if someone's in the 309 program they're not eligible for a re-entry facility for those of y'all who aren't familiar the 309 program is when you're essentially performing manual labor at a county jail so someone at some point in time made a decision that it's more beneficial to an inmate who's going to be released from prison and back
into society to do manual labor at a county jail rather than go through substance abuse, mental health treatment, and job training at a reentry program. I don't think that's the smart, I don't think that's the right policy decision personally. Now, I'm sure our sheriffs like having those folks do that work at their facilities, but you know, there's, there's other issues there and that I'm just, I'm just using that as one example the overarching point is i think it's going to be our job mr chair as a legislative body
to work with the department and the board of corrections to change those criteria to make sure that we are getting folks into these re-entry facilities before they're reintroduced into society because whether it's 3 500 a year or 6 000 a year that we are releasing from prison they're getting out right they're getting out so you know some folks aren't eligible for a facility based on the type of crime they committed. Now tell me how much sense that makes. They're getting out. One way or another, they're getting out. So do we want them to be
prepared when they get back out or do we want them to walk out stone cold unprepared? I think these are some of the important conversations that as a legislative body we need to be having because if you're getting out, you should have a transition period where you're equipped to have a chance to succeed once you are released. That's my opinion. Would you all
Speaker 323
5:38:38
agree? Yes, 100%. One of the comments that I've had, and I understand this, the people in corrections will say the last thing we want to do is send somebody
to you that tries to escape. The system fails. It could fail. I understand that. So I can picture looking at a computer and trying to decide from a computer who's eligible and who isn't. Well, I can't do that. I mean, I've done it with them, so I mean, I can do it, but that's a subjective thing. You can say, this guy thinks good, but this one's not, and we have different reasons, because I've done it with them. So you've got to either narrow the criteria that says we're being too selective, or eventually somebody is probably going to say,
i'm getting out of here but well
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
5:39:29
i understand that but like i said no one that we're releasing 600 a
month right uh the fact that they may escape a month early
that would not be my my biggest concern somebody's going to be there a long time but again i don't want to make a lot of that but but i am making a lot of that uh because Because the people are coming back out one way or the other, and we'd like to keep them out once they get out for their good, for the state's good,
for their family's good, and for their community's good.
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
5:40:06
Mr. Chair, if I may briefly, I think it's preferable as a state for us
to have multiple options. And I've invited a gentleman to testify at one of these future meetings who administers a residential reentry facility in the state of Alabama where they've had great success. And so maybe there are some folks who are flight risk. Well, I think it should be a minority. I think the majority should be in facilities like Hidden Creek. But we could have a state-owned residential facility where we can account for flight risk folks
and make sure they're still having the same opportunities as substance abuse, mental health, job training, and those sorts of things so that they still have a chance at success when they get out. And I think that's another important conversation
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
5:40:51
for us to have. Thank you. represent debating thank you mr. chair i i just kind of want to address one one area i do think that we're talking about that population that would qualify and those are within 18 months of of uh of their of terming out i i would say that i think department of corrections they're doing a
better job of making certain that these beds are filled compared to the way uh they were previously looking at this i think these guys have stepped up to the plate we we've asked uh every time that they see me they tell me how many folks they have in your facility um and tell me why there there are vacancies uh so i think they're looking harder at that but also i also think part of that recidivism rate um that that hidden creek has had is probably also a little bit of credit
attributable to doc with the folks they send there they're sending you they're sending folks out that they know or they have good faith will be successful in the program so again it's a team process and i think we have buy-in from corrections i i think they're actively looking at um at filling those beds but i agree with senator tucker 206 or 207 beds in the state it started off as a
temporary program it's still a temporary program is my understanding it needs to be permanent needs some expansion and i think the restrictions that we placed on them of who would be eligible for these facilities in this program may be a little onerous so we probably need to look at that and give them a little more flexibility um and in the end you know again i've said my my concern is not so much about saving money but it's providing for capacity for the folks that
need to be in the system and doing that the most efficient way and i think uh the re-entry program is a very efficient way and something that that we could work with but i do want to give a shout out to corrections that they're doing so much better and they're actively looking to see how they can you know their their pool of of qualifying inmates that they can get those into the program and i think they see the value in that um so a shout out there for what they are
doing but i think senator tucker's correct we need to expand those programs and and reduce some of the um some of the restrictions that we have on folks that could go into that program well again from
Speaker 323
5:43:31
the standpoint we don't want people escaping either we appreciate the idea of we're trying to help you not get those people i just think broadening the the scope is the key and again i can't tell you how to do it but it should be pretty simple there's a computer that
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
5:43:48
it these are the folks that are going to get out in 18 months
that's right and then then start looking and and a lot of times if you want to find a way to exclude someone that's easy I mean it's easy you can find a reason disciplinary or something in there to exclude them but I think there's more willingness and an openness to try to place people in this program because it benefits both the the inmate and the system so and I appreciate what you do there at Hidden Creek Representative Beatty
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
5:44:21
I don't didn't mean for any of my comments to be
critical of corrections or anyone, because I don't know how much, as Senator Tucker pointed out, as a former quorum court member and being familiar with Act 309, prisoners, had no idea until he testified that they were not eligible for reentry. So I don't know how much of this is our fault, how much of this we've put rules in place, but laws in
place that they can't get around, And that's why we're spending the long
hours is to find out what needs to be changed.
And I also appreciate you pointing out, and I don't know
how much the reentry folks are meeting together to talk about things like best practices. That's what in hardware and lumber flooring we call best practices. Things that all, any hardware dealer, any lumber dealer, any flooring dealer would make sense regardless of the rural, urban, small, large. Because one of the things that you have brought out, some others brought out some great things earlier, but it's transportation.
When I think of Arkansans, I think of rural. I don't think of Little Rock. I don't think of northwest Arkansas. I think of DeWitt, where my family's from, or DeWitt if you're from there, and Malvern and Pratsville. And I
ran into a 16-year-old, and I never thought about it because I lived next door to my family's business. I got up and walked to work. But he caught me one time because I was a state senator.
I was at some function and wanted to know if I could help him get a job. And he was 30 miles from a job,
and he couldn't drive. And if he could drive, he didn't have anything to drive. And it caused me to think even more, you
know, if you're in rural Arkansas. And so we have – some of us here have helped deal with helping inmates get barriers out of the way when they come out who have all kinds of fines and other things that they can't get a license.
But they could – we've helped them with the license, but we haven't necessarily helped with
the car. And so you've brought out something really good there and something you've come up with that I don't know everybody else is doing or not. but it would certainly, like I said, if you're going to be functioning in society and you're going to make it to a job, because that's one I would also help representative Tosh out with we're not keeping anybody else from getting a job because I'm telling you right now we're all hiring warm bodies.
So we're not in an economy where you're keeping somebody else from a job. We need people to work. And $400 tax credit or no $400 tax credit, you convince me somebody will show up every day. And as you had told me before, be there for four or five months, then if they're just going to be there for 30 days, that's a different thing. But if they're going to show
up for a while and maybe stay after they get out, after they're released, I'm interested.
If they can do anything I've got to do,
I'm interested. And I think I speak for all employers. Ms. Dixon, we'll end
Speaker 321
5:47:41
with you. Yes, regarding the transportation, even in Little Rock or Pulaski County, if you're doing a port job where it's going to be higher pay, the public transportation doesn't go out that way. My mail, public transportation doesn't go out that way where the jobs are paying more.
Speaker 325
5:47:59
So we think about the larger area having more accessibility,
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
5:48:04
it's not always the case yeah so uh mr johnson earlier mentioned the three things we can add to the three things transportation mind soul body but but transportation uh so thank you all for being here uh thank you for test fine thank you for what you do
and we are going to go to Dr. Denise Riffkes and Marlene Dahl-Henson okay see hand they tell me
handout C1 and C2 correspond to their presentation if you make sure your mics are
on and introduce yourselves for the record and who you
Speaker 382
5:49:12
go good afternoon I'm dr. Denise Ricky's thank you for taking the time to listen to us today I am a native of Arkansas and of
the Chickamauga Nation. I am a chemist, a pharmacist, and a pharmaceutical scientist. I worked at UAMS. I worked on the PNT committee. I also worked at Arkansas Children's Hospital, which is relative to some of the things I'm going to say. We're here today fighting for the children and senior citizens because when the middle generation is removed from the family, the family is destroyed. As a lifelong problem solver, I believe that working together, we have an
incredible opportunity to create a better world. Before I fully understood our native heritage, Governor Hutchinson asked that those of us who moved away from Arkansas to work, please come back and help us. And I answered that call 10 years ago. My purpose today is to explain what everyone may already know, but may not understand why. Once we know the why, then we understand what to do. First, we must recognize the incredible heritage of the
people who were always here and those who married them, primarily including the English, Scots, Irish Welsh German and African we are special people they forged a path forward that ultimately led to this great United States of America in fact their belief in manifest destiny brought the world forward but they also believe that if something bad happened to you it was your own fault and that's a cultural belief that is still wildly held it wasn't nice
It wasn't easy, but they forged us as incredible innovators. That said, you can imagine that there was some fallout. The VA has now identified the damage. Not only was it physical trauma, witness of atrocity, drugs and alcohol, infectious disease, which produces antibodies against the brain.
Each of these is identified at the VA as causing a head injury. It damages this little part of your brain right here at the base of your skull. I found these listed in the Internet while I was searching for our ancestors, and I found that some of them were also lead miners. That means that the following can be added to the list of head injuries. heavy metals, and you can add malnutrition
because if you do not have all the nutrients you need, you cannot make epinephrine. You cannot tell by looking at a person that they may have experienced a head injury and that they treated themselves with drugs and alcohol because they needed to take care of their physical problem. There is one very important root cause to consider. Many of those convicted as criminals in our prisons have, in fact, experienced head injuries,
whether caused by falling off a bicycle, playing football, being assaulted, or other unfortunate circumstances, to mention a few. As a process expert, I can professionally state the obvious. The current reform process does not work. As a process expert, I can inform you that the number one reason for process failure is that the process does not account for the characteristics of the inputs.
In this case, a key factor in the input is all the unidentified medical conditions of the so-called criminals. I'm not saying they all have it, but a lot of them do. Ladies and gentlemen, all one must simply do is search the Internet, and many of these problems are heritable. Here are just a few examples. Fetal alcohol syndrome, methamphetamine addiction from the 1960s meth epidemic.
Their parents did the meth, and they were born during that period. Failed anatomical development of the jaw around to the back of the head affecting the brain stem and cerebellum. Lack of metabolic enzymes by certain bloodlines, gender, and ages to get rid of certain drugs, and so their level goes sky high for longer. antigen-antibody reactions against the brain, both from infectious disease and hemolysis caused by RH and other inherited antigens.
You've already been shown in two years ago that 70% of those in foster care have fetal alcohol syndrome and that 50% of the recidivism is due to fetal alcohol syndrome. it's easy to see where the other 50% might originate. What is happening with this process is that the police, prisons, and social workers are expected in part to solve a medical problem that has not been diagnosed.
While there may be a belief that there is no answer to this medical problem, I can safely say that there is a path forward for some of these people, and that Arkansas absolutely has the talent to lead the world in its resolution. In our neuromuscular system, organs and decisions, in our neuromuscular decision, our autonomic organs and our decisions are all controlled by the same part of the brain.
We all know that sight, hearing, walking, speaking, and heart problems can come and go and then one day they just go and never come back. Why would we believe that the decision-making part of the brain is any different? I'd like to recognize and noting that the decision part of the brain
also is the one that steals and runs away. I'd like to recognize our research colleagues at UAMS and the VA for their expertise and remind everyone that each community has an accessible professional with knowledge of drug metabolism. You can always ask your pharmacist. I'd like to thank my incredible teachers and mentors, many of who are already gone, but who actually delivered you this message through me.
Together, we can take all the pieces that we already have and configure them into an unbelievably innovative path forward that includes everyone already involved. If we only accept that the ancestors were wrong about one thing, everything is not always your own fault. And I will leave a quote from my best mentor. Don't let your judgment stand in your way.
Speaker 389
5:57:16
Thank you. Ms. Henson? I'm Marlene Dial-Henson. I'm a very overly educated redneck that grew up three miles on a cattle farm from the football stadium. I've been gone for 45 years, so my hands are not directly engaged in all the acts that Arkansas has changed over the years. I'd like to say I'm a citizen, but I'm a registered lobbyist. You can find me in the Ethics Department with all of my ethics things up to date. But I'm coming to you more as a consultant of governmental affairs.
I believe that the state can only fix a state problem. And there's very clear defined rules about separation of church and state. And I don't want to see this state get sued and lose one penny. It doesn't have to lose. So my first recommendation would be that we go back to the understanding of what we can do as a state and what we can't now working in the bureaucratic system for the last 20 years i was the first grade school teacher for a long time before i went back to school
so i recognize layers that have to be in place in order for government to succeed and i have come up with a recommendation for a recidivism board this board would be sanctioned by the state, and there would be real skin in the game from all the people sitting on the board that would demand accountability for their success, such as probation and parole. I'm not picking on those guys. It's a horrible job, and as a vocational expert recognized in seven states, I can tell you
it's not one people are lining up to Tate. You know that. With that also said, though, it's an honorable job. And those guys don't get enough credit. But there does need to be some accountability directly attached to their job performance on a quarterly basis for them to be held accountable for the future success with the lack of recidivism. So I have created the people that I think would fit on this board. I'll start with just discussing with you the very broad picture of what causes
recidivism. 73 percent of all crimes in Arkansas that are directly attributed to recidivism come from property crimes. The other part is 41.3 percent of homicide. Those people are not going anywhere. You can't, you can't avoid recidivism, you can avoid recidivism with that particular entity because they're not going to get out. Number two, unemployment is obviously the first factor as a vocational expert I can tell you if you don't have a job you don't have dignity
you don't have anything to work towards to try to become a better person then from there homelessness if you get out you don't have resources and you're homeless guess what three hots and a cot still work so people are going to go back to that mindset I will also go to the concept of the fact that we as citizens first of all you guys don't get paid enough i can tell you my patience today has been rather long but i take phone calls because
i still work unfortunately um the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results so while considering the fact that we need to revisit how we avoid recidivism how we stop crime to begin with i think that's already working in our favor with the crime rate down but now how do we avoid recidivism and the first problem this is my observation I'll be glad to give you a personal example but you've heard so much today I don't want to go there the disconnect from family while they're in prison it's hard if you want to go see
your child in prison you have to go through a background check if you want to speak to your child in prison you have to get online and fill out a background check now you can write letters as long as you got the right address but I will remind you that the Arkansas Department of Commerce excuse me Department of Corrections has changed their address three times in the last four months so if you're the average parent out there just trying to stay in communication with your child via letter then you're you're not going to be able to do that because there's no way for the
inmate to be able to send the information back to the family that their address has changed we have that big of a disconnect between the inmate and the Department of Corrections the other part I would recommend is i noticed and i watched i did my little bit of due diligence from the last meeting you had lots of prosecutors sheriffs some judges people just want more bets more money because those people run for office based off of those statistics they're just trying to do their job
and so they want to cut deals they want to get them convicted they want to put them in prison because that's their instant solution so in my idea of this recidivism board I want to see a judge that thinks we need more beds put on that recidivism board I want to see a BOP person on that board because they all have real skin in the game I want to see an Arkansas DOC person there you can forgive me later Mr. Chairman but I'd like to see you sit there because it's a tough job
and the only way for us to fix this is to address it and own what we don't do right and then sit out to make it right. I'd like to see two family members from current inmates included in this board because you're going to get direct relative information right there. I'd like to see one property insurance commissioner. We heard from a really smart insurance agent earlier. She totally understands that with property crimes comes higher insurance rates whether it's car auto home
whatever so she gets it I'd also like to see us include an at-large legislative member now I know you guys just don't have enough to do I get it but in this case we've got to hear from more people of the citizens that vote and then the state has
Speaker 90
6:03:35
to fix the state problem with that said I'm done questions
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
6:03:48
from the committee not seen any i appreciate y'all being here oh oh somebody senator tucker
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
6:03:52
i just i just want to say y'all have been here all
day and you have exhibited quite a bit of patience and uh we are grateful for that and we appreciate your
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
6:04:06
testimony very much thank you thank you sir the yes I appreciate you know everybody that's on the end of the agenda I did not purposefully I did pull a couple people out of order I did not put people in here in any order other than the way they signed up so if you're
at the end it's because you were one of the last ones to let us know that you that you wanted to be here it's not because I purposely put you there I i
don't think you did don't worry it's not too but uh thank you
for being here uh thank you for uh what you had to say uh it was uh very well put uh we're going to go to uh sarah moore and colleen nazeen which i think
i can pronounce because i heard it last month
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
6:05:31
and don't be dismayed at the few people sitting here there are lots of people watching and it's being recorded. So trust me, you will be heard. Handouts C4 and C6 are related to
these witnesses. Would you please, from one end or the other, start and introduce yourselves and who you represent. My name is Colleen.
Speaker 400
6:06:17
Turn your mic on, please. It'll turn green. There you go. My name is Kaleem Nazim, co-director of
Speaker 402
6:06:26
the Acarcerate. My name is Taritha Lowe, a sister of an incarcerated person.
Speaker 405
6:06:33
Okay. Sarah Moore, co-founder and executive director of the Arkansas Justice Reform Coalition.
Speaker 407
6:06:41
Melissa Dick Supreme, better known as King Supreme. I have, I'm the founder of the Roots Foundation, and I'm the president of My Brother's
Speaker 403
6:06:53
Keeper. Okay, and who's going to start? Okay, I guess I'll start. Once again, my name is Kaleem Nazim, and you all should have a printout of some information that we provided.
So I won't just go through that information. I just kind of speak from the heart on what I want to share. What were I asking for or, you know, being considered for us to bring to attention, you know, elderly parole or individuals who have served a significant amount of time because we think that this would be a perfect way to reduce some of the prison population to open up some of the beds.
When we look at overcrowding, staffing, and the high recidivism within the prison system, I remember when I first came to prison, it was like one staff member to 100 incarcerated individuals. And this caused, this was an overcrowding problem, but it also was a staffing issue, which, and I think the three combined kind of lead to recidivism when you just think about the harshness of the conditions of prisons and things of that nature.
However, when you look at the individuals that had the long-term time in the system, to me, they were mentors. I remember when I first came to prison, having been there for about a year, I remember talking to several individuals about kind of asking them how much time had they done. And I remember one guy told me 20 years, and I thought this was a long time.
But after years of me being incarcerated, I became that old guy. And the younger guys come in and ask me how long I had been. And I was able to say I've been here 20 years, and I got out after serving 28 years and 11 months of incarceration. The reason I kind of brung up that story is because I came in prison in 1990, and I didn't get out into 2018.
And when I first came to prison, there was nine prisons in Arkansas. And when I left, there was 20 prisons in Arkansas, six residential centers in Arkansas, and two federal prisons in Arkansas. So I make the point that we can't basically, you know, incarcerate ourself out of the problem because the problem just by locking people up isn't going to solve the problem. However, if we look at some of the people that were mentors to me and myself
being a mentor to others, and we start, you know, targeting some of these people who have a low level of recidivism, When we think about people who are in the category that I classify as being elder, they have a low recidivism rate. They have a low dictionary history in the prison system, and they basically have aged out of criminality. So these are some of the things I would like to share with you
as far as in Arkansas prisons now hold more than 2,000 people who are 60 years or older and holds 3,000 people who are 55 years and older. So I think if we start looking at these individuals who have a low recidivism rate and start releasing them, we can alleviate some of the overcrowding within our prison system. When we look at some of the apparatus that we already have in place,
like medical parole, home detention release, and medical executive clemency. We are receiving a failing grade as a state with all three of these mechanisms because it really, they are there, but they are not being properly utilized. So I would like to say this here in closing. I would like to say that we are basically recycling our failures,
but we're not embracing our successes. In 2012, and what I classify as a success here in Arkansas, the legislative body in 2017 passed legislation, Act 539, which allowed people like me to come home after serving long-term sentences. And it was a juvenile bill. In 2012, the United States Supreme Court said it was unconstitutional to give a juvenile a mandatory life without parole sentence.
I fell up under that category after serving 28 years and 11 months of incarceration. I was allowed to come home. It didn't take me 28 years and 11 months to realize that I want to be free, that I had the propensity to come out in the world and be a productive citizen. Since I've been home, these are some of the things that I've did. I have, I work as of now, I work for Decarcerate as the co-director.
I'm a part of a national organization called the Campaign for the Fair Sentences of Youth. I went to college when I got out. I went to 8th State and graduated with an associate's degree in energy control, and I just do a lot of different work in my community. Now, sometimes when we talk about elderly parole, when we talk about apparatuses to relieve the pressure off our prison system,
we try to cherry pick who should be eligible and who should not be eligible. Well, I would just like to say this here. If we were cherry-picking, like we don't want people who have committed serious offenses, then I would be in that category and I wouldn't be here today. However, you know, since I wasn't a cherry-picked to get out of prison, then, you know what I'm saying, I was allowed to come out, be a productive citizen, be someone that has voted every voting cycle.
So one of the people that I said was my mentors was this woman's here brother, and I would like for her to introduce him
Speaker 409
6:13:57
And thank you for allowing me to share also. Hi, as I mentioned, my name is Teresa Lowe, and I am the sister of Charles Henry Houston that's been incarcerated for 50 years. have a clean record. This last time he made the clemency board, all five voted
unanimously and naturally it hurt him so and it hurt us because he was denied. And so he went in prison when he was 26. He's 74 now. He's three years younger than me and so you know I would go down and visit him and he's he's had a change of heart and I don't condone what he's done and don't take it for granted you know that other the victims and
things and you know that was involved I don't take that for granted and I pray that you know they uh have a heart you know to forgive you know and and so anyway i you know been uh he will have a place to stay he will stay with my husband and i and we do have an extra car i heard so much about transportation and things of that nature and he is in good health that he will be able
to work if it's nothing but a janitorial deal because he wants to work, and so by him being with us, we will be able to take him to the, well, he will be able to drive once, you know, we get all the other things that he needs to these different places, and he's a changed man, and I just would love for him to have another chance. My mother died in 2008, and her heart's desire was to see her son released from prison.
I had a brother that died at Commons last year, and they both knew, you know, they both could see each other, talk with each other. So now he's there, you know, alone. And like I say, I'm not condoning anything, but I, you know, I believe 50 years is a long time, especially when no one was killed or, you know, and everything. Everybody deserves another chance. There's no one here that has not done things.
And I'm not trying to, you know, put a guilt trip on anybody. i just would love to see my brother free one more time and and to live he's changed he's changed and he's received jesus in his life and my husband and i we will make sure you know helping encourage continue to encourage him to live the right kind of life and it would be a lot it would be a blessing as well for he has a daughter that was two months old when he went to prison and so now she's 50
and so it'll be a blessing you got grandchildren great-grandchildren and I just thank you all for your time. Miss Moore.
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
6:17:25
I hate to follow that I appreciate you sharing that's that's a touching in an awful situation. I have some slides that I want to present to you today. I'm with Arkansas Justice Reform Coalition, and I think kind of like some of the introductions that happened earlier,
I think it's important to also level set. I know we talked about whether or not folks are in re-entry. We do a lot of data analytics and awareness around who's arrested and incarcerated, but we also do direct services. Our organization in a year touches the lives of over a thousand people, resourcing them, and getting them direct legal services. We had a clinic last week, and one day we sealed 30 records for individuals to get second chances. And when we had conversations last week, I'm going to try to keep to just one particular topic on my slides,
but this is such a vast conversation. I'm so thankful that we're taking the time to have thorough discussions. But really, our policy decisions are a huge driver of this. And some of the things will take, you know, no financial outlay, you know, limited, or some might be quite substantial. And so I do want to go ahead and put a pin in and bring up that we did talk about the Emergency Powers Act and that that's no longer been in place. And that was letting out around 2,600 people yearly.
That's something that could really relieve and let folks go home just a little bit early. And I also, you know, want to bring up what was mentioned earlier in regard to 309s. I mean, 309s every 90 days, they are able to go home with a piece of paper when they're approved, and they go home for an entire weekend, and then they come back and they return themselves to a county jail. So these are individuals, too, that are the best classification, have done everything they're supposed to do, and really could be home being productive with their families.
So with all that said, what I've taken the time to focus on today is to think about the $70 million that we have that was reallocated. I apologize. I'm going to try to figure out how to work these slides. Sorry. Oh, did that work?
Speaker 413
6:19:36
Yes. Okay. Sorry. Now I got a little crazy there. Oh, gosh. Sorry. Okay. Now I
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
6:19:43
know how to do it, I think, maybe. So I'm going to start with the summary, and then how do I get to the summary?
So reducing incarceration actually has the ability to create a stronger and safer Arkansas by recognizing the health crisis, and this was talked about by other folks, about the drivers of our top new entry a lot of times being around drugs and theft and mental health, funding diversions and alternative community supports, and investing in evidence-based interventions and supports. And then also want to touch on recognizing pretrial and its role in the incarceration journey that leads from jails to prisons.
You know, for reentry programs, if you look at the research that's out there, for every dollar that gets invested into reentry, studies show a multifold return on our investment as well versus just incarceration, anywhere from $2 to $41 with anti-violence teams that are out there like Cure Violence. And really want to recognize in pretrial that even a few days in jail has the ability to disrupt people's lives. They lose their jobs. They lose their housing. They lose their children. And there's a high likelihood of reoffense because of that.
So how did I arrive at that? Well, the state has been talking. We talked about acts earlier. But the state has been doing lots of study and had many task force. From the 2023 recidivism report, it states itself for formerly incarcerated individuals, the probability of reoffending is the highest within the first year of release. They found that past incarceration increases the probability of future incarceration. And then, you know, goes on to talk about programming, especially for those with a history of drug use and prior incarceration.
And then recidivism and incarceration adversely impact families, the economy, our communities, and crime, as well as delinquency rates. An in-depth look at Arkansas's carceral population and recidivism rates of formerly incarcerated individuals is, you know, warranted. And that the implementation of intervention strategies should really be something to be looked at. There was also additional study that was done in 24 with the Reduction Recidivism Task Force. And, you know, in particular, too, they really recognized that since 2014, admissions for
violent crimes in Arkansas had actually been decreasing, but we were seeing drug offenses that were actually increasing, and that, you know, investing in resources in areas that impact behavior change for our supervised population is a huge opportunity for sustainability and increased public safety efficiency. Okay, now I've messed it up again. I apologize. Oh, gosh. Here we go. There we go. So this is a bit of an eye chart, but one of the things that I wanted to kind of brainstorm is I've really just been thinking a lot about, and I know a lot of people across the state have been having conversations about the $70 million that had been allocated towards a Franklin County prison.
I think when that's reallocated, it was stated that it could be used for beds or it could be used to tackle recidivism. And so I wanted to just throw out a few things out there. We talked, and I'll go into this in detail, just point out a few of these. Peer recovery specialists have been mentioned. We have the ability with $70 million that 875 individuals could be hired across the state for that. We talked and heard from other reentry folks today that talked about the need for supports to be able to keep stability for individuals for health care and education and job training.
We could do ranch supervision supports, you know, $3,000 just to get somebody started coming out
Sarah Moore
Unverified
6:23:23
of prison. That could help 23,333 individuals with $70 million. This thing
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
6:23:31
doesn't like me. I apologize. There we go. So diving deeper into this, whenever you look at the Council of State Government's Recidivism Reduction Task Force report, They talk about investing resources in areas that impact behavior change for the supervised population.
And so you heard from people that do provide this level of service. One of the biggest things when you're talking about residential evidence-based treatment recovery supports is that these are areas that have incredibly unstable funding sources. They have a variety of ways that they oftentimes are delivering these services. And so one of the things that I wanted to put forward for consideration of what programs could look like that the state looked at putting together a grant fund is that there are programs out there today that are delivering for about $5,600 annually for a bed versus ADC.
obviously is at 27,000, and that the recidivism when you go to treatment programs, when you look at across the nation, it's anywhere from 20 to 23 percent versus our current at ADC. And so one of the considerations that I really want to be weighing on you is thinking about how we potentially look at doing a state grant fund, potentially piloting it with $22 million to add 50 residential beds across the 75 counties. That would allow for 3,750 new residential beds.
Why do I say that? Because every day I work with individuals, and you heard today, that we struggle to be able to find appropriate, adequate places for individuals that are either trying to come back into the community and are struggling to get an address that can be approved, someone that wants to keep out of additional court involvement in arrest but cannot find those beds. And so I just want that to be something that we might consider because oftentimes you're hearing it's through philanthropy,
federal grants, or unstable funding sources. And we've talked about this gap earlier that exists for these types of beds. I also, the second thing for consideration today, and I'm going to go quick on these, happy to follow up, given the hour we're at today, is to explore state funding structures to expand and enact diversion courts statewide and explore the language of the current statutes to allow for wider judicial discretion for participant entry. This is a response to the findings in the recidivism cohort released from 23 that said,
the results suggest that programming and behavior interventions are needed to address this part of our population. This could look like a statewide fund where counties can opt in. Texas has done an opt-in program for court reminders, and so I kind of thought about it modeled after that. When I talk with some of our judges across the state, their best-functioning drug courts really look like capping participants at about 40 individuals with a team that includes a probation officer, a counselor, and a peer support.
That comes out to about $220,000. These are going to be approximate numbers, so please don't get me down to the dime. That also, too, they sometimes are getting people on insurance or might have to dip into funds to be able to get people additional stabilizing needs. And so I put $5,000 additional for participants knowing some of the things they run into. We know that drug court programs reduce overall rearrest and reconviction rates by roughly 38% to 50% compared to our traditional probation or incarceration.
And so really it's a question for us to sit with of the people that are entering Arkansas prisons for drug offenses. You know, how many, you know, could be safely diverted to these evidence-based community treatments instead? And then on the considerations for the statute, you know, there are instances people can be a first-time offender and be considered a dealer and can end up with prison time on the very first time. They're not eligible for getting diverted into other programs.
I actually just said goodbye to a gentleman who has three kids who had been a long-haul trucker that got into a jam a couple years ago, first time got into the drug trade to kind of make ends meet, had fentanyl, why felony, he's not serving time away from his three kids that he was supporting, first time offender. The other thing too is past violent charges are not allowed to divert over to specialty courts as well, and so considerations for capping like a look-back period of maybe five years or ten years in the past
to be able to have them for consideration or looking at opening up that language that it can be for judicial discretion. And then the third thing to consider is the reports also talked about reducing recidivism by supporting reentry success, and we've heard a lot of that today. I know you guys have spent a lot of time on this. I cannot drive home, and you probably believe this too, how much peer recovery specialists do incredible work across our state.
They save lives. We have an incredible program in the state of Arkansas. So often I talk to peers and they actually struggle to get employment in their field once they're certified because there are not enough jobs for them. So there's an opportunity to create a jobs program for people who have a felon past to put them as part of reentry teams and hospitals, ambulance teams, alternative response, anti-violence teams. And, you know, this could look like, you know, $80,000 a year.
You know, at $20 million, you could put 250 peers across the state. I know that we could use them in northwest Arkansas. I know, you know, in the south, southern parts of the state, they could use those folks. And then I'd like to move on to pretrial services. And, again, I know I'm putting a lot of information forward and kind of jumping quickly due to the time. But I bring up pretrial because this really, again, is really the front door, this revolving door that happens into the criminal legal system and folks kind of getting jammed up.
Once people are in a local county jail and they're too poor to buy their freedom, this causes many things. You know, people lose ties to their community, they lose their houses, they end up with longer prison and jail sentences, and then they're very vulnerable to overdose whenever they do actually leave their incarceration setting. One of the things that started to percolate across the state are these pre-trial service programs. They've been a Department of Justice best practice since the late 90s.
They are teams that help the courts make informed bail decisions. They ensure realistic options are put forward, and they do needs assessments to understand what the client's needs are for that release. There's some information about successful programs that happen, too, across the country. These really just look like case managers, peer specialists, and a supervisor that prepare these release reports and work.
I know in Washington County, we're currently looking at the possibility that we're going to be employing this in early 2027, and ours looks something like maybe a half a million dollar a year investment, but we're looking at being able to potentially release 200-plus people from county jail. And so, again, because the longer someone stays, the higher likelihood of re-offense trying to close that front door. But we also understand that every county doesn't look the same in their financials,
and so that this could be a hardship to afford for many counties in the state. And so looking at the possibility of thinking of the $70 million and whether or not there could be a grant fund that was established of $17 or $18 million, again, that counties could opt in to do a trial program to see if they want to look at this as a possible release to help with the overcrowding, but also to be a solution for not sending more folks towards prison. I went very quickly through those.
Sarah Moore
Unverified
6:32:06
really appreciate your time today and really happy to answer any questions
Speaker 407
6:32:19
who you represent yes sir my name is Mela Sadiq Supreme that is M-E-L-A dash S-I-D-Q my last name is Supreme I'm better known to the world as King Supreme anyone can feel free to google me I travel across the United states and I help renovate low-income communities that's my that's my job I haven't been too long
come back from Greenville Mississippi where I partner with the mayor Eric Simmons to put forth some ordinances to begin to grow that community and that led me back up here to where everything started for me here in Arkansas so I'm a problem solution minded individual but before I bring you the solution to the problem, I want to speak about some individuals that help to shape and mold my mind. So understand that I bring about $250,000 a year on average. I do sales. I talk. And so
these tools were taught to me on the inside by individuals who had served 20 and 30 years. I came to the Arkansas Department of Corrections at 19 years old, born homeless, literally raised in the struggle mentality, which a lot of individuals that sit in prison today, they struggle with the struggle mentality. They come from broken homes. I was raised in the Delta, the poorest part of the United States of America, in Sondheim, Louisiana.
And so when I meet Brother Nazim over at the Vorna unit in five barracks and he's telling me about the law and the need to understand the law because the law controls your life. And I meet Brother Corey Harris, who tells me, hey, young man, it's okay not to act out in a physical manner simply because you like that color over that color. I meet individuals like DeMarco Rainer, who tells me, hey, it's okay to be smart.
Just be yourself. You ain't got to fit in with the rest of these crazy people. And then I go over to the Cummins unit and I meet the Houston brothers who teach me about working out and how working out physically helps you mentally prepare yourself for the outside. And so I come out here and the only thing that's on my mind is some shape, form or fashion fixing what is. And so some genius little boy that's born homeless doesn't go through the things that I had to go through.
I think about what is the problem. And so I traveled all across as far as I could travel, and two things always stuck out to me. Poverty and ignorance. Ignorance meaning unaware. Because at 19 years old, if someone would have told me, hey, if you go up to the elder rate and rob those people, you're going to spend 14 years of your life in prison. I promise you I would not have done that. I mean, that's logical, right? But think about it. In places like the Delta and all these rural areas where individuals grow up in a struggle mentality and they see your mom smoking weed and you see your dad selling crack and you see your other dad selling milk and your other dad, because mom got three daddies for you, he's selling fentanyl.
And so the only thing that you're being programmed with is the struggle mentality. There is no one around you to give you the positive influences to say, hey, you need to come to these Senate Judiciary meetings so you can understand that law controls your life. You need to understand to put on a suit and a tie when you go places so people would receive you better than when you're wearing your clothes the way that you wear them. But we're talking about emptying the bed space, right? That's the problem.
So here's a solution. You got poverty and ignorance. So let's start with the poverty side. I told you guys when I sat down, I'm the founder of the Roost Foundation. What is the Roost Foundation? The Roost Foundation buys up all the property that we can, residential properties, commercial properties. We fix up communities from the ground up. It has every NACIS code connected to it. So anybody need a job, you just sign this list so we'll make sure that hourly you are making some money. So that way you won't be in survival mode.
And you can stick a 501c3 to it. So that way you can get the government funding if need be. Or you can say, you know what, reg not populist, the people rule. So how about I take myself out there and utilize direct marketing tactics to raise funds like Susan E. Coleman or the breast cancer awareness, realizing that you can do the same exact thing. So now the problem of being poor, impoverished, you can do away with that.
So places like in Osceola, in northeast Arkansas, where you have the highest electricity bill in Arkansas and possibly the United States, I don't know. But the people there, they're living in survival mode. They're making, on average, $22,000 a year, maybe. Where does that take care of a family? Nowhere. And so these same individuals, they're the ones that's going to get hired by the prisons, because we're talking about the guards bringing everything in. I've been here all day.
And so you're talking to a woman or a man that's used to making $22,000 a year, and you expect them, logically speaking, to go to these places to work because they're forced to. Nobody really wants to work at a prison, let's be honest. And so they are forced to work at these places where they meet all of these handsome young men with a whole lot of money, and they say, hey, I'm going to give you $3,500 just to do this. So once again, I
Speaker 420
6:38:10
go back to the struggle mentality because if you have things set in place for those people, they won't be intrigued by the numbers that inmates are throwing out.
Speaker 407
6:38:21
Pay them more money. They put their lives on the line every day just to go serve child in the Supermax. But
Speaker 420
6:38:28
you want to keep people out of the prison. Well, you take people like Mr. Charles Houston, like DeMarco Rayner, and you put them out here on the streets of society where they're going to do the same thing that I'm doing because they're the ones that taught me. They're going to go into the communities and say, hey, this is the problem.
Speaker 407
6:38:51
This is how we solve it. And all of the young men that surround them, they're going to look
Speaker 420
6:38:58
at them like they're OGs and unks, and they're going to listen to everything that these men have to
Speaker 407
6:39:07
say. How do I know? I bear witness. They treat me like that right today. And so you have to ask yourselves, really, do we want to solve the problem? If you desire to solve the problem, give the individuals more jobs, which you can do, utilizing,
decarcerating their beautiful platform, other beautiful platform that were mentioned here today. And you connect them to vessels, other 501c3s that's cleaning up the neighborhood or something so a person can
Speaker 420
6:39:30
literally just come out and pick up trash. We came off hoe squad. There's a hoe in your hand and you're hitting the ground all day. And it's a guy on a horse with a gun. So you don't want to go to no job and nobody's standing over you telling you what
Speaker 407
6:39:46
to do. But you'll go out there and pick up trash until you figure out, hey, this is what I want to do with my life.
You've got plenty of trash from northeast Arkansas all the way to southeast Arkansas. So there's plenty of work for those guys to do. How many houses need to be fixed up? Well, I know in prison they got welding, they got plumbing, they got electrical work. So let's buy off the properties and put them to work there. And you know
Speaker 420
6:40:13
what? While we're buying up the properties, let's put the guys in it. And don't just rent it to them. Make it available rent to own. So now they have a sense of pride and they can actually build a family.
We can fight against Section 8 that's happened to send people to the prison system.
Speaker 407
6:40:33
But I'm going to end with that. And I thank y'all so much for allowing us to come here and to speak to you guys. And I truly hope that this go around individuals actually are inspired by the words that we're saying to bring the necessary change to Arkansas that's needed. You guys have the power. You can throw money anywhere that you want to. The word is proper.
The word is allocate. So you can allocate the dollars wherever that you like. However, if you are not allocating those dollars to prevention, then you're going to be focused on recidivism. Get the parents' life first. Get their lives
Speaker 420
6:41:10
right so that way they can lead and guide their children in the way that they should go. That's what the books say. Because if not, yeah, they're going to be repeating that cycle. And the prison industrial complex is going to make a whole lot of money if we don't do something about it.
Speaker 407
6:41:31
So what's more important, saving the community or making money for the prison industrial complex? I'll leave you
Speaker 409
6:41:43
I say one other thing, sir? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Well, I'd just like to say that, you know, people came and they said, you know, they'd never been on drugs or alcohol. And I'm a living witness that a person can be delivered without going through. Some of them have to go through. But I was instantly delivered from drugs and alcohol many years ago.
There was times when I used to didn't know that I exist in the world. I was so hung out and strung out, getting my tongue cut out of my mouth, hanging on a mere piece of meat. But, you know, it's because of the grace of God that I can sit here to say that, you know, people, we cannot say that once a drug addict or once an alcoholic is always a drug addict or alcoholic because that's not so.
Because I know for a fact that God delivers and he changed people. And so I believe that a lot of people in prison, not just my brother, but other senior citizens and some young people, you know, deserve a second chance, another chance at society to be an asset to society rather than a liability. For instance, myself, now I write plays, I produce plays, and I've written a book, If God Can Use Me, What About You?
And it got down to the women's unit in Riceville when they used to be there. And I received 23 letters from the chaplain, from ladies that wrote and thanked me for being, you know, open and sharing with them about how they can, you know, make it in this world. And years ago, when I used to go to the prison after I got saved, there was only 200-some people, women in the Pine Bluff unit, and then they moved them to Tucker.
It was more, and then they moved on to Newport, and so I was a certified religious, what is CR, certified religious assistant, and I would go down there every other week just to talk and listen to the ladies and encourage them to do right, and I truly believe that a lot of people have gotten out because of people going in, letting them know that there's a better way of life. Thank you.
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
6:44:25
once more, which I said to the last group, thank you all so much for your patience today. I mean, it was a long day. You all stuck it out to the end, and you deserve to be commended for that. We appreciate you all added a lot of important points to this discussion, so thank you. And thank you for your testimony, too. Ms. Moore, I just want to, there was a lot from all of you, and it was all great. And you've identified some concerns, and you've also proposed some solutions, which we want all of that, right?
Ms. Moore, there's a couple of data points from your presentation that I think bear repeating, just for the sake of the membership. And one is that an estimated 72% of prison admissions over the past 10 years involve people who were revoked for supervision. Um, it's really, obviously we want to prevent crime on the front end. Uh, that, that, uh, that is a goal for us as a society, but the fact that such a, a huge
percentage of prison admissions are from people on supervision, parole, or probation. If we did a better job with re-entry, would that not have a huge impact on, uh, the demand for prison beds in
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
6:45:44
our state? A tremendous impact. Absolutely. Having supervision set up in a way where it's an individualized success plan for every individual where there's a champion that's wanting to incentivize people to do their best and connecting them and removing barriers is how that should work.
It's unfortunate that I can tell you story after story where that's not what happens, and that unfortunately the way that things are set up oftentimes is for trip hazards, for people to have lack of clarity at what they are supposed to be doing, and especially when they face tremendous hurdles with poverty and having a criminal background, you know, getting knocked down because, you know, they can't stay in employment, can't get that bed that they need to at a
Sarah Moore
Unverified
6:46:33
recovery place. when it's a part of their requirements for staying out of prison.
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
6:46:40
Thank you. The second point that I think bears emphasis is what we are reincarcerating people for. And as you mentioned, over the course of the last 10 years, reincarceration for violent offenses has gone down, reincarceration for drug offenses has gone up. I think it's important for the members of the legislature to know that as fact. It's not a theory. It's fact, and it wasn't in your presentation, but I also happen to know, and, you know, these numbers, you know, vary a little bit year to year, so it could be off a tiny bit.
But the point is about 16% of reported violent crime in Arkansas was committed by people on supervision, and yet somewhere in the 65% or 70% range of people being admitted into prison are people on supervision, which means there's a whole lot of people on supervision who are being admitted into prison for reasons other than having committed a violent crime. So it's, you know, the two points together are if we do a better job about reentry and reducing recidivism,
then we're reducing crime, preventing future victims, all goals that we want, and also reducing the demand for capacity for prison beds. But at the same time, it's on us as we're the board of directors for the state of Arkansas, right? And the prison beds that we have are a resource. And it's on us to make sure that we are using that in the smartest way that we can. And when we're incarcerating people for drug offenses and we have 2,500 people waiting in a county jail for state backup, you know, county jail backup waiting for a state bed.
And, uh, people are getting out, you know, who I'm repeating myself, but, uh, but the point is we need to be smart about it. The resource needs to be used for violent offenders, not for drug offenders. And do you have any thoughts about this? Thank
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
6:48:42
you, Senator Tucker. Um, one of the things that I think, especially again, as a family member who has, uh, people that, you know, struggle with, uh, having their, their health needs met is that, you know, we've said in this state, we've declared that these are health crises. And I wouldn't put someone in prison for diabetes
or cancer, but folks that are struggling with drug and alcohol and their mental health. We are filling up our jails and our prisons with people who are sick. We've also sat on task force. I have for a number of years for mental health. And yet we've really struggled to deliver meaningful solutions that divert individuals that really need care and healing and restoration which you'll never get in a jail or prison setting we will always struggle with that and it's incredibly costly in the human numbers but also financially it's devastating to localities and to the state
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
6:49:36
budgets thank you very much yes thank you for
Representative Keith Brooks
Unverified
6:49:47
being here uh center simon thank you mr chair and thank you all for your powerful testimonies for us here today and like senator tucker there's more a couple of things jumped out a couple of numbers jumped out to me out of your thing that do need repeating the first of all in the first year on the recidivism
50 of the crimes happen within the first year before they go back in so i just can't help but wonder what it would look like if instead of just putting them out there if they had spent that first year in a good re-entry program how much money that would have saved the state for the last year of their sentence had they been in a re-entry program as opposed to out on the streets just trying to get by how much that would save not only on the front end but also uh save things in the
future from not having to re-incarcerate them so i think that does need to be a point of emphasis that we focus on um the 70 million dollars that you mentioned um something does have to be done with that that is that's been reallocated for uh recidivism reduction you gave us lots of options there pick any that you like yeah so the first thing mix and match the first thing that pops in my mind whenever we start throwing about throwing out big numbers like that and and options is is that a
Speaker 316
6:51:07
one-time expense because we're gonna have to continue to fund that and that's a problem
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
6:51:12
Sure. No, and I think that's a very fair question. That's why on some of those, you know, I pick something that really is a smaller pilot to figure out. But as I have done this work for a number of years now, I've talked to people all over the nation in regard to programs where you pilot them. But if you find that they are successful and that they are delivering on solutions, you ultimately want to fund them and they are a part of your entire budget because you know they work and they make sense.
I think it's that tradeoff. I hear we just have the 70 million, but we also have, you know, almost seven, was it 700 million that we spend on prison? I mean, so, you know, we were talking about, you know, the Franklin County prison would cost us something north of $70 million a year to operate. And so, you know, those are the tradeoffs is if we're thinking about this as a one-time allocation, but we potentially are talking about ongoing operations and maintenance of millions of dollars if we add beds. What does the tradeoff look like in the budget when we do these instead?
Oftentimes, I think they're a lesser return. I think when I looked at the reentry dollars, right, to about $6,000 a year versus, you know, $27,000 for an ADC bed, you know, that's a cost savings that we'll realize. Very good points.
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
6:52:36
Thank you. Again, thank you for being here. I think for your testimony, you've added a dimension, I think, to the discussion. And I think it would be remiss, not because y'all are here, as we're getting almost to the end, for me, since I'm leading this parade, not to say that I think that we can see, we can look at it in numbers in other states and see that there's much that we can do to improve.
That being said, I don't want to paint this rosy picture either. It was alluded to early on that I love the success stories, but there is one thing
that always has to happen in a success story, and that's the person. One of the gentlemen with the reentry ministry talked about his brother. I've got a good friend, grew up together, who's been in and out of prison.
And I have to say, sadly, that I don't know if any of these things would have changed anything about him going back. I would hope that I'm wrong, because I believe in everything, but it comes back to you. You know, a lot of individuals would succeed if they
had the help, I agree. Others, until they make that decision, I just worked with drug and alcohol people.
I haven't been involved personally, but I've worked with Teen Challenge over the years and others. And the person has to reach that point where they decide that they want to change and that they want to do better. And every program in the world won't help if they don't have that. And so we love to hear all the wonderful stories about people who have changed their lives for whatever reason and with whatever help. But I don't want us to kid ourselves that we'll change everybody or that everybody that has gone to prison
and even that everybody that we think has changed has changed. I'm a preacher's kid. And a lot of times we want to believe people have changed, and sometimes they have and sometimes they haven't. And that's something we have to remember that the
people in charge have to be very careful of. And because whether you're the first victim or the next victim,
People, society, don't look very well on people who allow somebody to victimize again. And so they have
to be more careful sometimes. When we're involved in the situation personally and we just know that nothing's going to happen, it's not so easy for the person making the decision because they would have to live with it's easier for them to make the decision to leave people in.
always than it is to let people out. And so we need to keep that in mind because, like I said, you've added a dimension to the discussion that I like and I think we should really look at, especially as people age. But I think there's some questions still unanswered in science and society. Some I know people just, men, let me just take it there, men are not as aggressive as we get older.
uh we're not as i would agree with that we're not as likely to offend we're not as likely to get involved in road rage and all kinds of things uh but we still have to be careful uh and so like i said i and i just i've seen this just because i'm leading the parade
and i don't want everybody think we just think that that that everybody's going to be able to be helped and that everybody's going to do better because as we do these things
we're going to have failures and those failures will be publicized and so we we've got to be really careful that we we do the very best that as we vet and remember that in every case as representative Josh Tosh pointed out in in every case if somebody's uh serving time and serving time because they should be it's because there was a victim and it may have just been a retail store owner like me who gets angry because every time you look around you wonder what got got picked up and carried out
uh that's not that's lots easier to forgive than a loved one who really got hurt And we need to remember those things, that there is both sides because, as somebody pointed out earlier today, the first thing is that we protect society. That's the first thing. That's one of the things government is called to do
is protect society. Second, we want to protect the people, our employees, who we hope we've
heard differently today, but most of them that are working in prisons are safe.
Then third we want to come back to what y'all have talked about and many others have talked about is We're looking at not just that individual. We're looking at their family We're looking at the community. They come
from their parents their kids And how they're all affected and so but we have to look at that third We have to look at we have to look at protecting society first and then we have to come back to what we've learned Because we've learned things over the years. We've learned that incarceration isn't necessarily
the best answer in lots of situations.
And continued incarceration is not. But we still have to go back to number one and protect society until we figure
out how to do the other. And thankfully, we've got these people coming forth with ministries and other things. I don't care whether you like religion, don't like religion. like i said all i care is what works uh is that is
change lives so thank you all for being here and i think we've got one more uh sarah i did not put you last on purpose
Unknown speaker
6:59:31
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
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Thank you.
Thank you.
Speaker 177
7:04:01
The process with the Post-President Transfer Board is cumbersome
Speaker 437
7:04:07
and difficult. Most people don't have attorneys for that process, particularly when they're being revoked, when parole is being revoked. That is something that's changing now because of litigation, but we could also look at those processes, not just for people being revoked, for people who are trying to get out. One of the women who spoke before me
Speaker 438
7:04:32
talked about her brother. But I think the board could use a little more oversight and maybe do a little more work to help people qualify to get out. You know, there should be, in their decisions, there should be some indication to the person that they're denying how they can get approved the next time, you know, what they need to do to convince the board that they are ready to get out.
And I think that's all I have for now. I'm going to be following up with all of you with more information, and I am just really grateful that you're having these conversations, and I look forward
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
7:05:18
to continuing them. Any questions? Thank you for staying all day. The
committee, first I want to tell you, I want to be sure we get this covered. October, we have moved the date.
I'm not going to name the old date so as not to cause more confusion. We have moved the date for October to the 26th, 10 a.m. I do not intend for it to last as long as today, but we are allowing ourselves the morning and afternoon. We will be more specific. Today has been mostly in-state. October 26th will be the same subject, but mostly out-of-state folks
that are running programs, et cetera, in other states with things that are being successful that we could actually sink our teeth into, I hope, and see things that we might take action on. That's the purpose of doing this again on October 26th. Having said that, we have people who have signed up. Who I've got left here are the Wednesday night people, for those of you that have a Baptist or fundamentally evangelical background.
The Wednesday night people, for those who are familiar, are the people who, for those who have midweek services, the people who show up even on Wednesday night but we have people that signed
up they couldn't all possibly still be here I don't think just by the numbers that are out there but if somebody has stayed this long as much as I hate to ask y'all to stay I'd like to hear them and I am I'm very favorable to somebody making a motion on a time limit per person, and that's up to y'all.
Speaker 38
7:07:21
Senator Rice? Good to see you. Show of hands how many we've got here. How many that are here have signed up to speak? Anyone?
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
7:07:29
so we got about the same number of people out there that we have signed up to speak and none of them are the same people so
i think we so i think i think we have done our job of allowing the public uh to speak and the chairman has probably done a good job of warning them off because it has been a long day and i very much appreciate you and let me also to those of you
that are here and those who have already left, let me apologize. I don't know another way to have done it. We gained lots of information that will be good going forward. It was not
all concrete on what we can do to reduce prison beds, but it was from people who are doing things that could help us reduce prison beds and so it made it a long day for y'all and the chairman could have
done probably a better job a better chairman let me say could have probably done a better job of organizing things to make it more specific but your chair did not and I think it's important at least this one time that we we heard everybody as tiring as it may be and heard let them tell us about the things that they are doing because it certainly increased my knowledge a great deal and so but going forward we will try to be more specific and be more meat to as things that we
can actually sink our teeth into and actually do something about
and so I hope you'll bear with me and I hope you'll be here on October 26th because I think we're gonna we're gonna have some people flying in from different places so we definitely want people here to hear them and I think they're going to have some they're going to have some success stories from other places that you'll want to hear that possibly that come January we can start trying to put into action so thank you
does anybody have any other business if not we're adjourned I gave you another chair.
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Consideration to Approve August 12, 2026, Meeting Minutes [Exhibit B]
C. Overview of Proposed Housing Policy Initiatives [Exhibit C] - Duke McLarty, Executive Director, Groundwork Arkansas
D. Presentation on Memphis Fire Code Changes in the International Code Council and International Residential Code [Exhibit D] - John Zeanah, Principal, Interval
E. Presentation on Housing Policy Changes in Other States and Localities [Exhibit E] - Tushar Kansasl, Senior Officer, Housing Policy, Pew Charitable Trusts
F. Presentation on Deregulation and Housing Policy [Exhibit F1-F2] - Kileen Lindgren, Senior State Policy Manager, Pacific Legal Foundation
G. Other Business
H. Adjournment
Documents
Speakers
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
Representative Carol Dalby
Unverified
Speaker 14
Speaker 15
Speaker 17
Speaker 24
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
Speaker 45
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
Speaker 28
Representative Keith Brooks
Unverified
Speaker 68
Speaker 78
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
Representative Tippi McCullough
Unverified
Speaker 107
Speaker 108
Representative Tara Shephard
Unverified
Speaker 118
Speaker 120
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
Speaker 144
Speaker 148
Speaker 156
Speaker 168
Speaker 170
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Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
Speaker 223
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Speaker 49
Speaker 271
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
Speaker 273
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Speaker 279
Carrie Williams
Unverified
Erry Williams
Unverified
Speaker 270
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Speaker 47
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Speaker 315
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Speaker 323
Speaker 330
Speaker 346
Speaker 332
Speaker 325
Speaker 368
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Speaker 382
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Speaker 389
Speaker 90
Speaker 400
Speaker 402
Speaker 405
Speaker 407
Speaker 403
Speaker 409
Speaker 413
Sarah Moore
Unverified
Speaker 126
Speaker 406
Speaker 420
Speaker 408
Speaker 50
Speaker 316
Speaker 151
Speaker 177
Speaker 437
Speaker 438
Speaker 38