ALC-Charitable, Penal, and Correctional Institutions
Video
Transcript
2 documents
Machine transcript
May contain errors. Verify important quotations against the official video.
About transcript accuracy
- Source
- Whisper
- Model
- ggml-large-v3-turbo.bin RTX5060
- Processing date
- October 6, 2026
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
10:00
Members, we'll call the meeting to order if you'll take your seats. If you'll stand for a moment, we'll have an opening prayer led by Senator Tyler Dees.
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
10:40
as we try to do that well and with excellence thank you for the men and women who have put on uniform to serve this country and sacrificed all and thank you for the men and women who continue to put on uniform to to serve this state and this country and just ask you extra special blessing and protection on them as they do that job and do it well and help us do our job well help us do it with with excellence with grace and help us keep
our eyes fixed on you the author and perfect of our faith so we can do that in an honorable way and thank you for all the sacrifices that the families that allow us to be here the things that we have to miss just again extra special grace as we get to do this so help us do that well in your name we pray amen and
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
11:23
and before you see it are seated we have a birthday in the in the chamber today senator clark uh so if
you'd join me in wishing the center happy birthday we would sing to you but i don't i don't know that i want to lead
happy birthday to you happy birthday to you
Speaker 54
11:42
happy birthday dear alan happy birthday to you so what am i doing here on my birthday who else would have
Speaker 56
11:54
saying exactly i want to thank you all for being here today
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
12:02
we were running just a few minutes late we're providing some time for uh representative of the state police to make the meeting today
i think maybe tied up with traffic i don't know are they here yet
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
12:17
okay in that case we'll move right on to item b and update oh was she
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
12:24
yeah okay well come come on joe we're going
to move right in on update on arkansas state police report on the prisoner escape from calico rock if you'll
introduce yourself and then you'll address the committee thank you mr. chair
Speaker 66
12:44
my name is joan shipley and i am chief of staff of the arkansas department
of public safety and i appreciate the courtesy yes i did get
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
12:58
stuck in traffic ms shipley we just wanted an update on the status of the police report on the
Speaker 66
13:04
prisoner escape from calico rock yes sir and uh that that report has been completed and was delivered to the governor's office i think it was maybe thursday of last week um for their review okay and once
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
13:17
that's reviewed then it will come back to this
Speaker 66
13:20
committee it will mr chair um and we will
have um uh stacy rhodes major stacy rhodes here she's out of town this week on a
Speaker 74
13:27
planned vacation um to to uh answer questions before this committee all right well thank you joe i didn't
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
13:33
see you sitting there i was sitting here talking and and other things i didn't notice that you were in the audience or we just started sooner so apologies to committee
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
13:41
members are there any members that have any questions for um for miss joe seeing none we appreciate your time appreciate you being here today yes sir thank you moving to item
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
13:54
c is an update on the department of corrections
critical incident review of prisoner escape from calico rock by uh director dexter pain mr director
if you'll introduce yourself and then you may address the committee
Speaker 80
14:14
yes sir mr. chairman members of the board i'm dexter paine i'm the director for the arkansas division of correction here today to update you on our mishap at the north central unit we've got our critical incident review mostly completed at this time with our findings
Of course, you already knew that we terminated two employees based off of their failure to perform their duties. But we've also found additional information as to other staff that worked in the food service area who also did not perform the duties and who also chose to disobey the instructions of the warden and deputy warden and allowed inmates on the back dock. So those staff members also have been disciplined for their actions.
We've also found other instances in our classification committee where our classification office did not appropriately update custody scores on the inmates there. So that was an incident that we're going to address also as well. But I received this report in full this morning. I've reviewed it, and those are some of the steps that I've taken, other than what I've already told you in the
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
15:29
previous meeting. Is there any questions or anything that you would like for me to address?
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
15:38
So the report is complete? Yes, sir. And when will that report be officially presented to the board, to this committee? To this committee, within a
Speaker 80
15:46
few days. I've given it to Ms. Ryle, Tawny Ryle, our chief legal counsel, and she's going to present it to
Speaker 85
15:53
the legislature. Members, are there any questions from the committee? Senator Dees, you're recognized.
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
16:09
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Dexter. Yes, sir. You mentioned the classification. Is
that specifically related to the inmate that escaped, or is that just in total how it processes for other inmates? Could you give more details on that? Yes, sir. It's an overall issue
Speaker 91
16:26
that we've got to address with the classification staff there at that facility and we're going
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
16:32
to go over with all classification officers to make sure everybody's on the same page was
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
16:38
the inmate that escaped was he categorized or classified
incorrectly yes sir so what what was in what
Speaker 93
16:46
should he have been he should have been a c5
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
16:49
custody score would that make him not be eligible to be at
Speaker 80
16:52
calico rock unless he received an override sometimes they receive an override for programs or for discipline issues that they'll receive override but yes he without override he should not have been there okay thank you yes sir we have any other questions from committee no one
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
17:12
in the q in the queue you said there are other
other employees have those employees also been terminated no they have not
no they were not terminated no sir okay
Speaker 98
17:25
what type of reprimands were issued uh suspensions
Speaker 101
17:35
and demotion for one okay representative justin gonzalez thank you mr. chair over here right like out
Speaker 103
17:40
so how did that misclassification happen did did he have an override no he did not have an override but
Speaker 80
17:48
there was the system our electronic offender management information system did not catch that that system automatically updates it but our classification office usually goes in at least at least yearly to check to make sure the custody score is uh correct so you have a
Speaker 103
18:05
system that automatically advances their their score and then you have to override that to keep them where they're supposed to be if they if they messed up or whatever so what the system does
Speaker 80
18:18
the system calculates the score it calculates it and let's just say uh his custody score was c5 or high security in order to keep him at that facility the warden a deputy director or myself would have to override that to keep him there and saying that hey we understand he's a c5 but we want him housed here for this purpose did I answer your question but but did that happen how no the the electronic offender management system did not calculate his score correctly
That's why he was there. There was no need. The system didn't show a need for override because he was showing a medium security inmate, and he was properly
Speaker 103
19:04
housed there. That's what I'm trying to get at is how that system messed that up. Did somebody
Speaker 80
19:10
enter that wrong? No, sir. No, sir. We don't know yet how it didn't calculate the score correctly. I'm not sure yet. It's technology. It's a computer. But it did not appropriately classify him. okay thank you yes representative rose
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
19:27
thank you mr chair uh thank you for
your testimony this afternoon just a couple quick questions uh you referenced the uh discovery of
other uh i think it was kitchen staff or food services staff of violating protocols and so there's discipline passed down for those violations how did you guys come to know or come to discover that they were in violation of protocols and kitchen staff letting other inmates or the same inmate working on that back deck we we once
Speaker 80
20:03
we started our critical incident review we reviewed all of the camera footage we took statements from inmates as well as staff and that's how
Speaker 85
20:11
we determined that uh the the staff the staff that we additionally disciplined had violated policy also.
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
20:20
So none of this was discovered from interviews from those staff members or other staff members, only from video footage? No,
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
20:28
sir. No, that's what I said. Video footage, interviews with staff, as well as inmates,
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
20:33
during this critical incident review. Yes, sir. Okay, so I just want to, maybe I didn't ask it specifically enough, and I apologize for that. Was this information discovered through an interview, yes or no, or was it
through video footage, yes or no? Both. Okay. Yes, sir. Did anyone's testimony
Speaker 98
20:58
change after video footage was discovered? Yes. We had one person's testimony that changed, and he received a more severe disciplinary action than everyone else.
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
21:05
Okay, so upon an initial interview, this was not discovered. by their own testimony to you, their own answers. And then after reviewing video footage, it was discovered, and then
they admitted to so much. Is that correct? Yes, sir. Okay. Follow-up, Mr. Chair. There was also failure from, I believe my
terminology may be incorrect here, but there was failure by a guard in a tower of sorts on the rear gate,
I guess where, uh, prisoner Hardin escaped. Yes, sir. Um, was, was there any investigation into whether or not other verifications were not happening with people coming and going through that gate with, with any other guards who worked in that same position? Yes, sir. We did not find
Speaker 80
21:58
any other issues like that, but what we have done, we've, we've put in place, uh, prior to this incident every gate was electronic that that tower controlled that gate where they can open both
gates and let somebody out we've changed that process and now you have to go inside of our master control check out a key and open one of the gates if somebody is there to walk you out and open one of them for you then the tower you know once they clear that person then they can let them out so we've changed our process up
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
22:32
uh with the gates thank you for that mr director it Sounds like a great step for preventing this in the future. You said that there was no protocol violations discovered from that position, the tower position.
How did you guys come to that determination that that had not happened previously
Speaker 124
22:50
or since? Just by reviewing camera footage and talking to
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
22:54
staff. Okay, so the same process is with the kitchen staff, video footage, interviews, et cetera? Yes, sir. Okay, thank
Speaker 101
23:02
you so much. Yes, sir. Thank you, Senator Co-Chair, Senator McKee. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr.
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
23:08
Director. Yes, sir. For being here. How many inmates were found to be misclassified after this escape took place?
I don't know that number. I can get that number to you. You are doing an audit, though, to make sure other inmates are classified correctly?
Speaker 80
23:31
Yes, sir. Is there a potential public safety risk because of those misclassifications? I can't say there's a potential safety risk. I mean, we operate prisons, and I think we operate fairly safe prisons, and we try our best to keep everyone inside those fences. But we classify people according to their custody score,
and if that custody score is not correct, we're going to move them. We're going to get them out of the way. So I just don't know the total that you're asking me today.
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
23:57
Could you find that out for us? Yes, sir, I will. And do you do an annual audit of that system, or I'm trying to figure out why it took
an escape for us to find out that some individuals were not being classified correctly? No, sir. We do not do
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
24:10
an annual audit, but I can get that done also. Okay. I think that would be wise. Representative Collins.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. So the questions by Representative Gonzalez and Senator McKee were along the lines of what I
wanted to ask you. I'm right in front of you here. Oh, I'm sorry. So I guess you said, did I hear you say at the beginning that some
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
24:38
employees were disciplined for not properly updating the custody scores? Yes. One employee was disciplined
for not properly updating it. Okay. What you said to Representative Gonzalez is that it was all on a
computer program. So I'm confused as to whether it's all automatic or whether there's a human input that's happening.
Speaker 124
24:55
Okay. So the computer updates it automatic. The staff annually needs to go and
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
24:59
make sure. We do an annual review on every inmate, and during that annual review, that classification officer should make sure his custody score is correct.
Okay, so it's a verification that was not done rather than an update. The update is automatic. The verification was not done. Yes, sir, that's correct. Okay, and then regarding the number of misclassified inmates, if you don't know, and it sounds like you don't know exactly what went wrong with the program,
And by the way, I would just say, I mean, computer programs are just what you put into them. It's not like they have minds of their own or something. So that information is findable. But if you don't know what the issue is, how do you know how many inmates are misclassified? Or do you know? Maybe you don't know yet.
Speaker 148
25:42
Yeah, I don't know that number. I don't know the number, but we're sure that there
are some. So it's not just that you came in without having that particular piece of data at your fingertips. It's that y'all as a division don't know yet. Yes, I don't know yet.
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
25:56
Okay. All right, thanks. I'm just going to follow up on Representative Collin's question. You just acknowledged
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
26:06
that you're pretty confident that there are miscalculations and misclassifications in the
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
26:12
system. What efforts are you undertaking right now to ascertain who's misclassified and get that
Speaker 153
26:17
information corrected? Marquee is the company that actually operates our offender management system. They've been notified. Once we found out we had an issue, they've been notified to assist and try to correct those issues.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
26:29
But you just told us, I think if I heard correctly, that there's human verification of what's in the system. Yes, sir. Have
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
26:37
you started that process, or are you just waiting on Markey to solve a problem that you know
Speaker 153
26:42
you have? No, sir. We're trying to verify it. I just don't know the number. I wasn't expecting to be asked that question
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
26:49
today. I'm not asking how many. That was Senator McKee asked that question about how many. I'm asking you what efforts you're doing to make certain that the classification of
inmates is correct at all of your systems.
Speaker 153
27:01
Our classification administrator and my chief deputy director are reviewing those to make sure we've got people in the right facilities and their custody scores are correct, but they're not complete
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
27:12
with that project yet. Okay. That's more what I was wanting to ask. With that, Senator Dees.
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
27:19
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think that's where I started, and I think we've got a
lot of questions on the categorization side. And just one little piece on the override.
So an inmate in a normal process would have a system-generated categorization score. Yes, sir. And that's based on the level of crime and level of background and— Disciplinary history and things of that nature. Yes, sir. And so when you say override, what does that exactly mean? What's the human element of an override in the system? The warden, the deputy
Speaker 80
27:55
director, or myself will say, hey, look here, I need this person here for a program.
We're going to override the custody score and place them there. And normally we put
Speaker 153
28:06
what we call case notes in the system to let them know this is why that person
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
28:12
is there at the facility with that custody score. Okay. I think that's what I want to understand. And is it possible that someone could have overrided Mr. Harden's score as because a more favorable score because of his background in law enforcement? No, sir. That did not happen. So there was no preferential treatment because of that background in this situation?
No, sir. okay and then would there is there um when an override happens is there a a time stamp and an id stamped with the override of the
individual yes sir okay so there's always traceability with with any change yes sir okay
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
28:55
thank you just again i want to
follow up um you you mentioned that the information was incorrect on on the system and and you do an annual review of of those classifications is that correct yes sir
so how long had harden's classification been incorrect probably five years five to
Speaker 169
29:18
six years probably like 2019 yes sir 2018-2019 problem all
Speaker 97
29:25
right thank you yes representative rose well how do i
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
29:29
get back out of here my finger's too big i missed
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
29:40
the mic all right thank you mr chair uh i have a question uh for
the director but before i do maybe a question for uh committee staff uh we had requested from warden hearst at our previous meeting we had requested reports that they had testified to or some evaluations at calco rock to the annual security inspection some other inspections and evaluations that had taken place and we were told that those would be furnished had those been furnished to the committee yet i i don't think those have been furnished yet uh can we make that
request to you, Mr. Director, because we
were told at the last meeting that those would be furnished to us. These were not the critical incident report. These were the previous reports on Calico Rock or evaluations that had taken place within the last year to the safety and the security of the prison and protocols. And I wanted to review those because the question was
at that time, was there any indications on those reports that would suggest a prison break like this could happen and we were told no there was no data there are answers that would suggest that i wanted to
see it um so uh if we could do that that'd be great yes sir i'll get the reports to you
thank you and a follow-up on that uh also uh we had discussed the terminated employees at the last meeting that they had not been interviewed uh specifically for why they made the choices to do what they had been, to let him out of the prison without the verification and to let him work on the back deck.
And we were told that, yes, when we do the critical incident report, we will follow up. That's a great idea. Let's do that.
Speaker 85
31:30
Did that happen? I need to check to make sure. I need to look at our binder and make sure. I just got our critical
Speaker 80
31:37
incident review. I apologize for that. I got it today. I'll check and see if that happened. It should have happened. I know Internal Affairs interviewed both of them. our internal affairs division did. So do you
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
31:49
know if there's any testimony to whether or not they responded to why they chose? I'm not, I'm not sure. No, sir. I'm not sure. Okay.
And so you don't, you don't have that accessible today. No, sir. Okay. Um, so I know you got a lot on your plate from this and I would appreciate if we could get that along with those reports, if we could get, you know, that testimony, I'm sure we'll see these reports at some point, but wanted to speak
Representative John P. Carr
Unverified
32:15
to that. Uh, thank you. Yes, sir. Representative Carr. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Director, thank you for your information today. Just had a question. You had mentioned earlier that you had changed your protocol in the way of the gate
and how they could access it. Are there any other procedures that you guys have restructured in a new way to make things more effective? Our searches,
Speaker 148
32:37
we're going to do more searches and definitely more searches of our
Speaker 80
32:42
outside areas. I think that's where we feel at this point at this facility, the back dock area was was not searched enough or they would have probably found, you know, that he was hiding items out there on the back dock.
So we've updated we've updated our search protocol to search those areas outside, such as the maintenance shop, the back dock areas, Sally Port areas, things of that nature. yes sir all
Speaker 183
33:08
right good deal i appreciate your self-reflection and self-evaluation on that thank you thank you yes
Chair
Unverified
33:13
sir thank you mr chair representative rye you made a couple of
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
33:19
motions were you trying to get attention and be recognized if you'll push your button we'll recognize you okay there you go
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
33:29
representative rye you're recognized thank you sir sir i got
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
33:34
a question for you and maybe you can answer this maybe not i just don't know but you know when you have a break like this in in the jail do you have any idea what percentage of the weapons or whatever would be used during something like that what percentage do you think is coming from the outside in to some of these folks that are making a break?
You're saying weapons? Uh-huh. I don't know. We didn't have any weapons in this. Didn't have any weapons? No, sir. Okay, but can I ask you this, though? Yes, sir. As far as when you guys have checks of folks that are visiting folks, do y'all check that very, very well to make sure that no one can transfer something to someone inside the facility
Speaker 80
34:34
itself, sir? Yes, sir. We have metal detectors, we have cell phone detectors,
and body scanners in the entrance building for any visitor that comes
Speaker 98
34:41
through. So any metal, anything like that would be picked up during that search. We've got body scanners kind of like the airport when you go through and it shows anything that you have hid on your person. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir,
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
35:01
you will. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Representative Ryan. Director Payne, just another question. I think
last time we were here, we went into quite a bit of discussion about the breakdowns and what the problems were.
And I think it was reiterated several times that this was an isolated incident with two employees, and both of those employees we were quick to terminate and send out a Department of Corrections. now at this point you've done a more comprehensive review and you see that maybe maybe it was a little more system-wide and maybe there were there were other folks that were violating the same protocol that these two individuals had violated he told me that there had not been
terminations but they had there had been suspensions and demotions and other things so my question is uh these two gentlemen that were were terminated uh right at the beginning because we had to have somebody, somebody had to be responsible, and these two guys were the guys that were responsible. Have we gone back and evaluated that and looked at the decision to terminate
those employees and when you have similar violations for other employees that are there now?
Speaker 80
36:14
Yes, sir, and I stand on those terminations. Uh, these two individuals, uh, unfortunately their decisions led to this person getting out all the way outside of the fence. Uh, so we have to use progressive discipline, uh, according to our policies and due to the seriousness of this offense and allowing someone outside of the fence that that violation is a lot more serious than the others on the back dock. These, these two individuals allowed a person to actually get outside of our fence and that's
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
36:45
very serious. i i would agree that that's very serious i also look at things that having supervised employees and had employees
over the years that when there's a breakdown or a failure of my employees to execute the instructions and the plans that i've given that some of that responsibility falls on me and i haven't heard a whole lot of uh that responsibility falls
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
37:06
on me from you or anyone else at corrections so i'll give you an opportunity to respond to that uh well of
Speaker 183
37:13
course overall i'm the director overall i'm the i'm the one responsible for the entire facility unfortunately i wasn't at
Speaker 80
37:20
north central unit that day uh when this occurred uh so i can't say i was the one i could have stopped him from popping the gate i couldn't say i could have stopped him from allowing that inmate on the back dock i can't i'm the person that's in front of you today uh because i'm
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
37:37
overall responsible so yes sir well we just hope that you know through this critical instant review when we When we read that, we can see some steps and some changes and some attention to inspect what you expect. And maybe things will
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
37:48
be a little tighter there, and we won't have a repeat of this.
Anyone else have questions? Oh, I'm sorry. Senator McKee. That's okay.
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
37:57
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. But I think I just heard you a minute ago say that you had updated or changed some protocols since the escape. Did I hear you correctly? The security protocols, yes, sir. So the security protocols prior to the escape
Speaker 80
38:14
were not adequate? Well, I'm not going to say they weren't, but we just went to a different level to make sure that now we've got a two-person system.
Someone has to go check out a key, and they open one gate, and then
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
38:29
the person in the tower has to open the second. It strikes me that the purpose of systems is to mitigate the weaknesses of any system, right? Right. And in any system, the weakest part is always the people. Yes. Unfortunately. While we have many very qualified and good employees that work for our prisons, that's always the weakest point in any system. Yes, sir. So if that system fails because it's not the appropriate policy, because you didn't have backup, those things,
that seems to be a much larger issue than just two employees not doing what they said they
Speaker 80
39:02
were trained to. Well, in this case here, on our weekends, no one is supposed to go out of that back gate. No one. That's written. But I had a person open the gate. So it wasn't a system failure. I had a person that chose to open that gate, and he wasn't supposed to open it.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
39:24
Senator Gilmore. Well, I have more thoughts on that, but we've belabored the point,
so I don't think we're going to get – well, I'm going to
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
39:40
gravity's working. I mean, Representative Rose, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Beatty was going
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
39:48
down a line of questions that I was interested in as well. Do you
recall how recent prior to the prison break that the policy or the protocol was changed,
that no longer allowed unsupervised prisoners on that back deck to clean the boiler, or whatever it was behind the kitchen? I
Speaker 98
40:10
don't know the exact date, but it was not long. No longer than a month or two. Was that something that was? That's when it was found that they were doing it. It was always the protocol. They couldn't allow them out there on supervised. But once the deputy warden and the warden found out that they were doing that, they made them sign
Speaker 217
40:31
a form and documentation showing that they've been told
that they cannot allow anybody on that
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
40:38
back dock. Um, so, and I could just be mistaken. That's the first, um, I'll, I'll defer to
anybody else in the committee. That's the first I'd heard that it was never allowed prior to that. I was of the understanding that it was a policy change recent, just before the actual prison break took place.
Speaker 129
40:56
No, sir. It was not a policy change. Once they, once
Speaker 98
41:00
they observed them violating policy, they made them science and Hey, you understand that you cannot let somebody on this back dock unsupervised.
I mean, that's just, that's natural, that's security 101. Why would you open the door and let somebody out the back door unsupervised? You're asking me the wrong question. Hey, I'm just saying that's just our protocols, yes, sir. We didn't need to change the policy. We just needed to make them aware that, hey, we've seen this, and this is what we want you to sign, saying that you understand you
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
41:29
can't let anybody out there. Since this prison break, have you guys followed, Have you followed a similar path with any other changes
or any other policies that were being breached or broken by any staff? Have you had staff members come in and sign something saying, we're not going to do ABC? Is there anything else? Not that I'm aware of. Like the guard tower letting people out or anything like that? Not that I'm aware of, no,
Speaker 98
41:53
sir. It was in their post orders, and they signed for it every day saying that I'm not letting anybody out of this gate. So they have to sign saying that they've read understood their post orders every day they've
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
42:05
all that were that was taking place prior to this
prison break yes okay so what i'm saying is you had somebody who violated a policy that you recently reinforced by signature in the kitchen correct correct okay so the policy that was violated from the tower how did you guys reinforce to the staff that that shouldn't be done well we just discussed it with the
Speaker 80
42:26
staff it's already in the policy and every day they have to sign their log
Speaker 98
42:30
they fill out a log every day okay they have to sign i've
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
42:35
read and understand my post orders we didn't have necessarily a policy that the kitchen supervisors signed every day
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
42:42
yes all right all right thank you thank you mr chair since gear
more you think otherwise and you back in the
Speaker 225
42:52
queue all right so you're recognized thank you mr chair see
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
42:55
i was going to let it go and uh you just prompted me so here i am director thank you for being here thanks for your service i i too have trouble with this uh last time you were here we had some of the similar line of questioning i think it is very safe to say and i understand what everyone has said two people
didn't follow the job that can be true two things can be true and those two things are yeah people didn't do their job but also there should be checks and balances to ensure that people do their job where are those checks and balances and i know i know what the answer is going to be and respectfully sir i just don't think that cuts it for me and what i mean by that is clearly there should be supervision there are things that we talked about last time of like how did he get the markers to dye his shirts i i don't i still am boggled by that like i have no
idea i don't think you can even explain that because you didn't last time no offense but like i think you can understand and and what i think is really funny in all of this is the fact that you've changed protocols and procedures point to the very nature of what we're saying here that policies and procedures needed to change or you wouldn't change them is that correct you don't just change policies unless you think they need to be changed unless you do because that's another issue no we don't change them unless unless we think that they're broken thank you so we've One second. So in this scenario, you felt like policies and procedures needed to be changed based on what happened.
Speaker 230
44:28
Yes. Thank you. Representative Crawford. Thank you,
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
44:39
Mr. Chair. Thank you for being here. Yes, ma'am. Director Payne. We had discussed last time, too, about video, about cameras being on the back dock.
and is that going to be something that you put in your reports for how to keep this from happening again? Yes, ma'am. We definitely need more cameras.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
44:58
Okay. Yes, ma'am. All righty. Thank you.
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
45:05
Yes, ma'am. Just going to follow up again. That back dock is viewable from the guard tower, correct? Yes, sir. And that guard tower is staffed how often? 24 hours a day. 24-7, so 24-7 you had eyes on that back dock and that's how you knew that someone was allowing the inmate Harden to access that dock during the day, is that correct?
Speaker 80
45:29
No sir, not from the towers from actual camera footage inside the facility that went out the back door, yes sir. So you
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
45:37
had camera footage, your guy in the tower, could he see him on the back
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
45:43
dock? Yes. Okay, so I just want to make certain that we do have 24-hour human eyes that can view that back dock and know when someone's out there. And I'm assuming now with proper protocol and the fact that you've made it clear to everyone that no inmate is allowed on that dock alone,
that if someone in the guard tower sees an individual out there by themselves, that somebody's going to send an alarm or radio and someone's going to go out there and check on that situation. Is that correct? Yes, sir. That's correct.
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
46:21
All right. Uh, representative Rose was chair. Thank you. Uh, director Payne, would you say that the employees who have since been terminated, uh, recklessly permitted prisoner Hardin to escape or make an unauthorized departure from the prison? Yes.
Speaker 85
46:34
They made a horrible decision that day, uh, to open those gates and open that
Speaker 98
46:38
back door and allow them out by himself. Yes. That was a horrible
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
46:43
decision. Have there been any arrests or charges against those two employees? No sir not at this time. Because the way I describe that is is actually a criminal offense in Arkansas code for recklessly permitting the escape or unauthorized departure of a prisoner. I was curious why the Department of Corrections or the prison itself has not filed charges against those employees that were terminated
unless they feel like they're not responsible. Well
Speaker 98
47:11
I definitely feel like they're responsible But as I said before, I just got the critical incident review. We're trying to go through it now. And
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
47:20
sorry, I don't mean to cut you off. The critical incident review is one thing, but you guys terminated them for releasing the prisoner. Yes. Recklessly or however you want to determine that. But that's been a while back that you made that determination. Why has it been decided to not pursue further action against those individuals? Because we did not have all the information.
Speaker 80
47:39
And what we do, once we get all the information, we submit the entire report to the state police for prosecution or
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
47:48
possible prosecution if needed. So when they were terminated, you were uncertain whether it
Speaker 98
47:52
was reckless or not? No, sir. I was certain it was reckless at that time. However, I wasn't done with the entire report, and we submit the entire report. Let's just say we had more people that need to be prosecuted. We submit the entire report so we can do it all at one time.
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
48:09
I'll yield back at this time, but I would think expediency would be more beneficial than delay. But thank you. Members,
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
48:20
I see no one else in the queue, so last shot if you've
got a question. All right. Then we'll move right on to the next discussion. It's item D. and that's going to be a discussion regarding the number of inmate deaths at Arkansas Correctional Facilities
and Director Payne, if you'll present some
Speaker 80
48:46
information to us in this area. So far this year, the Division of Correction, we've had 82 inmate deaths, and that comes with a number of causes, cancer, heart disease, pneumonia. We've had drug use deaths. We've had a lot of deaths. Unfortunately, we've got a large population, 82 deaths out of 16,000 or so inmates is what we've had so far this year.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
49:14
Do you have some breakdown on that? You mentioned cancer or other things, cause of death for
Speaker 247
49:23
those 82? Let's see. I may have some information.
Speaker 80
49:36
Let's see. okay yes sir I do I do have a breakdown of those deaths 18 18 of those were
drug-related two were homicides 42 were natural 16 are still pending with the Arkansas State Crime Lab five was suicide and one was undetermined by the the Arkansas State Crime Lab. All right, thank
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
50:04
you. Representative Bray, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chairman,
Representative David Ray
Unverified
50:10
and I appreciate those numbers. I guess my question would be, without any context of what prior years death totals look like,
it's hard for us to process that information and know whether that's, whether these numbers are consistent with previous year's data or if there's some issue that needs to be addressed. Obviously, if you have a population of 16,000 inmates, a certain percentage are going to die of natural causes. But I guess in particular on like the drug-related deaths, the homicides, things of that nature that are not natural, how do these numbers compare with previous years?
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
50:53
So I don't have the breakdown from previous years, but I do have the total deaths from previous years. In 2024, there were 94, and in 2023, there
Speaker 253
51:04
were 92. And that's total of all causes? All causes, yes, sir.
Speaker 106
51:08
Okay. And we're at 84 so far this year. Okay. If you have the
Representative David Ray
Unverified
51:14
data, the breakdown for maybe the last five years or so, that might be helpful for members to be able just to look at for comparison
sake. Thank you. Yes sir. Co-chair McKee.
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
51:29
Thank you Mr. Chair. So it looks like close to a full quarter of those deaths are not from
natural causes. Is that about right? About yes sir that's about right. So what kind of programs are you working on to help mitigate some of those things like drugs and suicide and homicides so one of the things that we've done
Speaker 155
51:53
with suicide uh that's really helped us our suicide numbers right now are
Speaker 80
51:58
at five this year uh in the past we've averaged around 11 or 12 per year they've kind of gone down uh as you know the legislature approved a contract for our uh medical provider well path to provide mental health services for us, too, and they are able to staff their mental health positions a lot better than we were, and it seems to be working with the programs that they're putting in for their inmates. Our drug treatment programs have been evaluated by our doctor,
and our doctors made some changes to those. We've updated, upgraded some of our programs, such as our substance abuse treatment programs. We've updated it and made it evidence-based, and now it's called our SERS program, but it's evidence-based off our Thinking for a Change, which is an evidence-based program. So
Speaker 153
52:50
that's the direction we're headed in, trying to make all of our programs evidence-based this time. Okay, and
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
52:58
do you know how these numbers compare
to other similarly-sized systems, prison systems? No, sir, I don't. I
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
53:18
don't? Okay. representative Tosh you're recognized thank you mr. thank you mr. chairman director Payne thank you for being here today yes sir and I know the topic is inmate deaths and I think you related to us 82 I believe is what I jotted down I'm just curious have we had any correctional officers or employees
there in the correctional facilities have any of them lost their lives in the line of duty during this same period
of time yes sir I had an employee just about a week and a half ago lose his life in the
line of duty at the Cummins unit okay what about injuries how many correctional facility employees would you say during this same period of time that have received injury injuries while on duty Representative Tosh I
Speaker 129
54:04
don't have that number but I can definitely get it
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
54:07
for you. I'm just curious so I think we're going to talk about you know as we visit and talk about the number of inmate deaths I think it should be pointed out also we don't need to forget those that are there you know that are employed the correctional officers that we need to also review exactly how many of them are been placed in harm's way during the same period of time yes sir i agree thank you for that thank you yes sir senator
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
54:39
tucker thank you mr chair this is related to our discussion but not
exactly on point but it makes me think of it i know in arkansas under the law at least we have a compassionate release program for the department of corrections i'm just curious about what the state of that is in practice. I mean, when I hear 84 deaths and, you know, we're not, we're not even halfway through August yet, that, that number surprised me. And so, uh, I'm, I'm curious about what the practice of our compassionate
Speaker 153
55:10
release program is. Yes, sir. We, we do, uh, compassionate release. Uh, basically what happens is, uh, two doctors have to, uh, basically say that person's
got between six and 12 months uh left to live and uh if he meets the criteria he or she meets the criteria that will be forwarded to my office for review and once i review it it's forwarded to the post-prison transfer board for possible release okay i know i'm
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
55:34
putting you on the spot and that's not my goal but do you know on a year-to-year basis approximately the number of individuals who are released through compassionate release no sir i don't know that total okay uh again i'm putting you on the spot i understand so but would you ask your office
to maybe just get those numbers for us over the last three four years something like that and if you'll send it to staff then they'll distribute it out to the members of this committee will that work yes sir thank you director payne all right
Representative Chad Puryear
Unverified
56:08
thank you representative purrier yes sir thank you chair so of the drug overdose deaths mentioned are these all and i apologize if i missed
are Are these from illicit drug overdoses or like a malpractice overdose? Oh, these are illicit drug. And
Speaker 276
56:22
that was how many? There was a total of 18.
Speaker 277
56:26
Okay. Well, that seems to be an issue.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
56:36
So thank you. I agree. Yes, sir. Representative Rose, you're recognized. Thank
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
56:41
you, Mr. Chair. As we have been discussing the drug-related issues, I was curious if you're aware of any drug delivery-related arrests outside the prisons that are connected to drugs coming into the prisons.
Has anything taken place that's led to arrests outside the prisons? Yes,
Speaker 80
57:03
sir. I know we have a young lady, and I don't want to mention her name at this time, but we have a young lady who's currently incarcerated with us, who was operating
Speaker 281
57:13
a large drug operation and providing drugs through the mail to multiple facilities within Arkansas. Well,
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
57:20
I had a question, but you led me to another one.
How do drugs come in the mail and then get to the prisoners?
Speaker 80
57:31
Basically, what we're having an issue with is books right now. We've stopped the mail process. What we do now, we were getting it bad with letters, and we changed that process, and what we do now is copy the letters and give the inmates the copies, and we destroy the originals. So now they've gone to doing it in books. So when they order books, basically what they do is the person operating, selling the drugs may say, hey, tell the inmate, hey, it's on page 48 and on page 296.
we can search for that we can look for that but we don't always catch it
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
58:11
do you have an approved vendor list that that literature is able to come by mail can
people like only send books if it's from say amazon or walmart or something like that
Speaker 98
58:21
yes sir it's got to be from a certified book publisher it's got to be a bookstore yes sir it can't it can't be mom just
Speaker 153
58:28
sending it from her house. It has to be from a publisher. So I know I'm going
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
58:35
off in left field here. I apologize. But so if somebody
walks into, say, a Bible bookstore and they want to send a Bible to a prisoner,
Speaker 283
58:45
can they do that from the bookstore? Yes, they can buy the book. They can buy the Bible and the bookstore
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
58:51
should be the one sending it to the inmate. Okay. And my original follow-up on this was you mentioned this large operation where you've got this gal now incarcerated with you. Have the drugs that have been coming into the prison, has that decreased?
Speaker 190
59:06
I think so. I think it's decreased. But, of course, just because she's incarcerated doesn't mean that they've
Speaker 98
59:11
stopped trying to get it in. Sure. You said that you think that
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
59:15
they have decreased. Do you have a way to statistically show us that? I can check and
Speaker 286
59:20
see if I can pull reports to show that. um i would like
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
59:24
to put that on staff's radar just to add
that to i know you've getting a lot of requests but put that on a request list for the director thank you mr chair representative tosh
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
59:37
thank you mr chairman director just uh one quick question when there's an inmate's death what is it not part of the protocol that if you feel like that death might have been foul play that that you involved at that time do you not call the state police and they conduct a criminal investigation or is that totally uh internally i i was thinking that if uh there
was suspicion of something that the death may have been uh foul play involved as i said that then you involved the state police and i guess i'm curious is that true is that still true yes sir that's true but we call
Speaker 98
1:00:20
state police on any death no matter what it is we contact state police for any death even if it's obvious the death is
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
1:00:27
from natural cause you still yes sir involve them yes sir but we
Speaker 98
1:00:30
tell them that this is a natural cause and we give them the chance to say whether they want to come out and look at it or not okay and
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
1:00:39
and if i understand correctly and i remember at
one time you had a real issue at the prison with people that uh I think the reason you had to stop the mail and you correct me I'm just curious that they were lacing those envelopes with uh fentanyl and then of course obviously the inmates were using that and there was no way for you to detect that but I thought with uh new technology over the last couple of years that y'all were able to detect that is it they attempted uh you know to you know to send that through uh in those envelopes Am I mistaken about that?
Speaker 80
1:01:16
What we've done, we've started copying all of the mail that comes through. We copy it. So the inmate only gets to
Speaker 98
1:01:22
copy. The actual original letter that comes through is shredded and discarded. But I am correct. At one point, that
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
1:01:28
was a problem because they were lacing those envelopes with that, and that's how the inmates were having access to it. Yes, sir. And y'all stopped at this point. Yes,
sir. Good call. Okay, thanks, sir. Yes, sir. We find ourselves in an empty queue again.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:01:46
So, Director Payne, one last chance if members have any questions. Representative Matt Brown. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Director, when did you all start shredding the mail? 2017. So, follow up, Mr. Chair.
Speaker 291
1:02:02
So those 18 deaths, I think you said it's happened since then. How are they getting the drugs in that case? Mainly through books. But I thought earlier you testified that the books are coming from Amazon.
Speaker 98
1:02:16
When did that start? That's been the process the whole time, sir. But unfortunately, we have bad actors that may be employed at Amazon or, you know, they're not totally good people either.
Speaker 291
1:02:30
So people that work at Amazon and other bookstores are the ones now smuggling the drugs
Speaker 98
1:02:35
through books into the jail? Well, I don't want to say that they are, but
Speaker 80
1:02:40
they're coming through the books, and they're purchasing the books through those different companies. And we're in the process, right now I'm in the process of Securus is our telephone provider,
and they provide tablets to our inmates. So right now what I'm in the process of doing is having the mail digitally scanned and put on their tablets so we don't get any paper mail, and I'm trying to get a bookstore also, so they can't purchase any books to actually send the books in. So once we get all that worked out, I think we'll have a pretty good plan. place thank
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
1:03:13
you mr. chair representative Collins you're recognized thank
you mr. chair director isn't it right I mean Amazon is sometimes a direct seller but
also a third-party marketplace yes sir you've got booksellers and you may find inmates who know a certain book seller is going to send them something they want so I guess the follow-up question to that would be do you vet these booksellers or just any old bookseller that if they're on Amazon they can send it
Speaker 80
1:03:40
yes unfortunately if they're on amazon they can send them and you're exactly correct uh we had an issue where a third party uh there was a book from my understanding there was a book that no one really wanted no one bought it no one ever purchased this book so they decided to buy
10 copies of that book uh and sent that
Speaker 98
1:03:57
book in particular book in well far be it
for me to make suggestions to you but i might
suggest only approved booksellers might be one way to go Yes, sir. All right. Yes, sir. Thanks. Thank you.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:04:10
Howard. Representative, I mean, Senator McKee. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
1:04:18
you, Director. Have employees been reprimanded or terminated? I'm right here. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That's okay. Yeah, I'm looking for you. Have employees in the past been reprimanded or terminated for smuggling things in in recent past?
Yes, sir. Is that something? Yes, sir. Is that something that's a regular occurrence pretty much? I mean,
Speaker 80
1:04:36
more often than you'd like, right? More, yes, definitely more often than I like, yes, sir. And we've contacted state police, and we've arrested employees. Yes, sir. Okay, when's the last time that happened? I don't know
Speaker 98
1:04:48
the exact, but probably within a month and a half ago. Really? Yes, sir. Okay, thank you. I'm pretty sure it was in July. Representative Breaux, you're recognized. Thank you, Chairman.
Representative Harlan Breaux
Unverified
1:05:02
I'm over here. What would happen if I wanted to send an inmate a Bible? I just have one here and want to mail it to him. What would happen there? The mail room should catch that
Speaker 129
1:05:15
Bible and not allow it to come in. Okay. Okay.
Representative Harlan Breaux
Unverified
1:05:19
So, I mean, what do you got to do to get a Bible, not the one I send, but some Bible? uh normally
Speaker 276
1:05:30
we have churches that donate bibles to us uh all the time uh but if if you wanted to
Speaker 106
1:05:36
order a bible you'd have to go through a uh a bookstore or
Representative Harlan Breaux
Unverified
1:05:40
publisher okay okay because i'm a gideon and that's what we do we distribute bibles and uh jails and whatever so i'm just wondering about that situation too so okay i couldn't just give him one no sir okay okay i just wanted to what the protocol was there thank you yes sir well looks
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:06:05
like we're back to an empty queue
senator gilmore was in there but i think you're saved by that phone so he stepped out to take a call so there are no other questions from the committee uh director we appreciate you coming today appreciate your honesty uh and answering and taking the time to um hear the concerns and questions of
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
1:06:27
the committee. Yes, sir. Thank you. Uh, and I think now we'll move to item E, which is an update on department of corrections policy implementations and inmate numbers. And I believe, um, uh, chief legal counsel, Tony Ryle will be making that presentation.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:06:54
ms rowell introduce yourself and uh you're free to begin chairman i think
Speaker 306
1:07:01
you give me too much credit for my math ability um so if it's okay i'm going to yield to miss wendy weir she's with cgl formerly of jfa associates and they've been doing our projections for a long time i was just
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:07:12
going with what i was told but but you and whoever you want to to present will be fine thank you just
please introduce yourself on the mic and you you may begin sure thing tawny rowell chief
Speaker 306
1:07:22
legal Council Department of Corrections yeah thanks Tony for the introduction my name
Wendy Ware
Unverified
1:07:29
is Wendy Ware I'm a senior vice president with CGL industries prior to that for the past 25 years I was with the JFA associates producing forecasts and correctional analysis for the state of Arkansas we were obtained we were obtained by CGL so now we do that work under that banner so as I said my name is Wendy Ware and I've been asked today to really give an overview of longer-term
trends in the Arkansas prison population as you're moving towards the construction project I was asked to really summarize where you've been where you're going how the forecasts have looked and what I've presented as last 15 years and then I prepared a little bit of an analysis as to why the prison population is growing and what's the assumptions behind our forecast. So that's going to sort of be the run of show. Just a little more about me. I have
spent the past 30 years exclusively doing correctional research and criminal justice research across the country. I have produced population forecasts in over 200 state and local jurisdictions through the course of my career and I have been providing this analysis for the state of Arkansas since 1994. So I have a good history with the state. I know a lot about what has happened legislatively, how that's affected the prison population in terms of admissions and sentencing. So hopefully that's gonna bring some context into what I'm
talking about today. So first when we look at a prison population whether it's growing or not and what makes up that population it is a two factors admissions and then how long they're going to serve so the number of individuals coming in the front door multiplied by how long they're going to serve whether they get out what their serving times is is going to equal your population so what we've done and as I said we're trying to present some really longer-term trends in this presentation I have appeared before this committee
many times before and we really just focus on the last three or four years but what we wanted to do today is give it some longer term historical context and since we've been doing it so long we have that background information so we're looking at admissions here so this is the number of individuals coming through the front door regardless of reason so straight from court whether it's a probation violation that's been revoked from court or a parole violator so this is everyone that's coming in the front door and let me just say up front when
we do a forecast we produce a total number of your total jurisdictional population so basically everything you're responsible for paying for as under the custody of the Department of Corrections whether they're in county jail or whether they're in a state facility so what we so we call it the jurisdictional population so it's regardless of housing location so it's basically everyone the state is responsible for housing in that prison setting so this represents admissions into that as you see there was a decline
from 2010 to 2013 that is act 570 I will talk a little bit more about that when we get into the forecast and the performance of it we saw a big increase in admissions in 2013 that coincides with the zero tolerance policy for parole violators and again i'll talk about that a little bit more we saw a dip in admissions in 2020 due to covid restrictions and court slowdowns that's pretty standard from what we are seeing nationwide and then it's been increasing since then as you sort of go back to normal when the courts start
to catch up and those admissions get processed into the doc so if we look at that sort of total 13 14 year trend it's been a admissions into the facilities into prison has been growing by about Just shy of two and a half percent a year So it's sort of a you know We even out the ups and downs from various policy changes. It's sort of a consistently growing Number of people coming in the front door So what does that translate into in terms of individuals in the jurisdictional population?
People you're responsible for you see sort of the same sort of trend that we talked about a decrease as a result of act 570 an increase with the zero tolerance policy for parole violators in 2013 we saw a dip in 2020 but since 2020 you really can see that there is a very a pretty good clip a pretty strong increase every year in the prison population um since 2020 that's been an increase of 5.5 percent okay so when we talk about forecasting
we talk about trends I wanted to give you a good historical perspective but if we just look at you know since COVID or since COVID really um averaged out in 2021 you've got some pretty strong indicators of increased need uh in the prison population I like to present this which is just the annual change year in year out so it's just a different display of the bars that we just saw but you can see sort of some big jumps in some years some decreases in other years if you look
at that covid year and then immediately after act 570 but overall again the prison population is growing by about two percent per year for the past 13 14 years okay so that's
Chair
Unverified
1:13:14
a pretty consistent increase. So as I mentioned, I'm
Wendy Ware
Unverified
1:13:21
going to talk about the forecast and then I'm going to talk about what goes into that forecast and why we're looking at that historical growth and then why we're looking at sort of continued growth. I referenced those policy changes and they show
up here online. So what we've done is we've taken all of our forecasts since 2010, strung them together to see a how well we're performing with what the prison population is doing those are in our bars the line being the forecast and then what that looks like for the future so while it's not perfect forecasting is certainly not an exact science we're doing pretty well in terms of mirroring the growth in the prison population having said that and this this chart
goes back to 2005, so we're looking at a total of about 30 years on this chart. If we look at just 2005 to 2024 historical, that growth rate is, again, just over 2% per year. And then what's being forecast is very, very similar at that 2% per year. One thing, there are two lines on this forecasted chart. the what we would call a base forecast and then the final forecast which
includes the protect Arkansas Act in our capacity with the state we also do the legislative impact assessments when bills are proposed and what the impact is going to be on the prison population and costs so you can see that the protect Arkansas Act is going to have an impact really beginning in about it's going to be a while it's going to be about six or seven years as that those targeted individuals who are already serving a long time and then they're
going to serve even longer so we're not going to see a full impact of that for another five to six years but then you're going to see that that's going to increase the prison population growth even more so for looking at 2035 and this number isn't on this last dot but you're just sigh of 26,000 okay I'm
Chair
Unverified
1:15:41
gonna go into some of the reasons that we're seeing that continued growth and
Wendy Ware
Unverified
1:15:46
I'm sure as anyone who pays attention to the news or anything like that knows that some other states are seeing decreases in their inmate populations some have made strong policy changes to reduce or dramatically reduce their prison populations but Arkansas is growing and it's continuing to grow so I want to give you a why part of what we do when we do our forecasting is we have a proprietary simulation model where we feed in a lot of data so we're not just
doing a statistical forecast but we can also we can sort of pinpoint and tell you why there are certain growth trends up or down one of the biggest ones is and we're comparing sort of pre-covid numbers to to our most recent data points in 2023 is that the average total sentence to serve is going up okay so for comparing and these are broken down by the seriousness seriousness levels from the sentencing guidelines which is how individuals are sentenced
this is their total sentence to serve so if they have multiple charges and serve towards the that are running concurrently this is their total sentence to serve for all charges and they're assigned to their highest near seriousness level as you see the average percent increase is positive for all seriousness levels so all sentences that we have seen over the last four years have gone up okay I've I've highlighted the ones in red that are over about four or five percent so those are some of
the bigger increases but sentences straight from court are going up okay so admissions are growing slowly but also the amount of time that they have to serve is going up okay the other piece of the puzzle when we talk about admissions are these parole violators and so these are parole violators returned with a new charge they make up the overwhelming majority of parole violators admitted to prison there are a handful of parole technical violations but they
are very very small so we focus on individuals who are admitted to prison with a parole revocation but they also have new charges assigned to that and as you see starting in between starting in 2013 there was a zero tolerance policy applied to parole violators you see the number of parole violators represented in those blue bars go up and stay up okay they peaked at about 5,900 in 2017 but we are still seeing between 4,800 and
5,000 of these parole violators admitted with new charges I point them out separately as individuals committed directly from court because when they returned for a parole violation they often have time attached to that parole violation plus the new charges so when we're talking about increased serving time in prison we're not just talking about straight from court judges handing out higher sentences or sentences going up for plea deals with multiple charges
or criminal history these parole violators who are making up about 50 percent of everyone coming through the front door have those new charges plus some time from their parole violation so it's a stacking that goes on top of that as you see as I mentioned you're at 51 percent in our 2023 data if we go back to 2010 before the zero tolerance policy parole violators only made up about 35 percent so that's just sort of illustrating how some of these policy changes
have changed the dynamic and increased the need for prison bed space um to further discussion about serving time uh there are inmates serving 70 mandatory time in prison for some offenses if we look back to 2014 i've got 2019 on this chart as well as 2023 you can see that the number of individuals admitted for this 70% really hasn't changed that much. It's only about 300, 330,
not a really big increase in the number that are coming in. But if you look at the sentences that have been given to those individuals, they have increased dramatically, furthering sort of that narrative of longer time to serve. But the end of the year, so that's the number of individuals in the sitting prison population who have a 70% mandatory time. You've gone from 3,000 to 4,000. So that's the stacking effect that happens when individuals get long time and that they have to serve in the facility.
In 2014, 70%ers made up 17% of the prison population. In 2023, they made up 23%. So you can see that stacking as I'm talking about, and it's creating an increased need for bed space. this case because of the 70 percenters that protect Arkansas Act which I referenced briefly before we did the official impact assessment for this a couple years ago and have built that into the forecast as I showed you so
that is going to create an additional need if estimates play out of 15 to 2,000 beds in those out years as I said they have to start stacking up because they They were already serving seven years, five years, 10 years. Now they're gonna be serving 12, 15, 20. So it's gonna take some time for that impact to be felt, to be seen in the forecast, to be felt in prison bed space needs. But I wanna stress, and we stressed this when we did the impact assessment,
it's highly dependent on sentences imposed, changes to plea agreements, and future crime and clearance rates. So when we did our impact of this, What we see in other places who pass similar truth in sentencing or mandatory serving times, the sentences that get handed down are adjusted down because they will be serving longer in prison under these. So we have built in some of those assumptions, but we have to see how it works out.
We also, in other jurisdictions that have done that, we see plea agreements changing and individuals being more willing to plead to charges not in the 85% to 100% serving time. So it's something that we'll watch in the future, but that impact could change based on how it plays out in the courts. So when we talk about length of stay, there's two mechanisms.
There's the sentences and the time that they have to serve, and then there's the release mechanism. In Arkansas, there's a transfer eligibility date based on what's issued in the sentencing guidelines as the earliest date that can be released. And then prior to March of 2020, there was an emergency release mechanism called EPA releases. prior to 2023 when that was eliminated by the governor there were about 2200 individuals who were released early between 90 days and six months earlier than that te date and since that
has been discontinued now those individuals are serving longer okay the elimination of epa has increased the prison population to our estimates between 400 and 550. The other part of the release mechanism is that transfer eligibility date that I mentioned, and so we've mapped this out. We calculate how many individuals are released on time,
so at that date that the parole board decides they can go out and then if they are not released how long until they are released it was hovering at about 50 percent of individuals were held beyond that date and started out about six months and has been creeping up and you see in 2023 83, 10 months, and 83% of individuals are held beyond their transfer eligibility date,
so the date that they're given in the Sentencing Guidelines for their earliest release potential is not being met, and they're serving an extra 10 months past that date before they're being released.
Chair
Unverified
1:24:36
So that's adding more time onto their time. So with all of that, I
Wendy Ware
Unverified
1:24:46
think you can see how we got to where we are with the forecast and what the expectations are.
I know there's a lot of conversation about the new facility and the number of beds that are being needed in the future, but we don't really look at capacity numbers when we do this, we don't wanna know. don't
Chair
Unverified
1:25:03
want to fit to how many beds you have we tell you how many beds you're going to need so I guess I'll take questions if there are any senator Tucker you're recognized thank you mr. chair and thank you all for all
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
1:25:25
of the information if you haven't already or could you provide this to Colby so Colby you could send this PowerPoint out to everybody unfortunately My eyes aren't exactly what they used to be, so I can't read everything quite as clearly as I would like. Would you go back to the slide with the breakdown between parole and new admissions? Yeah, so parole is in blue, right, and new admissions are in orange? Correct. I was curious. I have two questions about this slide. One is where probation fits into this.
Speaker 320
1:25:58
Is that included with parole? Probation
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
1:26:01
is included in new commitments. Are they included in new commitments? That's correct. Okay. So if we were actually wondering about recidivism, for example, then it would be more than just
the blue. It would eat into the orange component if we're
Speaker 323
1:26:18
talking about. If you include probation in recidivism,
Speaker 320
1:26:24
yes. Okay. But I will tell you that dual supervision, so probation, there are individuals on both supervision, suspended probation and parole.
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
1:26:33
They are within parole. okay fair enough and you said the slide does not include technical
Speaker 327
1:26:40
violators they are included in parole violators they just do not make up a large
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
1:26:46
portion the ones who are admitted for technical violations do not make up a large portion okay but there's no slide in this slide deck that says exactly what portion they make
up no but that can be provided okay that
would be great I'm curious how community corrections facilities fit into this whole framework.
I know there's separate divisions within the entire department, but, um, I mean, it's, they are directly related in terms of population. And we've, we've also changed laws when, as to community
corrections eligibility and that sort of thing. So curious about that. senator tucker
Speaker 306
1:27:28
um just because miss ware doesn't get um maybe the entire picture of of how the data transition is going and we've not yet had our update on legislative changes from this session
we'll say that this data is not um from 2025 yeah it's is it 2023 or 2024 okay so this is based on 2023 data that she analyzed last year she's still working on the data from 2024 that she's going to analyzed for this year um until 2023 community correction centers were actually projected at a peaking factor and that was on the supervision projections not the secured population so that's not going to be accommodated in this at all at this
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
1:28:11
point okay yes and so like
for example the number of 70 percenters that you had listed that was for
23 that's before the protect act was
Chair
Unverified
1:28:22
in effect that's correct that's correct okay but they'll still be in there next year they just won't be admitted as 70 percenters anymore if that makes sense yeah okay
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
1:28:32
um i'll i'll get back in the queue if i want to ask more questions mr chair but uh one thing i just want to note for the benefit of the members is well i so you you did say sorry 5.5 percent
since covet that's per year correct for growth yes and it was over two percent since 2010 correct yeah and just for the benefit of the members of the committee i just want to note that the rate of population growth in arkansas since 2010 is 0.3 percent per year
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:29:08
so thank you mr chair thank you senator uh representative ray
Representative David Ray
Unverified
1:29:14
you're recognized thank you mr chairman so i'm over here to your right. In the inmate projections that you were showing us, you mentioned or you
talked about the length of sentencing and the parole reforms and all of those sorts of things as factors. My question is just about population growth in general. Does that, how is that factored into your projections with us being a net inbound state for
Wendy Ware
Unverified
1:29:43
migration so we do look at demographic growth in the state we look for a correlation between that as well what is considered the at-risk population which is males 18 to 44 which
is the most crime pro actually the crime prone and incarceration population for crime it's actually males 18 to 34 but for incarceration it's 18 to 44. So we we do look at both of those and we look for a correlation between the two but we we don't usually find a strong one. Prison incarceration is a policy decision and it's a it's not directly correlated to population in the state.
okay thank you representative Collins you're recognized thank you mr. chair so regarding the TE date and
the change from prior to 2023 and then in 2023 so can you describe a little bit what may be going on there why is such
a jump in the number who were being delayed and also the length of the
Wendy Ware
Unverified
1:30:57
delay sure some of it is the EPA releases because EPAs were released ahead of their TE date
either a month or two before or some after so some of it is this elimination of the early releases but some of it is just sort of a natural tick up in the board not granting at that transfer eligibility date I can't speak for the board but in the past some of the information we've seen is lack of of programming well they'll say you have to complete a particular program that's not available or they're on a wait list or it's not in their facility we have seen some of that in the past
or they're not in the right classification level to be released to the street there's a variety of reasons we don't have that data we've only looked at in the past but some of that 2023 jump is because of the early releases being terminated. Okay, and that's helpful
for me to understand. But you're saying that one of the other things would be that they would be essentially said they could be released, but they would need to complete programming that doesn't exist?
Wendy Ware
Unverified
1:32:09
The board is just denying them for whatever reasons. We've just heard that a lot in the past.
But that's what it really is. It's a board decision to not release them until that point.
Speaker 349
1:32:24
Correct. Okay, thanks. Representative Roy yes sir thank
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
1:32:29
you mr. chairman no when a person is on parole they have to meet once a month I think to speak to the parole officer and I think that there's a charge of
$25 would it help do you think if we could work on that fee to maybe make it to where some of these folks may
Speaker 191
1:32:52
not have the $25. Representative, I'll take
Speaker 306
1:32:58
that one for Ms. Ware. Director Cheek at the Division of Community Correction does a very good job of working with offenders who have a legitimate inability to pay, and we're happy to have that conversation and provide more details about that to you offline
if you're interested. But they do have fee waivers where they're not required to if they have a real inability to
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
1:33:20
pay that fee. Well, the reason I ask a question is I know a person that is in low income and they really don't have the $25, and I just wonder if there's something that we could do to kind of help that situation, I want to make sure they show up to that parole officer. Absolutely.
Speaker 331
1:33:40
We can get that offender's information and see if that's something that we can look
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
1:33:45
into for you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
okay are there any other questions from committee members so mr. I think part of this update was supposed to be about Corrections policy implementations so if we can move into that a little bit I know that we passed some legislation this last session that dealt with some programming and some classification and
things like that are you prepared to talk about any
Speaker 306
1:34:19
of that well representative i had spoken or senator i'm sorry you're sitting in the wrong chair um i'd spoken to representative baity um i've got something that i put together in writing and was hoping i could just distribute that i want to make sure that i'm getting sure the the most up-to-date information from everybody that'd be fine he hadn't communicated that with me so that's fine okay thank you so much okay so
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
1:34:39
you'll get that to our staff and yes i'll send it
Speaker 353
1:34:42
to colby hopefully he's got a lot you guys are
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
1:34:45
going to be getting a of emails this week okay if there's no other questions from the committee then we'll let you
go and we appreciate you being here thank you so much thank you all right members we're uh as henry the eighth said to his fourth wife we won't be keeping you long we're on the last member next to other business if we could get mr jim bell from the hidden creek re-entry center to come up Mr. Bell, if you'd introduce yourself, you'll be recognized, and then if you want to dive
on into educating us on what you do, and then we'll let members ask questions. Push the
button right up there on the machine. There
Speaker 363
1:35:50
you go. Okay. My name is Jim Bell, and I'm the owner of a reentry facility in West Leroy. It's called Hidden Creek. We've been in business doing this for about 10 years.
The reentry facilities were set up several
Speaker 365
1:36:08
years ago for people that are 18 months from release from prison or less. So they have to be in the mode of we're getting out of here in 18 months. Those folks are then chosen by the state correction system and sent to us or one of the other five reentry facilities. And when they come to our facility, they have a six-month sentence.
If they do what they're supposed to do for six months, and if they were all sent on the 18-month from release, the last 12 months goes away. So they serve six months instead of 18. Now what makes our facility so successful is a series of things that I want to show to you. Number one, when an inmate comes
to us, he has to have a job and we get him a job. A lot of people think that an inmate or a released inmate is very difficult to find a job. That's bunk. That's easy. We have employers begging us to send more of our inmates. You probably wonder, why would that be true? Well, they know they're going to be there every day. We take them. We're going to pick them up every day and take them back.
They're drug tested twice a week. So if they know they're going to be there and they're drug tested, they can't have a cell phone, they can't smoke, they can't drive. So they're going to be at work every day. They know if they lose that job, they're going back to prison. So we've got folks that have a chance for six months to completely change their life. Three years ago, we ran a recidivism rate on the seven years before, I think, or seven years in a row. And our recidivism rate
was 23%. I don't know what it is today because we haven't rerun it. But 23% compared to the state is phenomenal. If it were 40%, I'd say that's phenomenal. But what's happened is that if you have an inmate that comes to us, we're required to save his paycheck for him until he leaves the prison. All he does is pay a $500 a month rent, and the rest we save for him. So he has between
$7,000 and $10,000 the day he leaves. So the guy at our facility that's doing that compared to the person that's leaving the ADC with a $100 check and going to some small town without a driver's license it ought to be that our recidivism rate is less now there are things that we do that are not required and i'm going to give i want to give those to you because
Speaker 363
1:39:14
those are the success stories in in order in order to make our program work they have to
Speaker 365
1:39:21
do certain things we have five
meetings a day in our facility that they must attend three of those and there are things like life skills economics all kinds of different things there are aa meetings na meetings celebrate recovery meetings that we have people come and take them to we have three churches that come and pick them up on sunday mornings so we're trying to say to these people here is the way life should be when you leave compared to the state system where none
of this is available i understand that you can't do that in a state system but if there were more if there were more of these facilities and there's only 200 and some odd some odd beds in this system throughout the state and we only have 60 beds now the problem is the beds aren't being filled the system is not sending us the inmates we had 20 vacancies as of today out of 60 beds that's not right that's too easy
but it's not being done we only get 800 a month from the state to house the inmate plus 500 from the inmate. So that's $1,300. Now, we make sure that every inmate before he leaves has got his ID, social security card, driver's license, and in many cases, a car. We go find them cars because if they don't have transportation and they're sent out to wherever, we know they're
not going to make it. So we have things that we do that we're not required to do because we want our folks to be successful and having done this for 10 years i've owned the building for five years i managed it for a charity for five years before that our church bought the building and then sold the building to me the people that run that are professionals the woman that's been in charge of that for 10 years is the best there is she knows what she's doing makes these folks work. We have employers that say to us, since we know these people are going to be here,
please send us more employees. Now, one of the kickers to this, when this thing opened up, I'm the one that went around to various employers and said, would you please hire some of these people? It wasn't easy, but it was amazing when I said, did you know that you get paid to hire these people? They said, what's that mean? I said, well, there's a $400 a month tax credit for every inmate you hire if you will hire him for six months which is the time he's at our facility i said the way i figured that that's twenty four hundred dollars and i'll never forget
this factory over in maumelle said well send me ten of your guys he's going to save twenty four thousand dollars off his taxes now that's not a that's not a tax deduction that's a tax credit so anybody that's in the employer field that we get to and explain that getting these folks jobs is easy but that can be true anywhere in the state because they're going to leave our facility they're going to go somewhere else we beg them do not go back to where you came from if it's a small town it ain't going to work because here's what happens your community there
is what criminals drug addicts and alcoholics you're going to go back to those same people and they all say oh no no this time i'm not and i'll go how in a small town of 5 000 are you not going to and they don't have a very good answer so my my goal in our facility is we're trying to change what we call the community outlook we've got to pick up a new community and we say here's where you get that if you go to aa meetings if you go to a church if you go to a gym you got three
places that you can pick communities from that you can learn to be like and they agree they say oh, we've got to do that. Do most of them? Yes. Do a lot of them? No. And the biggest problem is they sit there in our facility for six months, or actually for five months, and then we
Speaker 363
1:43:40
give them a one-month trial into the free world. But the key is to keep them from returning to their old people. Now, obviously in a town like Little Rock, we don't say move from Little Rock.
but if it were gurdon arkansas dumas you name it we say don't go back there there's no aa meetings there's no
Speaker 365
1:44:00
community that you can connect to therefore you're going to connect to the people you connected to before so having said all that i wish there were more of these facilities they're owned by individuals just like me doesn't cost the state a dime of real estate nothing because i own the building and all i'm getting from the state is currently 800
and the inmates paying 500 we've asked for a 200 increase for five years and hadn't heard a blip from anybody nobody said we can help and we don't know how to do that there used to be more of these facilities but they shut down because they can't operate there are other facilities that have empty beds besides ours what I would encourage you to do this week at 11 30 this Wednesday we're going to have a group of legislators come out to the facility I'd love for any of you to come do that
our building is so small it won't take you 30 minutes keep in mind we've got about 20 to 25 individual apartments that's that's what we have all of them
Speaker 363
1:45:05
with a bathroom all of them with a refrigerator it's not like the prison system and once you see that you understand why people that come there say i'll do anything to not go back to prison because it is completely different so all of a sudden they're in a facility that people are helping them get jobs and they know when they leave they're going to have money in their pocket and we go out and find people to
Speaker 367
1:45:29
sell them cars cheap therefore they've got transportation they've got ids got social security cards. Any questions?
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
1:45:42
Senator McKee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Bell, for being
here. I want to commend you on the work that you're doing. I know the difference that you're making. You mentioned that you had 60 beds. Yes, sir. And as of yesterday, 20 of them were empty. That's correct. How many inmates would currently be eligible
Speaker 363
1:46:01
to fill those beds i'm going to use an example and that's all i can do if i were sitting in the facility that makes that decision i would look at a computer and say how many people are leaving in 18 months i think the answer is 700 it's going to be real close and what i've seen is about 20 of those typically qualify the other 80 don't obviously you've got to handpick people that you think have a chance of succeeding you're not going to have fights they're not going to whatever so you got technically 140 people from one month that
if you sit down with a computer you ought to
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
1:46:40
be able to pick 20 could be and and so do you do you uh regularly have
Speaker 370
1:46:46
open beds yes it's not just a this month oh no
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
1:46:49
no it was worse than that last month okay thank you
Representative Carlton Wing
Unverified
1:46:56
sir uh-huh representative wing you're recognized thank you Mr. Chair appreciate that Mr. Bell I've had the opportunity to be able to do your facility before and I've seen the great work that you do there my question is is what kind
of screening goes into the inmates that are eligible you know obviously there's a time frame 18 months or less on their on their term but is there any are there any additional screenings as far as eligibility to participate? The ones that I know about
Speaker 373
1:47:21
are they can't be a sex offender. We don't allow that. And
Speaker 365
1:47:26
that's because when we opened the facility, we had to agree not to do that. Number two, people that have had too many disciplinaries while they're in prison,
those are cold. We don't do that, but the system does. They tell us who's coming. We don't have any choice but to take whoever they put on the list generally speaking most of
Speaker 373
1:47:48
the inmates that we get fit what I would pick it's just I would pick
Representative Carlton Wing
Unverified
1:47:56
more of them and I guess to follow up on that so the folks that are coming have motivation to succeed and one of the proofs of that would be this is a very minimal security situation that they are in at your place and yet you have had
zero or next to zero issues with that i'm going
Speaker 373
1:48:15
to say in 10 years i think two people have left without approval i think it's two uh
Speaker 363
1:48:20
keep in mind our facility has no bars we technically don't have locked doors we have no guards we have no guns we have we have nothing that makes this look like a prison it used to be a uh i'm going to say a nursing home so all we did was put furniture in and built a commercial kitchen,
Speaker 365
1:48:41
and it looks just like it did probably when it was a nursing home. You have three to four inmates
Speaker 363
1:48:47
per apartment, so they have the privacy of their apartment. You have a community TV. They have ankle bracelets.
Speaker 365
1:48:53
We know where they are. They can't just take off and go somewhere, and it's just that they know the procedure that we put on them, and they don't bend it hardly ever because again if you're in prison you want to stay in our place you don't want to go back to prison
Representative Carlton Wing
Unverified
1:49:11
and that motivation is continues because if they perform well over that six months they they have skills that they did not have before they have money that they did not have before and then they also get the last 12 months of their term trimmed off which of course saves the state as well all of those are in play is that correct that's correct and so do we know why those beds are not being filled have you been told that there aren't enough people who qualify for this or what what if what are what is your understanding on this i wish i could tell you
that answer i do not know all right we've been fighting it for years and
Speaker 363
1:49:56
it hasn't been solved yet well hopefully we can we can help with that thank you very much one of the mathematical problems i want to share with you is we're required to have three people on staff for every 25 five inmates. Well, so that means if we have 50, we've got to have six. Well, if we have six employees and only have 40 inmates, we're paying people that we shouldn't be paying. And then if
you use the theory that we're going to get 60 in there, we've got to have nine employees. And if you only send us 40, you see the mathematical problem. And that's the juggling act of trying not to fire somebody trying to cut their hours whatever it takes to keep a decent staff and and this is what the the facility does it's 40 beds 35 beds 42 beds there ought to be a waiting list based on all logic I know there should be a waiting list of people saying I'm next to go
Speaker 375
1:50:48
to that facility you got 10,000 people to choose from all the people that are going to get out within the next
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:51:01
18 months, technically, is your base to choose
Representative David Ray
Unverified
1:51:08
from. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Ray, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Bell, like Representative Wang, I've been to your facility and toured it as well, and one of the things that really impressed me or stuck with me is through the –
the transportation that you do the employees to work from work the kind of the forced savings habits that you have with their um with their paychecks and so forth what you're really doing is you're you're sort of on a compulsory basis making them develop good habits um and that is something that i thought probably is a contributing factor to the lower recidivism that people who go through your re-entry facility C. So I just want to thank you for the work that you do. My question
is for staff. I know you have a long list of their questions to send to the department. I would like, from previous guests, I would like to request that the department respond in writing to some form of this question, which is why do they consistently not fully utilize this reentry facility and others like it if we have 20 open beds at this facility that's that's 20 lives that we could be moving toward a better path going forward if they're
going to be getting out soon and i'd just like to know from the department's perspective why they're not fully utilizing that and if they have plans to to do so in the future senator tucker
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
1:52:49
you're recognized thank you mr. chair mr. bell thank you for
being here and for everything that you do um i don't want to belabor the points but i think my colleagues have made a lot of the points you know senator mckee want to follow up on on his i want my colleagues to
understand not only do you regularly have empty beds but you made this point but other re-entry facilities have actually closed for lack of use. Right. Correct. Yes. Okay. Um, and I think representative Ray asked an excellent question, you know, from the department and I'm, I co-signed, uh, what, what he, what he said there, cause this is, this is an issue that as a legislative body, I believe strongly we need to fix. You talked about, uh, 800, the state pays you $800 a month.
and i've heard you say before at other times uh from a more macro standpoint how much the
state could save if we were utilizing these beds as opposed to a prison bed do you have those numbers handy
Speaker 363
1:53:49
with yes okay it costs us twenty one hundred dollars a month to keep somebody in the
Speaker 385
1:53:53
state prison system twenty one hundred dollars a month yes sir and ours is eight hundred so here's
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
1:54:01
the difference so thirteen hundred a month and if you multiply that out the the savings get
Speaker 363
1:54:06
to be pretty Well, and a mathematical example of that is if you were to take the people only that are 18 months from the door,
let's say you took those people and you sent all of those to us, per inmate, you're saving the state about $30,000 because you've eliminated the last 12 months plus you've saved the difference in $1,000 if we were making the $1,000 and $2,100. So you're saving the state about $30,000 for every one of those that came to us that was going
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
1:54:42
to get out in 18 months. And if we did that, for example, for 2,000 inmates, then we're talking about $60 million.
There you go. Okay. Like Representative Wing and Representative Ray, I've also been to your facility. I didn't know that tour was happening this week. I want to encourage everybody to take a tour that hasn't done it. Before I knew about that, I was going to suggest, and I mentioned this to Senator Gilmore, but to our co-chairs here, that we could have one of these meetings, subcommittee meetings at your facility sometime in the future. I'm certain that you would be open to that, but that way we could get everybody on the committee there. We could do a tour with everyone on the committee
before we conducted one of these meetings if you've got the space to host us
out there on one of these meetings one month. So, yeah. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much,
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:55:34
Mr. Bell, for what you do. Thank you, Mr.
Chair. Thank you, Senator. Representative Collins, you're recognized. Well, thank you, Mr. Chair. And I agree with everything that's been said. It really sounds like an impressive program and I can see how it would reduce the recidivism rate. I do want to just see if you have any additional kind of information, though, about whether it does reduce the recidivism rate
for this particular population that you're taking in? Because it seems like clearly you're taking in people who are in many ways predisposed to succeed because they have to be drug-free, they meet the qualifications from the department. Is there any kind of a baseline for that kind of high likelihood of success population that shows what their recidivism rate is? I know for the state overall, it's much higher. for that particular group do we have any information because i i see that it it likely
very likely works anecdotally and otherwise but that particular stat about the recidivism rate it's just it's not quite there for me because i feel like the baseline of recidivism is too high if you look at all of the inmates being released out of the system does that make sense yes well Well,
Speaker 363
1:56:49
I'll give you my opinion on that because that's all it is. There are people they do not allow to come to us that if they did, they probably would fail. Okay? So we're getting a select group of people.
There's no doubt about it. But we've had murderers. We've had all kinds of people with all kinds of crimes. It's not like we have just a bunch of drug addicts. It's all kinds. We had a guy leave two months ago that had been in prison 20 years for murder. So would I have thought he would make it? Probably not, but he is, and he's out there in Arkansas and has his own business. So there are reasons that our recidivism is better than the states because of what you just said.
There's a select group compared to just at random picking people out of the prison system. I agree. But, again, if our recidivism rate was 40%, it would be a home run. But at 23, if that's still true, which I can't validate, it's unbelievably good compared to the over 50% for the state. Okay. Well, thank you, and I look forward to coming out on
Wednesday. I'll be in the group. Thanks. Thanks. Representative Crawford, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
1:58:05
It's good to see you, Mr. Bell. Yes, thank you. I have been there as well and was very impressed by what all was going on there. A couple of questions. Senator Tucker hit on the money question answered that very well you guys also have mental health is that correct to some extent
Speaker 363
1:58:25
and I can't elaborate on what all that involves but yes so
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
1:58:32
you have that with those how many employers do you have um working probably about that will
Speaker 363
1:58:39
work with your probably about six or seven right now we could have more it's just that one of the problems remember is we have to take these people to and from work which is highly expensive so we got five or six vans sitting around running back and forth taking people to and from work some at night shift some daytime shift and there are people that say send us two of your guys and we don't because again we'd have to go to too many places so we're trying to consolidate the best we can uh my own country club uh pleasant valley country club says send us some more of these
guys they do great well that's close to us but we have factories that will take these guys for months at a time whereas a country club might be more seasonal and we don't want to get somebody in a job that we think he's going to lose in x months because most of these folks in our facility i shouldn't say most because i don't know that answer a lot of them stay and do exactly what they're getting paid to do because they're making 14 to 18 dollars or more per hour and they become good at what they're doing so they stay with the
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
1:59:42
employer right and we beg them to do that
that's good okay all right well
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:59:51
i will see you wednesday okay thank
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
1:59:56
you representative tosh you're recognized thank you mr chair miss bill thank you for the presentation and i've i've not had the privilege to be your to your facility so i like some of my colleagues so i apologize for that but you may have answered my question in in responding to representative crawford's question because i understood during your uh presentation that you that y'all go pick
them up at the inmates up wherever they're incarcerated is that correct no they bring them to us okay i thought said a while ago you provided transportation to and from work to and from work to and from church okay but so the department of corrections brings them to you on a daily basis they go i mean how's that work i don't know i'm confused a little bit do they they'll say we're bringing you for tomorrow do what they'll say we're
Speaker 373
2:00:47
bringing you for tomorrow they do okay i understand that
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
2:00:51
then do they come back and get them uh at the end of the day or
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
2:00:58
facility okay well i apologize for not understanding all this that's why i'm asking these questions so they stay in your facility yes okay
Speaker 370
2:01:05
this is nothing more than a prison it is
Speaker 363
2:01:08
a prison they don't get to leave and come and go and do what they want they're stuck there for five months and then they have a one month probationary period and it's over okay
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:01:24
thank you mr bell how many um vacancies did you say you have 20 right now 20 well we'll hope
that tomorrow they're going to bring you 20, 20 to fill those vacancies. With that, Representative Rye, you're recognized.
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
2:01:40
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Bell, this is a good program. I want to tell you a story about 10 kids
that were basically in a program like you have, except they were younger folks. now out of those 10 that graduated
8 of them are still in excellent condition they're working they're going to school they're doing the things they're supposed to do sir got 2 of them went back to the same bunch of folks that they were with before they ever got in trouble sir I don't know if the question to you would be appropriate but I would like to say this, it would be a great thing if we could have some type of a control
on to where these folks, once they leave, we can keep an eye on them and keep them in the right direction, if possible. Sir? Well, keep in mind,
Speaker 363
2:02:44
they're all going to leave our facility and they're all going to leave the prison system, the same group of people. There are halfway houses that are sitting out there. My son and I together probably have owned more than anybody in the state he now owns three of them and that's for people that are coming out of prison on parole so they that's different than the ones that are in
our facility okay because ours are not on parole they're they're
Speaker 365
2:03:14
in prison but ideally the whole prison system should put as many people in what i call aftercare housing as you possibly
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
2:03:30
you, Mr. Chairman. Representative Carolyn Brown,
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
2:03:34
you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I, too, have visited Mr. Bell's facility and was very impressed.
One of the things that I took away from that visit is not only would this save the state a tremendous amount of money to continue or to use, utilize these facilities to their fullest, if at all possible, and to reopen those that have closed. But it's also the, I think that's what we're called to do, to enable, we put, get people
into the prison system, and what we want to do is when we let them out, we really do want them to be successful and not come back that's why and so the recidivism rate is very important however the one of the biggest or one of the crying needs we have right now is to reduce our prison population to reduce the number of um felony um people who commit felonies that are housed in our local jails where the staff is not equipped to handle felons and it's not appropriate
to house felons with people who commit misdemeanors and i would love to see or or wouldn't you agree that getting utilizing these facilities more effectively could help relieve the stress and strain on our local jails no doubt about it and i'm not sure what
Speaker 363
2:05:08
the state pays the county jail to not enough that's what i've been told but i was told they get more than we get so if it's not
Speaker 402
2:05:19
enough for them it's obvious it's not enough for us however since
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
2:05:24
you are you're you say you're
currently receiving eight hundred dollars a month per inmate in your facility but you really need that to be upped to a thousand dollars. Thank you.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:05:38
Representative Rose, you're recognized. Thank you,
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:05:41
Mr. Chair. And I'm so glad that, uh, representative Brown brought that point up because I'd done all this math and then you and Senator Tucker discussed it all. So I'm not cheating off his math because the one thing that I think I'm aware of is that my County jail gets paid $40 a day per inmate and they do this at a $27 a day loss so I think the cost of the
state's about 31 million dollars a year that they're paying to county jails to house state prisoners and my county jail and others I'm sure are taking a loss but they do it at a significant loss so
it costs counties costs the state so first I wanted to say thank you for your work It sounds like very incredible work, and it sounds like that there are openings not just at your facility, possibly at other facilities across the state. So what I wanted to say to Representative Beatty's point that we hoped you'd get 20 prisoners tomorrow is that can we send an official communication to the department and say, hey, there's 20 available beds at this facility?
And secondly, could we request from the other facilities how many beds do you have available and then send that on to corrections as well to make sure that they're aware that, you know, maybe they're missing this for some reason, that there's openings at a discounted rate for a higher, you know, recidivism or a better recidivism rate. I just want to make sure that we communicate that and say thank you for your work and want to support that work and other facilities like you doing the exact same thing. Wouldn't you agree?
Speaker 363
2:07:14
Yes, I would. Well, using your logic, I'm just going to make this up. Let's just pick a county jail in Pulaski County. If, in theory, you were to go grab 20 guys out of the Pulaski County Jail and send them to prison and go to the prison and pick up 20 and bring them to us, you've just saved money and you've freed up the beds in the county.
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:07:37
Pretty simple math. And improved the recidivism rate. That's right. Yeah. That's all I have to
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:07:46
say. on that that um that topic of representative rose and his request to doc uh without objection
from the committee we will include that in communication to department of corrections from the committee uh hearing no
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
2:07:57
objection um center tucker you're recognized thank you mr chair i know we're wrapping up i'll be brief i'll
Speaker 408
2:08:06
just i'll move to amend that communication
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
2:08:08
not just for mr bell's facility but for every green tree facility with empty beds in the state um mr bell this
this is something you and i've discussed before that representative brown and represent rose we're just talking
about if someone is sentenced to say 18 months or their
entire prison sentence is 18 months or less okay the reality is they're probably never going to go to prison they're just going to spend their entire whether you're for against the building of a new prison there's there's no way around the fact that we have a county jail backlog right and so A lot of these folks are just going to be waiting on a bed, a prison bed for really their entire, quote, prison sentence, even even though they spent it entirely in a county jail. And that they're not getting in most county jails in Arkansas, probably very little programming. Is that I mean, that's consistent with what you and I have discussed before.
So I think this would require a legislative solution, but it may be worth looking at. You know, if someone's their entire prison sentence is 18 months or less and they qualify to just take them directly out of the county jail and go ahead and put them in a reentry facility where they can get a job and get programming and training and actually have a better chance of success rather than just be held in a county jail bed for six months and then let go.
At least that's something we should take a look
Speaker 363
2:09:27
at. Don't you agree? I agree. One of the mathematical items that I want you to think about, since our program is for six months, in theory, we're housing two people a year, okay?
The prison in Charleston is going to cost $283,000 per bed based on the $850 million figure. So for every re-entry bed that you fill, you would be saving $566,000. for every bed that you put in reentry so in theory if if you go back if any of you will google act 1190 of the year 2014 when you get a chance pull it
Speaker 365
2:10:11
up and read the first three or
four pages that committee recommended that the state have 4,000 reentry beds and when you see the group of people that were involved you'll say why didn't that happen I
Speaker 363
2:10:25
can't tell you I've been told it's just ASA didn't want to do it, but I don't know that. It just never happened. They did some experimental stuff. That's where we started doing what we did. I was on the board of directors of
Speaker 365
2:10:40
a facility in Hot Springs called Quapaw House, and once this thing started, we opened three facilities.
Speaker 363
2:10:47
One of them is Hidden Creek because we ended up taking it back, so to speak. That charity went broke. partly because of the expense of the facilities versus the income is not enough. It's obvious that if you're spending $2,100 a month just to keep somebody in prison and we're doing all the extra that we do, it ought to be worth more than $800. That's just simple logic. So I have friends that said if y'all would make this profitable, I'd go open one of these.
Speaker 365
2:11:22
Think about this. around the state there are deserted school buildings just sitting that I guarantee you some of these towns would say come take this facility and turn it into a re-entry facility we don't have bars we don't have locked doors we don't have guns you could do that with some deserted school and make it a re-entry facility in a matter of months and all of a sudden you change the dynamics potentially of the prison system but the key to that is somebody better fill the beds or it's going to make my my facility worse representative crawford
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
2:12:00
you're recognized thank you mr chair is it my understanding mr bill mr bell that uh there is a rule through doc that says that if they're housed at the acc as an inmate they cannot go to your facility that's what i'm telling if they are housed at adc they can is that correct that's what i've been told yes do you know you don't know why
Speaker 363
2:12:29
no that is no i i'm a volunteer i'm
the volunteer coordinator for the acc across from memorial stadium i've done that for 15 years and i go in there and meet with these guys weekly and they're always saying why don't you get me into your facility i said i
Speaker 362
2:12:43
wish i could but i can't mr chair could that
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
2:12:47
also go in that letter or or a letter to ask the reasoning why that rule is there i think we can get some information on that thank you representative springer
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:13:05
you're recognized good afternoon thank you mr chair
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
2:13:10
I'm over here okay, I would just like for you and thank you for being here and thank you for the information you've provided I would just like to know that act number
Speaker 377
2:13:22
again and the year act 1190 of what year 2004 1190 1190 of 2014
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
2:13:31
okay thank thank you very much representative
Speaker 103
2:13:33
Gonzales you're recognized thank you Mr. Chair just a question I guess kind of built off representative crawford's questioning i i think and somebody can please correct me if i'm wrong
but i believe that an adc inmate that's housed at a county facility has not been processed through adc and all of all of those that are coming in from from a county have to be processed through a specific adc facility before they're even assigned to to a certain prison in the department of corrections system so that would probably be a reason and i see benny magnus i don't want to get him up to the table but i see him shaking his head that maybe i'm i'm right on that but they
have to be processed through through the department of corrections and and at the point that they're in still in the county jail they have not done that yet so they have to be processed through the the state facilities before they come to you that
Speaker 362
2:14:29
would that be correct well i have no idea i I'm not involved with that, but my logic
Speaker 363
2:14:34
would be that anybody that's in a county jail, I thought, could also potentially be in prison at the same time. Maybe not. I don't know that. But if what I've been told is the new prison is going to alleviate the county jail problem, what you're telling me it won't.
Speaker 103
2:14:52
No, I'm not saying that at all. So I'm just saying they have to be processed through a specific ADC facility before they're assigned to whatever facility they may end up in. So I see that as being a reason that they're not transferred straight from county jail into your program because they haven't been processed through ADC yet. I don't know. senator tucker you're recognized thank you
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
2:15:25
mr chair representative gonzalez that's a hundred
percent correct my question is why why does it have to be that way or why can we not just take them there for a day have them processed and then go to a reentry facility now maybe it end up if you if we turn over every rock we won't be able to do it but i just think uh saying oh we can't do it because, uh, they haven't been processed. And meanwhile, they're going to spend six months in county jail and then be released with no programming, uh, because of a, a process they have to go through is not a good enough reason in my view. Um, and I'll, I'll wrap Mr. Mr. Chair,
I just want to make one last point. This data is two years old, but from the 23 session, we looked at the fact that, and this is born out of our last presentation, 62% of our prison admissions are people on probation or parole. Meanwhile, people on supervision, probation or parole are responsible for 16% of violent crime in Arkansas. That means that 46% of our prison admissions are people on probation or parole who have not committed a violent crime. And that data combined with our lack of use of this resource tells me what's driving our capacity
problem in arkansas and if we can fix this i think we can go a long way toward fixing our capacity problem so that's
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:16:45
it thank you mr chair thank you senator um the queue is empty again so
i think we're near the end of the day uh mr bell appreciate you for the information that you provided to the committee um want to remind members that that um tour is at 11 30 on wednesday and there's going to be an additional opportunity at 4 p.m. on Thursday, I think, too,
if you can't make the 1130 Wednesday tour. Been a lot of information that's been discussed here today and provided. A lot of that information will be made available and be sent out to members after the meeting. It was not sent out before because it was uploaded, some of the slide presentation and other things, information we received today. So, Mr. Bell, we appreciate you and thank you for being here. Sure.
Speaker 373
2:17:45
Can you give us the address? Yes, 10905 West Markham. Sits right next to Shotgun Dan's. 10905 West Markham. Thank you,
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
2:18:04
Mr. Bell. Again, 1130 on Wednesday, 4 p.m. on Thursday for that. Mr. Bell, you're released. I just note that we do have members of Department of Correction,
Board of Corrections that are here. If anyone would like to come to the table and address any of these points, I don't want to ignore your presence here and give you an opportunity to speak if you so
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:18:55
choose. Gentlemen, if you'll introduce yourself and recognize yourself, then you're recognized
Speaker 419
2:18:58
to speak. Thank you. Jim Cheek, Director, Division of
Speaker 420
2:19:06
Community Correction. Jared South, Area Manager with the re-entry program for Division of Community Correction.
Speaker 422
2:19:18
You recognized it. Yes, sir. I know it's referenced some of our screening procedure. I'm happy to answer any questions you guys may have, the committee may
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
2:19:28
have, regarding our capacity or how we got here transferred.
Representative Nazarenko has a question. Thank you,
Representative Jason Nazarenko
Unverified
2:19:35
Mr. Chairman, and thank you all for being here. And I appreciate Mr. Bell's testimony there. And it sounded
to me like the numbers were really good, like, you know, why would we not send folks over there? I know we've got, you know, different reentry programs. We've got some programs local to us that are not necessarily affiliated with DOC or anything, but they're really good, and they've got some great results. and right at our local we've got some some inmates that are able to work there at the county jail
and they are very successful in what they do so i'm i'm guessing that there's there's probably more to it of why we can't throw people into these programs i'm guessing that there's some information that you all have of why we couldn't and so that's my direct question for you is what What is the biggest hurdle? What's stopping us from putting
Speaker 426
2:20:31
these folks in that program? Just off the top, qualified candidates.
Speaker 429
2:20:36
What we see a lot of is you may fit the criteria of appropriate class, you may have the time frame, you may have the appropriate charges. When we exclude persons that are already in other programs, work release programs, the 309 program, and we start looking into those other details, that number of available candidates just dwindles and the biggest thing we're seeing right now beyond medical concerns for them that they're receiving care for and they're gonna have to be able to work to support themselves so we exclude those is the warrants overwhelming number of them have warrants and we're in the recidivism business so
if we put them through mr. Bell's program and we he has a warrant hanging over his head that we cannot get resolved while he's in the program the day he gets out and he gets pulled over he gets arrested that's part of a new recidivism statistic. And so we have to exclude those on the front end. We do work tirelessly to get those warrants cleared. We have to work with each individual jurisdiction. That's a hard task. And so sometimes the more complicated the problem is, the more widespread those warrants are. We have to exclude them from even participating on the front end. It's not as big a number as you
Representative Jason Nazarenko
Unverified
2:21:44
would you would think great thank you and I'm familiar with the 309 folks I'm a sheriff's deputy over in in Baxter County so I'm familiar with them because they do help out with different things that we do is there anything else that kind of would limit of how we could get folks in this program like is there monetary reasons or anything that's like limiting us
that that we here at the legislature could affect or impact or that we should know about?
Speaker 431
2:22:17
Well, we currently only have enough funding for 208 beds of what we try to run. Right now we're running, what, 182. So we're getting close, and we are kind of in a budget shortfall within a division. We're trying to work through that. So I guess our financing does play into this deal. And another thing is, like we were talking about earlier, and I know you all questioned Director Payne about screening people. We have to properly screen these people before they go into program because we're taking someone that's supposed to be in the Arkansas Department of Correction and putting them in a facility outside in the public.
So we have to vet them very carefully to make sure once they get out that they're not a threat to society, that they're going to run off. These offenders, if they walk out, they use a telephone, we pick them up in the middle of the night, whatever time it was, and we take them back to the Department of Correction. So these are a little bit different in probation and pro-leads. These are reentry offenders that have not quite met their T.E. date or their ability when they're actually supposed to get out. So they're given the opportunity to live outside as long as they follow a pretty stringent set of rules.
Representative Jason Nazarenko
Unverified
2:23:23
Excellent. Thank you. Thank you for that
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:23:27
information. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just to follow up on Representative Nazarenko's question, statistically,
I would like you to provide the information for the last 90 days of
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
2:23:37
the population and show those that were available and who could have been transferred and decisions why they were not transferred to the reentry programs. I think that would be insightful information. Go back 90 days if you could get that committee. Representative Collins, you are recognized.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. So you guys are both ACC or are you ADC? I hear you say you're both community corrections.
Speaker 421
2:24:01
We're division of correction but division of community corrections. So, yes, sir, we're
on a community correction side. Okay. So is it right what Representative Crawford was saying, that community corrections people can't go
Speaker 434
2:24:17
to this program? Is there some rule in place? Correct. Yes? Yes, sir. Act
Speaker 420
2:24:22
146 of 2015 specified they'd be transferred from the Department of Corrections to Division of Community Correction for this process.
Okay. And I'm right in front of you, by
the way. I apologize. That's all right. So are you speaking when you're saying these things about not sufficient numbers of people? You're not talking about anybody in ACC. You're talking only about ADC. Correct. So you're not
really speaking for your division. You're speaking for the other side of it. Correct, sir. Okay.
Speaker 437
2:24:46
All right. I got you. Thanks. Representative Crawford, you're recognized.
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
2:24:52
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Did you say Act 146 of 2015? Yes, ma'am. Okay. I'll look that up.
It's my understanding that in these work programs of the inmates who go to work, it's my understanding that they could collect a lot of cash, make a lot of cash that you guys keep for them that they have available when they leave to help them get started, but they don't have a lot of life skills. they just work work work work make a lot of
money and then once they're released a lot
just go have a big party they just party till the money's gone because they haven't been trained can you address that yes ma'am i believe
Speaker 429
2:25:44
you're addressing the or speaking about the the work release program yes ma'am this is the rancher program and mr bell's not incorrect a lot of them do leave with a large sum of money but we don't let them work a large number of hours full-time jobs required we're not going to let them work in lieu of programming or they catch they request overtime things like that we don't allow that the money is saved but if they've
purchased a car paid down any fines or fees they owe restitution they owe and we get them an apartment they're paying the first last month's rent deposits getting the utilities turned on the cars insured probably for the first time in their life ideally they don't leave with a lot
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
2:26:23
of money okay my next question is you one of you guys mentioned that they can't pay their warrants off when they're at a place like Mr. Bell's that that was one
of the reasons that they could not go to the facility no man so
Speaker 429
2:26:37
if it's a warrant we can address so if they had a warrant for aggravated
battery or robbery or something like that we would exclude them they need to go in front of the courts and that needs to be taken care of while they're incarcerated but the failure to failure to appear or failure to pay fines on a traffic or something simple that we are able to address we'll take them to court they are they do appear in court they do get a payment plan we help them effectively spend their money so let's get this from hanging over your head when you're released and so it depends on what
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
2:27:05
the offense is for okay it i thought i understood you to say that was one of the reasons they could not go yes ma'am if they have a place like mr
bills if they have serious warrants yes ma'am warrants for serious offenses i think you said that they couldn't because they wouldn't be
Speaker 422
2:27:22
able to pay for them it's not a question of paying
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
2:27:26
for them it's it's trying to or to take care of it yes ma'am i think that's wrong information i could be wrong
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:27:37
but let's get into that and see sure thank you just again the queue is empty i just have one question i heard one of you gentlemen say that you had 208 beds in the program
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
2:27:46
or funding for 208 beds is that for the re-entry program there
are 208 beds available yes sir and they're at two eight yes sir 208 but i i heard mr bell reference an act back in 2014 that said something of 4 000 beds so can can you guys i mean i don't expect you to give a lot of insight into it but why the disparity
between 208 that's a i guess appropriated and the four thousand that's in legislative act the four thousand beds was
Speaker 420
2:28:15
referenced in the 1190 steering committee final report okay and those were the idea of having
Speaker 429
2:28:22
state re-entry centers right and we i wasn't here with this division at that time but the direction was to go with these private entities uh to contract with us to provide these services um i don't know where we would have the four thousand at one time available and it's actually 11-90-2013, not 14. It's 2013? Yes, sir. Okay.
Speaker 431
2:28:38
And that may be what I wrote down, but.
Speaker 449
2:28:50
All right, well. Chairman Beatty, can I address the committee, please?
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:28:52
Please come to the table, and you
certainly may. If you'll hit your mic and introduce
Chair
Unverified
2:29:09
yourself, you're recognized to speak, Chairman. Hi, I'm Chairman Benny Magnus of the Arkansas Board of Corrections. One of the couple things I've sat back there
Speaker 451
2:29:18
and listened to is Senator Clark has always been a supporter, for example, of ACC centers.
The ACC centers are specifically designed for a lot of chemical abuse programs. and
Chair
Unverified
2:29:31
when they get sentenced there by the courts although the board can transfer or the divisions can transfer somebody into different both agencies now by the help of the legislature we have that authority but they're really designed to and they're very restrictive who goes there what crimes go there and um and we always so those beds are important to us
that that they get that chemical abuse treatment that they were sentenced to us for and like i said it's very narrow uh qualifications to be able to go the courts can send us a inmate we We constantly have inmates that are sentenced to ACC, but when we do the background, we have to let the courts know that they're not eligible to go to an ACC facility. Now, when we talk about ACC facilities, those facilities have now been transferred to ADC.
They're going to run just like they have been with ACC, but the facilities will actually be run by ADC. The other thing that's important to note about what you all are hearing here today, and I stepped out a couple times so it could have been said, anybody that this agency screens to go to a reentry center also has to be approved by the parole board.
So it's not just us picking it. it also then goes to the parole board for approval before they can go to that re-entry center so do i think that that's good yes because they're going to be released without seeing the board and it probably wouldn't be we'd have less people apply for re-entry if they knew they had to go back to the parole board to get out from that re-entry center. So it's a carrot to get that
approval for 18 months, 16 months before they go to a re-entry center. So with all the testimony y'all heard, it's important for me to stand up and let people know that if it wasn't said, that it's just not the process of this gentleman picking a qualified candidate. He also has to send the name to the post prison transfer board for agreement because essentially they're they're releasing them at the at the end of their time it's six months correct so they're although
they're getting approved for the re-entry center 16 to 18 minutes early from custody they only have to be locked up six months so they're getting out almost a year or something earlier they would from prison so that's why it's important that the pro board also reviews that
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:32:45
list mr chairman you entertain questions yes sir senator tucker you're recognized
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
2:32:50
thank you mr chair i just want to i just want to say well
so thank you all for being here you know and mr chair we did we did change significantly some of the eligibility opportunities to go to community corrections with Senate Bill 485 this year. I don't know the act number off the top of my head, but I think that will change some things. But I just want to acknowledge, you know, Mr. Self, you made a point about a law that the legislature passed in 2015, and that's what prohibits people from going from community corrections facilities to
reentry facilities. I want y'all to help identify these laws, help us identify these laws. I may voted for that bill for all i know i don't remember but that's some so i think you know i i think we need to improve across the board including from a legislative standpoint there there are things that i think have tied y'all's hands uh you know that the legislature has done over the years and whether it involved me or any other current legislators or not i don't really care i want to get it fixed now and you know if we need to change the law in order to make people eligible to go to a re-entered facility from community corrections then then let's file a
and get that done in the 27th session. But anyway, I just want to generally make the point, you know, there's shared responsibility to get this fixed, and we have our jobs to do as well. And if you can help us figure out how y'all's hands have been tied, you know, without – I mean, I'm not trying to point fingers. I don't really care. I just want to get it fixed, you know. So if you can help us figure those things out, I think that will go a long way toward, you know, helping us find solutions to these problems that I think, you know,
Speaker 431
2:34:26
we generally all agree with. Mr. Zach, can I answer a question that was earlier? Actually, we have been screening. I actually – we're not sitting back waiting on people, you know, trying to fill these beds. I've tasked Mr. Self to review cases, and actually I ain't saying take chances, but go further than we typically would go. So as of tomorrow, I think there's 14 slated to go to three different transition – I mean, reentry facilities tomorrow. So we're not sitting back, but we do have to be very careful on how we screen these folks
because if not, we'll be sitting here wondering why one of these guys went out and did a heinous crime in the community and we didn't properly vet them. So the amount of offenders that we can actually pull out of is kind of small. I mean, everyone you would hope could
Speaker 451
2:35:17
go to this program, but that's just not the fact. now also senator tucker the acc centers were
Chair
Unverified
2:35:22
first designed to be what you call punishment centers get them out work them hard and all that kind of stuff um we the legislature and
administrations uh felt like it was better to try to treat somebody uh with the addiction problems and that's why they really in my mind or was designed for treatment. I know that Mr. Bell's facilities do some programming for drug treatment, and I think the work component that the reentry centers has is important. But I also know that a lot of times when the courts or a judge sent us them to an ACC center,
They did that specifically because they trust and know our success rate at our ACC centers. So I don't want to say that they would be against us transferring somebody, but I know that that was the specific reason
Speaker 451
2:36:20
a lot of times they chose an ACC center if they were eligible instead of the ADC.
Chair
Unverified
2:36:26
and uh so you know there's a couple things that yes and y'all's help we asked for to be able to
Speaker 451
2:36:36
go to an acc center up to six years y'all passed that um they uh but you know that at an acc center his time is in half so really he's just going to be there three years it's we know that if you have a severe addiction problem that that six months is not enough to dry you out and get you thinking straight um and to the other representative they have to that answer the question the reason they
have to come can't come from direct from county jail they have to come to adc for us to tabulate what their te date is that we can make sure then what we wouldn't know from a county jail whether or not they was even eligible for a work release center till they
Chair
Unverified
2:37:32
hit the prison system for us to go through records and go through their initial
you know interviews and stuff like that see what their medical needs are mental health needs
Speaker 451
2:37:48
whatever it may be to make sure they were even eligible at some point for a re-entry center now i've said all that the re-entry centers are important and they do most of them do a great job most of them they got people like mr bell that's unbelievably dedicated i hope the next time we come before you all asking for a budget increase that we can get
that funding increased but it's still sometimes we still have other hurdles that should be there that we have to send them to the parole board that we have to uh have some level of making sure that person has a reasonable good chance of being successful in that re-entry program mr chairman i appreciate your
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:38:43
comments i look forward to seeing that budget request where there is a a request made by corrections for an increase in the re-entry
facilities uh and funding for those those beds
i would just think you know that the process you go through uh to vet the individuals to go into the re-entry facility would be very
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
2:39:04
similar to the process that corrections used to go through with the early release program and it seems like it'd be a whole lot easier to find 208 people to send to these re-entry
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:39:18
facilities than the 22 or 2300 that we used to just release on the streets of our state so i would like to know additionally
what is the waiting list that we have right now do you have a waiting list members that are qualified to to move to re-entry um and if so how many are on that waiting list i believe right now it's 18 sir i don't
Speaker 429
2:39:40
have that in front of me but uh 18 and then we have 14 pending transfers for tomorrow total all right and to answer if i may you're yes you had asked for a statistical breakdown of every person that would have been eligible in the past 90 days right i don't have that on me but i did have in my notes a snapshot from one day and it would
what i would call a heavy day right a lot of uh candidates to be screened um when i excluded class twos i excluded the work release program pathway to freedom program 309 program uh on july 20th i just happened to get down to 40 persons of those 40 we approved 10 seven made it past the post-prison transfer board but reasons for denial include medical uh mandatory hearing offense a 1029 offense um high escape risk um pending charges uh we deferred him because he
had a work release disciplinary very recently so he just got failed out of a another community program um institutional conduct mental health pending disciplinary and i have that snapshot here hey that
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
2:40:43
that information feel free to include that in with that snapshot over the 90 days those that you did refer back uh maybe what from probation parole um and why those that were disapproved that you sent over for approval yes i think that would be insightful information for
us to have as well um i still don't have
anyone in the queue i do now uh
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
2:41:09
co-chair mckee thank you all for being here is there a reason why we couldn't go to county
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:41:29
jails and assess inmates there thank you if you'll um turn on your mic introduce yourself you're
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
2:41:34
wanna mccaslin chairwoman for the post-prison transfer board so I agree with Senator Tucker. And I think that we can do that. As a matter of fact, we've started doing that and we are paroling from the county jail now. Legislation allowed us to do that. I can't remember when it was passed, but we have never done that. And we decided we were going to start doing that to try to open up some beds. So we are actually processing. It is in cooperation with ACC so it's it's a little bit different we um we they don't they're already eligible to see the
board so I mean the sentence is so short usually that they're already eligible so what we're doing is we are getting the list sending it to ACC and then they have their officers go in and do the processing and get them into the system where we would normally take them in and send them down to washita so what they're not getting is the assessment there but they get it at their first meeting when they go in front of the probation officer so because it was such a short sentence
there wouldn't have been really anything that they could have done in the prison anyway so they get the oras at their first meeting with the parole officer so we're doing that we've figured out It's taken a while, and it took a lot of people coming together to try to, and the director from ADC, Dexter, approved that, that we could do it this way. So it's working. We've got to think outside the box, and I think that's what we're doing with these releases. I actually have a meeting with Mr. Bell on Thursday after my board meeting, so we're going to sit down and we're going to talk about it.
but there's a lot of ideas thinking outside the box and not doing things the way that we've always done so you know there's we could be we could be filling those beds with parolees that are sitting in the county jail on parole for 90-day sanction or for you know six months or eight months or nine months waiting to go down we could be doing that i mean who says we can't they're sitting in county jail with zero programming right now so who says that we can't send parolees that have been
violated they've we've already approved them they're already in the community and they've messed up so that seems to me to be the perfect candidate to go to Mr. Bell's program and let them show them how to do life and how to do work and do the things that they haven't been doing so would that take legislation possibly i don't know i don't know if we could make it work within what we have now but we're willing to look at different options now what we're not willing to
do is send people to mr bell's program that are not safe we're here today because i'm an escape okay that was the agenda that i came for and we're going to be very careful in vetting because if something happens guess what I'm going to be back up here saying why we let this person go you want us to vet these people and we're going to do that but we can do better I'm sure we can find people that can go to these programs but when when Jared was talking about the the warrant issue
that is a real issue that's something that we're going to come to legislation and ask for you to help us with if we have someone incarcerated and they've had a warrant out of another state and they've got a hold on that person we notify them when it's time for them to process out they don't come and get them and so they they leave with the warrant which means they're going to come right back in the system again if if it's a notification only and we notify them they have what three days to come get them and they don't come get them we should say that warrant is gone
something where but it would have to go through acic i don't know but that is a problem for this program and so he screens out the people that have the warrants how many would that be in in a week how many would you screen out for warrants hard to say in a week it'd
Speaker 429
2:45:53
be hard to say in a week i was looking at this report it's 45 days from june 1st through the 21st how many had warrants probably
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
2:46:01
25 so far and that's a handful of people i mean that's half the list so i want to work with the
i want to work with you i want to think outside the box i think we can fill mr bell's seats it may not be with the way we've been doing it we may have to think differently but one other thing that that we've had to send one back a week ago because the victim found out somehow it slipped through and and it was a it was a victim crime and i had to pull them back because you know they don't want see this person in their community working when this person did something so we're real careful about that
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
2:46:39
um so i i would say i right here i applaud your willingness to think outside the
box and go find those solutions and we don't just want to see mr bell's beds filled we want to see all of them utilizing the assets that we can well hopefully i would echo what senator tucker said when you do see those issues where you
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
2:47:01
need a legislative fix you know we're all about that so hopefully we can ask for more of these facilities and more beds 208 beds is not very much so
Speaker 451
2:47:14
any questions and uh if you increase our budget we increase just like with 309s our limit is 350 if we had more
money we could we could we could increase that it's the same way with his bed if we had more money we could increase those but it's eligibility a lot of times just like in our programs work release whatever we can't send them work release if we even though if they have a warrant it's it's in our our either in our policy or statute and i can't say which we can't it's a lot so many of them are failure to peer or failure to pay fines they can't pay it but they're in jail in prison so there has to be some kind of moratorium six months one year and they may already be in
legislation i don't know that for sure so i don't want to but it there is sometimes on restrictions on what we do to even get beds we know that's working like work release or 309s get them filled because of certain requirements would 309s be eligible for uh
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
2:48:15
these beds uh we have five at a
Speaker 429
2:48:19
given time uh set aside for participants of the 309 program okay um we're at the they're almost all the persons in 309 would qualify for re-entry so if i i could take from them but they'd be also
Speaker 451
2:48:31
struggling yeah okay thank you yeah we we would have unfortunately come 309 program works and we would have sheriffs that are if we started cutting their beds they would also be uh complaining because they need
Chair
Unverified
2:48:51
that i forget how many like nine hundred thousand dollars we save a year at baxter county of 309 you know they do all the cooking the cleaning laundry everything
So, you know, if they had to turn around and hire those personnel, it would cost them, I think the sheriff told me,
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
2:49:13
$900,000. Everyone's competing for the same population now. You know, the worst of the worst get left, and then the rest of them are going out to 309 to work release in all these places, and it leaves what we have. So we'll work on it. well again i'm
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
2:49:31
i'm just going to act on and and my remarks are based on the remarks of
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:49:36
chairman magnus i look forward to seeing a request for increased funding in those areas coming from department of corrections and board of corrections um you know i i think that would be helpful is to hear those
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
2:49:49
things that you actually need uh and i think then the legislature can act on that center tucker you're recognized thank you mr chair i think this
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
2:49:58
has been a good discussion this afternoon um we've made a liar out
of senator mckee when he said we were about to be done that's my that's my fault so my apologies to you senator mckee but i just want
to compliment ms mccaslin for saying about thinking outside the box because you know i think and i don't think this is a controversial thing to say we're at a breaking point with our recidivism the number of state prisoners we have and you know Mr. Sell when you list all those reasons why you're excluding folks you're operating in the system in which you've been that you've been given right I don't think you're arbitrarily excluding folks but I think as as as policymakers and as the people who are running these programs on a day-to-day basis we all have to collectively
say why are we excluding that population right now do we need believe me we want these people to be vetted you're right about that 100 we we want these people to be vetted but we need to be asking why we're excluding all these folks do we need to change criteria do we do we need to change y'all are executing the process that you've been given do we need to change that process we have to ask some of these questions because we we're at a breaking point and we got to do something different so thank you miss mccaslin for making that point and i want to do that across the board and just once again you know uh extend my hand for when we need a legislative solution
um you know let's get that done so thank you
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:51:23
we're back to an empty queue it looks like we may actually be about to get out of here i want to echo the center's comments i thank you all for for sitting through the meeting today uh and just out of respect for your time i wanted to extend an opportunity if there's anything that you wanted to address i appreciate you coming to the table uh sharing your thoughts and uh on the issues that we've discussed today uh and look to uh working together to solve some of these
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
2:51:50
problems because it's a problem that we're all in together uh and if we if we focus on those problems the citizens of Arkansas will be better served so thank you all with that uh we're going to stand adjourned Thank you.
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Update on Arkansas State Police Report on Prisoner Escape from Calico Rock
C. Update on Department of Corrections (DOC) Critical Incident Review of Prisoner Escape from Calico Rock
D. Discussion Regarding Number of Inmate Deaths at Arkansas Correctional Facilities
E. Update on Department of Corrections Policy Implementations and Inmate Numbers
F. Hidden Creek Reentry Center
G. Other Business
H. Adjournment
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — ALC-CHARITABLE, PENAL, AND CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTIONS, Aug 11, 2025 | Agenda | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| Handout E - Long-Term Trends in AR Prison Population | Exhibit | 11 | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Speaker 1
Speaker 3
Speaker 11
Speaker 10
Speaker 21
Speaker 33
Speaker 34
Speaker 17
Speaker 20
Speaker 5
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
Speaker 27
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
Speaker 54
Speaker 56
Chair (Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.)
Unverified
Speaker 66
Speaker 74
Speaker 80
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
Speaker 85
Speaker 91
Speaker 93
Speaker 98
Speaker 101
Speaker 103
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
Speaker 124
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
Representative Andrew Collins Chair
Unverified
Speaker 148
Speaker 153
Speaker 169
Speaker 97
Representative John P. Carr
Unverified
Speaker 183
Chair
Unverified
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
Speaker 157
Speaker 217
Speaker 129
Speaker 225
Speaker 230
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
Speaker 247
Representative David Ray
Unverified
Speaker 253
Speaker 106
Speaker 155
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
Representative Chad Puryear
Unverified
Speaker 276
Speaker 277
Speaker 281
Speaker 283
Speaker 190
Speaker 286
Speaker 291
Representative Harlan Breaux
Unverified
Speaker 306
Wendy Ware
Unverified
Speaker 320
Speaker 323
Speaker 327
Speaker 349
Speaker 191
Speaker 331
Speaker 353
Speaker 363
Speaker 365
Speaker 367
Speaker 370
Representative Carlton Wing
Unverified
Speaker 373
Speaker 375
Speaker 385
Speaker 394
Speaker 196
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
Speaker 402
Speaker 408
Speaker 362
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
Speaker 377
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
Speaker 419
Speaker 420
Speaker 422
Representative Jason Nazarenko
Unverified
Speaker 426
Speaker 429
Speaker 431
Speaker 421
Speaker 434
Speaker 437
Speaker 449
Speaker 451
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified