Judiciary Committee- Senate and House
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Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
This meeting is called the Order, the Joint Judiciary
Committee. First thing we're going to do is I have asked Senator Jamie Scott to lead us in prayer, so if you'll stand.
Senator Jamie Scott
Unverified
2:30
thank you dear dear heavenly father lord we thank you for your presence today we thank you for everyone who's gathered before us god lord i lift up all the senators and representatives that are here today oh god lord bless us and give us wisdom and the courage as we
make decisions oh god to do what's best for the people in arkansas today oh god lord we pray that you watch over those as they travel back homes, back to their homes, dear God. Lord, give us the peace and the
resolve, O God, to have open ears and open hearts, O God, and help us to be solution-minded in everything
Speaker 7
3:10
that we do. We love you today. We give you all the praise, glory, and honor.
In Jesus' name, amen okay thank you
all for being here we're going to be just a little bit unusual because we're going to follow prayer with prayer we're actually going to have a moment of silence
in the moments of moment of silence I hope that many of you will pray this is I'm trying to do this without being emotional
this is the first judiciary committee meeting that I've chaired since we lost Senator Stubblefield and I know it's been a while but nevertheless can't have this meeting without me thinking about him
and so as we have the moment of silence to pray for his
family, pray for his friends, and pray for the state, because we suffered
a great loss when we lost him. Okay, thank you. Thank you for that indulgence.
I'm going to take a few minutes here to tell you what we're doing and what we're going to be doing.
Chairwoman Dalby has said that she doesn't have any comments. If she changes her mind after I speak and needs to correct me, we'll go back. This is the first
of a series of meetings
hope to meet monthly between now in January and The agendas will be tight Today will be strictly about do we need prison beds and while I'm normally a pretty freewheeling chair And let people say and ask what they want if you're not on the subject of prison beds the referee and softball empires gonna come out and if you're my friend and you feel like I'm rude, I'm going to apologize ahead of time to you and to the public
and to everybody here because we're going to cover this subject very well, but we're going to start today by laying the foundation. This subject is dear to my heart. I visited with every member of Senate Judiciary to make sure they were on board before we started, I visited with Chairwoman Dobby and visited with others. I was elected to the Garland County Quorum Court.
That's Hot Springs, for those who don't recognize. Garland County Quorum Court in 1992. And I'm going to tell you my
motto when I ran is I'm going to listen, listen, listen, and
not put off today's problems until tomorrow. and that's what we're going to do is we're going to listen, listen, listen, and we're not going to put off today's problems until tomorrow. But we had several huge problems.
You're used to that by now in government, and you can't always deal with all of them as quickly as you would like to. But one of the problems that we had is we were double bunking inmates in the county jail plus sleeping them on the floor and then letting people out that we didn't really want to let out. And we didn't get to fix that until sometime in the last 10, 12 years and built a new state-of-the-art county jail in Garland County, which is full. And much of it is with state prisoners, as it was back then.
And so we have a governor who has indicated she's interested in doing something about this problem. After being here 14 years, I had really kind of lost hope that we would. And I think it's incumbent upon us, and I don't think there's a better place than the Judiciary Committee, to dig into this and find out what solutions are and where we ought to be going. And also, I have a lot of confidence in this Judiciary Committee.
I appreciate all of you that are not members, and you'll be free to ask questions. But I have a lot of confidence. But let me, this is important for a lot of reasons. But today we'll talk about do we need prison beds. September 30th, dates may change, agendas may change, but I want to know where we're going. And let me tell you, today is the only day that I think I know what the answer will be.
And those of you that don't know me, I'm terribly transparent. I know that's unusual in politics. But I don't know where we're going. I know how to dig out information. And September 30th, the subject is going to be, please, if you can come, come and make plans ahead of time. I know how busy you are to prepare to stay. I know how hard it is to keep rear ends in the seats in a long meeting I'm gonna tell you ahead of time. It's going to be a long meeting The subject is going to be how do we reduce the number of prison beds that we need and that is a huge subject
we'll have a lot of people here to testify and And in October 19th, the plan is to dig deeper into some of those issues that come up November the probably the second week but november uh the plan is to look at solutions uh what are things that we can do uh and december uh is also about supposed to be about solutions and any and
recommendations if we can agree on it and when i say recommendations i don't have a clue what they might be and if we don't have a serious majority to make recommendations we just won't uh we're this is uh this is for us to find information so that when we get into january that legislators feel like they know the subject and and they they have some ideas what they ought to do what'll
work and what won't work. So as I mentioned next month, this is important. Everyone knows it's
important, but one of the things that government has to do is protect its people. There is no victim where there is no perpetrator, and it is our job to make sure that we don't have more victims than we ought to it would be nice if we lived in a world where there were none because perpetrators that we knew better are roaming freely so that's the first thing the second thing is behind that is I think then we have to be concerned about the safety of those
who watch over the perpetrators that being said there's much more the people who were the perpetrators that are in our prisons are people. And not only are they human beings, they have families. There's reasons why they got to where they are. Some of them we just need to protect the public from. Others we need to make sure they don't keep coming back. And we also, if possible, need to have them as close to the families. Like I said, they have families. Families where we can
keep it from being a hardship for families to visit etc we ought to do that uh we need to be sure that they uh are there that they can get the services i'll touch on one of the things that i know will be touched on in september it's it's not certainly not controversial uh just simply because yesterday i was starving on the way home and i stopped in benton and got went into a restaurant picked up something to carry out neat and as i was coming out i saw what i thought was an old acquaintance and I took the chance and spoke to him and it turned out that I was right
and in that conversation I asked about the son and this man and other family members with us said well the good news is he's clean well I knew immediately they knew I knew immediately what that would mean and he's been clean for a while they alluded to the bad news is that he's clean because he has no choice which means that he's institutionalized somewhere here in the state we're at a place where there are very few families that this does not affect
in one way or another and the we need to be aware first we need a place to keep them from hurting other people then we need a place where we can help and I being from Garland County we had a drug court I think before there were drug courts and the I remember a particular newspaper editorial I very much appreciate the judge that did that we had a newspaper editorial
written by a lady who I think is one of the best newspaper editors we ever had and and we disagree we disagreed on almost everything on politics so that's saying a lot for me to think she was a great editor and fair but she wrote an editorial criticizing that drug court because she said it was like a church service in those meetings that that editorial is still dear to my heart because those those court meetings were like a church service because of the people testifying
about how their lives have been changed that tough judge said you can go to rehab or you can go to jail your choice but seeing and but seeing that over and over seeing not just the perpetrators have their lives changed but what it does to that whole family so we're this issue is a huge issue uh i would like to go further and we can't we do not we will barely have the time i would like to go further and talk about what happens within the department of corrections and those things
we're not gonna have time for that uh so i want you to know where we're going uh and i want
you to know uh today should be the simplest meeting uh hopefully will be the shortest uh we've got lots of people to testify uh but uh i think that
it's going to be most will have the same answer not everybody will
have the same answer and let me tell you i was grateful for that i reached out to the aclu early on and said i want the people who don't
believe we should ever have another prison bed etc and up until just this last week they said well no nobody wants to come and then somebody is coming because folks we want to hear everything from everybody again the subject today is going to be do we need prison beds uh if anybody wants to i can't reinforce this enough because i don't like to be mean and i'm going to be uh so if anybody wants to go backwards into history if anybody wants to make a campaign speech today is
not the day uh today we are going to talk about do we need prison beds and our questions will be about do we need prison beds and you've got other subjects that you think i have not got on the agenda yet contact me contact uh chair Dalby because we're we're gonna do our best within this scope to really dig into this subject uh and so a lot of things that you might want to talk about we will talk about at future meetings uh so i hope i have been clear and uh the uh with that
chairman chairwoman Dalby is still fine with my remarks so we will move to uh see consideration to approve September 30th meeting minutes. Motion from Senator Rice. A second from Senator Blake Johnson. All for the motion. Any discussion? All for the motion signify by saying aye. All opposed? Motion carried. Let's move to D. Consideration to approve December 11th, 2025 meeting minutes. Motion to approve from Senator Rice. Second from
senator blake johnson any discussion hearing none all for the motion signify by saying i thank you now we get on to our business uh in e discussion of prison beds in arkansas and the first two people we are going to have come forward uh lee watson and dr william doves buyers of the correction board if y'all are here and will come forward if you gentlemen
will have a seat turn your mics on uh
and if you will each introduce yourself for
the record uh your name and uh who you represent
Speaker 29
17:14
william dubbs byers board of corrections Lee Watson, Board of Corrections. Okay. Y'all
get to lead us off. So the
subject is do we need prison beds? Tell us what you know. If you go too long, I'll let you know. And we'll, because we've got a lot of people coming behind you. But we're very interested in what you have to say.
And then I'm sure you're prepared to take questions. I think
Lee Watson
Unverified
17:45
without any hesitation, the answer is yes. and we need to add beds. Would you pull the mic closer, please? Pardon me. I think the answer is yes. Without any hesitation, we need to add beds as rapidly as we can. You know, however we can most economically and efficiently do that. Mr. Chairman, I do have a prepared statement,
Speaker 34
18:04
if you'll allow me to read it. And if I do wander off topic, I'm sure you'll let me know, okay?
I will firmly, but with all the love in my heart. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, Madam Chair, and
Speaker 36
18:21
members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. My name is William Dubbs-Meyers. I spent 39 years with the Arkansas Correctional School System, serving as a teacher, principal, assistant superintendent, and a superintendent. I was appointed in 2015 to the Board of Corrections, reappointed in 2022, and I serve until December 31st, 2028.
The question before us is straightforward. Do we need additional prison beds in Arkansas? The answer is yes. The Board of Corrections has recognized this need for some time. A Norman County Jail backup has historically hovered around 1,500. As of yesterday's daily count, the backup was right around 2,300. Our existing facilities are operating above design capacity, and the Protect Arkansas Act will lengthen certain sentences,
which will further increase the number of people requiring secure bed space. Current sentencing practices and judicial philosophy in Arkansas continue to drive demand for more capacity. At the same time, while we appropriately discuss reentry programs and skills training to reduce recidivism, There has to be far less sustained focus on the front end, expanded mental health, drug courts, et cetera. We need both. We need additional bed space, and we need more programming.
I'm prepared to answer any questions you might have. All right. Do I see Representative Beatty's lots on? Because I'm not used to this system, haven't done it in a while.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
20:07
Representative Beatty you're up first. Thank you Mr. Chair. First I want to thank
you for calling this meeting as a very important subject and as myself and co-chair McKee something that that
that we've looked at and and had plans for for a meeting but thank you for having this at a Judiciary Committee meeting. I appreciate that. My question for you gentlemen is what efforts have you done as members of the board of corrections to
Lee Watson
Unverified
20:38
add these additional beds well I can tell you that through 2022 our efforts then were to add a 1,000 bed facility and also a facility near community corrections facility near El Dorado of about 400 when the new administration came in
you know that was all shifted and we refocused and followed the lead of the administration In the meantime, we have shoehorned every inmate we can into every corner of every facility. And as Dr. Byers stated, all of our facilities except one are well above capacity. And that one is the women's unit in Little Rock. It only has a bed capacity. Memory serves a 44, and I think we have 40 in there. And that facility basically has two wings.
One is, in effect, a nursing home for women who have serious health problems or dementia or whatever. And the other wing, the inmates there are pregnant. And then once they give birth, they're there with their child for three days, and then they return to McPherson normally. That's the unit the women serve in. So, and then following that, you know, the governor's pushed the efforts to build the facility in Franklin County. so frankly the board kind of took a step back because even though traditionally and under the
statutes it's the board's lead on that we also and i've talked with benny magnus our former chair at length about this the the process that the that the department has always gone through is for the chair to approach the governor who you know as well as i do that's where the money and the budget come from to see what was tolerable in 2022 we were looking at and all the engineering work was done all the foundation was laid not physical foundation but all the underpinnings to move forward
engineering and all to expand calico rock by about 500 beds but they ran in some issues there partly because it is calico rock and the price tag was going to jump from 75 million to i think around 120 million and at that point governor hutchinson said no we're going to hold off on that and because of the expense and it was in that kind of limbo state when governor sanders came in and that 75 million dollars that had been set aside for calico rock got basically
Speaker 29
23:06
undesignated for that specific project representative baity did that
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
23:14
answer your question It did not. I didn't hear from
Speaker 49
23:19
board member Byers on that issue. Representative Beatty, I won't reiterate what he
Speaker 36
23:24
said. Please, thank you. I agree with that. If you look at it, and I can get you the information. I don't have it in front of me. But since 2014, the Board of Correction has submitted letters and requested more prisons to be built.
We've kind of run into a brick wall on that. We are not in the position to do that. That's the legislature and, of course, the executive branch. The only thing we can do is say we need them. And we have, for 10 to 12 years, we have submitted requests for more bed space. And, again, we have expanded some of the units. We put more inmates in some of the units, tried to pack them in as best we can,
find additional space within the facilities that we have. But I think we're about maxed
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
24:27
out. Okay, thank you for that. Mr. Chair, just
a follow-up, please. Okay, hold on just a second. Yes, of course you can have a follow-up. The subject that we're getting off on will be appropriate for November. Today, again, I want to stay on do we
need prison beds, but go ahead with your follow-up if it's on that subject.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
24:50
It is. First, I want copies of all those requests that you've made because I don't think I've read anything that's been a request for more bed space from the Board of Corrections. Similarly, I don't know, did we swear these gentlemen in when they came in today? I
made the decision during these hearings, since
they're mostly for informational purposes, not to be swearing people in Representative Beatty, so the answer is no. Well, I'm not certain
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
25:18
that it would have really mattered much, but I just wanted
to clear that on the front end.
So I'd like that request, and then I'll get out of the queue because I want to focus more on how you have created bed space in the past with EPA so you gentlemen can prepare your remarks
on that, and I'll get out of the queue and let some
of my colleagues speak. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Majority
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
25:44
Leader. Senator Rice, you're recognized. Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen, for
being here today. I don't want to get off subject, but we're talking about bed, need, and availability. The document put in front of me, I'd already thought about it.
In fact, I think I mentioned it to Mr. Watson at one time. About
incarcerations going well beyond their TE date. This document says 83%. I knew it had to be a number from the few contacts that I've gotten. Is there any, is that changed recently? And what can we do to accelerate? We don't want people out that's not safe and realize they do things in there that they get held for.
But that will open beds up. We're hearing from sheriffs that they've got them backed up. They need someplace for them to go. Have you seen an increase in holding in the last several months? past
Speaker 65
26:50
the TE date. I can't answer that. I don't
Speaker 66
26:53
know. Who would know that? Dexter Payne. He's here today. And Lindsey Wallace. I'll save that for them.
Thank you. Okay, Senator Clark, I mean Senator Tucker. Thank you, Senator
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
27:19
your testimony that it's your position that we need more prison beds um and my my basic question although i'm going to elaborate on it a little my basic question is why and the answer i'm looking for is not arithmetic it's not oh we got 2300 people in
county jail backup it's a it's a deeper question than that we already have one of the top five incarceration rates in the United States, higher than any democracy in the world. We actually have a higher incarceration rate than China, Iran, and Cuba combined. And my question is, do you think y'all, and Mr. Byers, you have a longer experience in the prison system, but both y'all have extensive experience at this point. And so are Arkansans particularly in need of incapacitation more than our neighbors or what, you know, what, what is going on? Why, why do you believe we need
Speaker 77
28:12
more prison beds? That is a complicated question. It has
Speaker 36
28:20
to do with the, I guess, maybe the attitude or the philosophy of incarceration. We want to lock people up. And there's not as much front end. There's not as much mental
Speaker 49
28:41
health programs up front or drug court treatment up front.
Speaker 36
28:49
You're talking now before they get to y'all. Right. That's a long – it's
Speaker 49
28:58
going to be a long answer. I think I can give a shorter answer. I
Lee Watson
Unverified
29:03
hope so. As to the why part of it. And the why part of it is simply Arkansas statutes. I mean, our prosecutors are following the law. They're prosecuting people. And my home county, Sebastian County, is especially good at it because I know that because percentage-wise, Sebastian sends more than its share, if you will, than most counties.
So it's a product of the laws that are on our books and our sentencing practices and all. The bigger question to me and it kind of goes to the heart of what you're talking about is if incarcerating people stops crime and deters crime We can't we have somewhat of a reverse chicken and egg problem in Arkansas because we have some of the highest crime rates But also the highest incarceration rates. So you think well if incarceration deters crime you would think we would have lower
Crime rates and and that's something I've that's caused me to, you know, scratch my head a lot over the last many years. And I started off in the 90s both for about five years as a deputy public defender and four years as a deputy prosecutor, so I've been on both sides of it. That's
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
30:20
an important point, and I'm glad that you raised it. I think it's important for the members to know that, so thank you for mentioning it. And I agree with you, Mr. Byers, too.
There is more that we can do on the front end of the longitudinal system. There is a point where they do get to be under the jurisdiction of the Department of Corrections. And I'd like to hear from you gentlemen about how you think we can do better. You know, we also have one of the worst recidivism rates in the country. And taking the recidivism rate specifically aside for a moment, I mean, because we're talking about prison beds, right? So we should be looking at prison admissions. And people on probation and parole constitute 64% of our prison admissions,
even though only 16% of violent crime is committed by people on probation or parole. And can you help? I think that's important for the members to understand, too, because I feel like those admissions are what are driving the demand for capacity in Arkansas, people on supervision who haven't committed a violent crime. So can you all speak to that at all and help us understand what the department is doing or can do or
needs more resources to do in order to help that problem specifically?
Speaker 36
31:36
Programming, vocational training, academic education. And by the way, we do that now. We need more of it. Vocational, there's only 200 to 300 inmates who are involved in the vocational program. That needs to be expanded. A passion of mine is faith-based programming. We have a seminary at Varner that produces field ministers
that go out and do ministry in other units. I think there's a great faith-based program at Riceville, also at Malvern. I think faith-based programs are going to have a major impact on this because realistically, you're not going to change unless the hearts change. And if we can do something to change the heart and rehabilitate morally,
I think that's going to be a step in the right direction. Does that? I hear
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
32:49
what you're saying, although my understanding is we've had those programs in place for quite some time. And I've got another question that's bed-specific, Mr. Chair. I know you were going to say we're getting into September 30 territory with that.
Well, your questions are on point, but we will handle both the issues you brought up, September, October, and
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
33:11
November. I have a bed-specific question, and that is, so right now you've just testified that we need more beds.
And it's a two-part question. One is, is there a particular type of bed? You know, do we need maximum security beds, community correction beds? If we added a new in-treatment reentry facility and we had more reentry beds, can we divide those up somehow in your experience? And then the second part of the question is, if we could just snap our fingers and add 3,000 beds today, magically, not in any particular place in Arkansas, that's not the point of the question. We just automatically had 3,000 more beds. Do you think
Lee Watson
Unverified
33:52
that would solve our capacity problem for a while? Temporarily. And I think the answer to your question is
all of the above. You know, Western Arkansas has, I think, one community corrections facility. I've talked with the drug court judge in Sebastian County, Steve Tabor. He sees about 1,200 cases per year. And I asked him point blank, if there was a community corrections facility in Sebastian County where you could sentence inmates who were first offenders, first-time drug offenders, who basically need to be pulled up short so that they could realize that the next
step is going to Tucker or Cummins. How many people do you think out of your 1,200 a year in a community corrections facility, could you fill those beds, or how many beds could you fill in the course of a year and he said about 120 we also need a re-entry facility near fort smith because of the large number of offenders that come back and i'll tell you not the department not the board but we have about 6 000 6 500 inmates that leave the system every year and
they're coming back home wherever that is and if if we can help them so that they can make that transition back to their their corner of Arkansas we're all better off for it but I've also spoken with Washington County judge she didn't give me specific figures and I'm also planning on talking with the Benton County judge that handles drug court because I think there's things we can do with community corrections facilities and I think if dance I'm going a little further here but if we
add El Dorado two or three on the western part of Arkansas probably Jonesboro pretty quickly if you have 300 beds in each of those facilities that are community corrections and re-entry those facilities are going to be way less expensive than a hardened prison and and it also keeps those offenders near their families near their communities and we do need a true prison and it frankly need I'm from Fort Smith it needs to be in western Arkansas and for all the folks that from Fort Smith that twitch and say,
well, I don't want a prison near Fort Smith. They need to drive over into Oklahoma and head through Poteau and Tallahena. And from Fort Smith, the southern corner of Fort Smith, you can be at a 700, 800-bed facility in Oklahoma in about 35 minutes. And occasionally one of their prisoners on work detail will walk away or whatever, but you don't hear much about it. But it's there. And I only learned of it a few years ago, and it's been there for decades. Even if we added all
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
36:30
those beds that you're talking about to finish where you started, that's still not going to be a permanent solution for our state, correct?
Lee Watson
Unverified
36:36
I mean, the system's going to have to grow as the population grows.
Senator Tucker? I'm done. Thank you. Unless we change the laws and the... Point's well made. Thank you for laying the foundation for September and November. Just remind members, they will be long but very interesting and very productive meetings. on a very important
subject, what was brought out. Senator Simon, you're recognized.
Senator Brad Simon
Unverified
37:23
All right, thank you, Mr. Chair. And you answered my second question about the types of beds needed because we would all agree all beds are not created equal, correct? That is correct. My first question goes more to do we need the topic of this entire conversation, do we need prison beds? You both emphatically stated yes, but it's been qualified. Yes. Yes, we need prison beds based on the current system that we have set up, correct? Yes. and that is the distinction that i want to make sure that we all keep in the back of our minds
coming into this september 30th meeting is we're spending less than most states on corrections we're incarcerating more people than most states on corrections so we need a deep analysis on exactly what's going wrong and i just want to make that point well and i and to your
Lee Watson
Unverified
38:12
point i think that's one of the things and i won't pat myself on the back for this because it was happening before i came on the board six and a half years ago but arkansas's prisons are operated most efficiently or one of the or cheaply depending
on how you want to look at it than about any state in the country i think our average cost is somewhere around 65 to 70 dollars per inmate per night there are other states where it's well over $100 so thank you I'm sorry if we can get
you back up I think you turned your mic off so I'm gonna need some help and
Senator Brad Simon
Unverified
38:58
I do just want to clarify I don't
think throwing money at the problem is the solution here y'all do an amazing job with the resources that you have
and I thank you for that Center Simon you you finish those questions with wouldn't you wouldn't you agree that that's
how you make your point and while asking a question is wouldn't you agree we know the uh and i would say yes
Lee Watson
Unverified
39:24
and it's the staff and management of the department that make that happen uh representative gas away
Speaker 128
39:31
you're recognized thank you mr chair so i guess first i just want to establish are you guys here today
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
39:39
speaking on behalf of the board or are you here personally in your individual capacities as board members i would have to say i'm speaking on i'm
Speaker 36
39:48
i'm not speaking on behalf of the board i am a member of the board of correction but i i don't i don't see myself speaking on behalf of the board i think in
Lee Watson
Unverified
39:57
order for that to happen the entire board would have to be here and before we offered
an opinion we'd have to vote on it so i don't think it would be practical okay to have the board come before the legislature um and try to have a collective yeah it's just
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
40:14
a yes or no okay thank you now this question has been asked but i want to i want to drill down on it you say that we need more prison beds which i wholeheartedly agree but not all prison beds are created equal that point has been made specifically what type of
prison beds in terms of ratio do you think we need what is the breakdown do we need adc beds do we need community corrections beds if so how many
adc beds how many community corrections representative gasway that's a great question but we really will get to that in november uh the and we will be here all day uh the i'm going to go ahead you're right on line go ahead
and finish the question and answer it uh because how many what types we need versus do we need them november we will definitely dive deep into
that no mr chair if that's your ruling
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
41:18
then we'll just wait till november okay thank you representative the uh center
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
41:35
king thank you mr chair uh so back to uh one question about uh this overcrowding and i've outlined this
and went to the board of corrections and gave a detailed about where we got to this point and started in 2011, but there was to answer, you know, one of the questions, this overcrowding has due to a lack of the legislature and governors, uh, putting enough money towards this. And the only thing that has happened since 2011, there was one proposal in 2017 that would have significantly addressed it. The biggest issue that everybody needs to remember is we can talk about beds and solutions, but the other part is how do you pay for it? So every time you come up with beds, the
other calf needs to be how do you wind up paying for it and what funding mechanism you're going to do are you going to raise taxes are you going to cut other services what's going to happen but to your point calico rock if we went through with that expansion would have been expanding 525 beds we need to go back to expanding calico rock and look at that center king that's that's a november discussion
well this is about adding beds so but calico
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
42:39
rock would have we'd already be 525 beds down the road had they done what you guys were wanting if i could hold up just a moment the
question today is not where the beds will go not what we what kind of beds they will be etc the fact that we've laid the foundation that we're going to be talking about those things is fine today the question is do we need beds and some of these are right there on the line because they're the reasons we need beds but when we get into the specifics of where they're going to go etc that's that's for a future discussion
it's not for today but and i can assure you when we get there we will
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
43:23
have that discussion okay but expanding existing facilities like that
would help us get to answer the question of adding more
Speaker 144
43:34
beds wouldn't it you may answer what was the question
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
43:43
i'm sorry question again i said basically adding other facilities like what calico rock was is a way to add beds that that certainly should
Speaker 49
43:52
be on the table i think that everything should be on the table adding to existing units now I do have a problem with southeast Arkansas you know we we're pretty
well saturated down there but I think that everything is on the table as as far as how
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
44:08
do we get beds yeah and the big question is if you were in here since 2013 what proposal did you have before you start criticizing what proposal did you have to address this problem when it was happening literally 15
years ago. Again, history will be a good thing to bring up in November today. We're going to lay the foundation of whether we need prison beds or not and whether
we need to have any more meetings or not. So thank
you. Good subjects, and we will get to them. Senator Hester, you're recognized. Thank you. I want
Senator Bart Hester
Unverified
44:44
to talk a little bit about the emergency powers uh act do you know how many uh you know if we want to talk about the beds do we need them or not how many inmates have we released in the past year five years or 10 years roughly through the emergency powers act
Speaker 49
45:01
i don't know i don't know senator we haven't released any in
Lee Watson
Unverified
45:04
probably two years we haven't released released any
Senator Bart Hester
Unverified
45:10
since january of 23 okay and who decides when it's appropriate to use the Emergency Powers Act to
Speaker 36
45:19
release criminals back out on the street? That is defined by a law that the legislature passed. When the prison system reaches a certain percentage of capacity, then the board can consider invoking the Emergency Powers Act, which basically just releases
Speaker 77
45:35
people who are, well, they still have to meet the parole board.
They still have to meet the criteria. It's just early release. It's within, I think,
Speaker 28
45:46
up to a year early on parole. And who decides when we're at capacity? Well, that's each of the facilities has
Lee Watson
Unverified
45:53
a rated capacity. So the board determines what capacity is at each place
Senator Bart Hester
Unverified
45:58
and then determines if because it's at capacity. If it was 1,000 members today, y'all could say in two weeks, we're having a hard time staffing it. So now it's 800. so now capacity is 800, we can let people out do the Emergency Powers Act
because you have moved the goalpost on what capacity is. Is that accurate? No.
Speaker 49
46:21
That's not accurate? We've never done that. I mean, I suppose, I don't know, maybe we could do it legally, but we've never
Senator Bart Hester
Unverified
46:28
done that. So you haven't left buildings at Varner, entire buildings empty? There
Speaker 49
46:33
have been. And then adjusted what your capacity was. There have been times, like I remember
Speaker 36
46:40
the Pine Bluff unit, It was shut down for a time because it needed renovation.
They were moved out. Tucker at one time was shut down because we couldn't get people to work there. Part of Tucker, not the whole unit, but part. So there have been times, yes, that it has been reduced for a reason.
Senator Bart Hester
Unverified
47:01
Okay. We've got a couple more thoughts. I mean, we've heard it said that we've got more people in prison than China. I don't think anybody, including the Chinese government, believes anything that they report. I mean, they're communist China.
They've killed over 100,000 of their citizens since we've had 10 executed. So using China as a reference point, I think, is a bit absurd to say that Arkansas is on some sort of playing field with some foreign country who's pleased on a daily basis to kill their citizens. We are not. We treat our people humanely, and we make them answer for consequences. So the next thing I would, I'll tell you what, I'll wait and I'll get back in later. Thank you. Thank you, Senator.
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
47:46
Representative Springer. Good afternoon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. As I understand, what we're here today to talk about is, does Arkansas need more prison beds? And so in order for me to be able to come
up with an answer for that question, I need to know what are the data? What are the data? Meaning that have you disaggregated the data with respect to all the prisons that you have within our system?
How many are in each facility? Can that information be shared? I would like to see that information. And I think that that would help us determine whether there's a need for more prison beds. We need, the data needs to be disaggregated so that we can see that. There
Speaker 36
48:36
is a report done every night, I get it every day, of what the, every unit, what the capacity is. And I'm sure that if you'll talk to Secretary Wallace, I'm sure that she can get you on the list to get that email every night.
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
48:53
Well, I think the entire, I think as a committee, we're supposed to be doing this as a committee. I think, and as I understand our charge, we have September, October, November, we have
meetings that will be scheduled. And I think that we need to come in at each of the meetings and look at the data to determine what the data show. And then from there, develop some plans or solutions to the problem if we've determined that it
Lee Watson
Unverified
49:19
is a problem. If I might add, this morning I emailed the chair the most recent monthly reports, and we have three of those.
One is from the Secretary, one is from the Director of Corrections, and the other, the Director of Community Corrections. And in those, you will find a list of the facilities, their rated capacity, and the current population of that facility, and how much overcapacity it is. And if I may take a moment and explain kind of the EPA and the history of that, I'd like to do that, because I think it gives us a good frame of reference. And it's all about us needing prisons, Mr. Chair.
And before you do, let me, Representative Springer, I have not had a chance to view his email. But
from what I will ask staff to distribute that to
Lee Watson
Unverified
50:10
the members of the committee. And if you look back, if you want to know a little bit about how bad Arkansas is needed capacity, do a Google search about Sheriff Tommy Robinson, early 1980s. I was in college at the time, and the county jail backup there was enough of a problem for Pulaski County that he took some inmates down to, I think, Tucker, I'm not sure, or Pine Bluff,
and handcuffed them to the fence and left them. It was a problem then. We're talking early 1980s. The Emergency Powers Act was passed in 1986, and what it did was it allowed a process by which inmates who were within 90 days of release, pardon me, within one year of release, whose release date had already been determined by the parole board, if they were in for nonviolent offenses and had been good inmates,
hadn't had any disciplinary problems, they could be released up to 90 days, pardon me, up to one year early. Again, nonviolent offenders. um that process basically is that the director of the department of corrections would make recommend a list to the board of corrections if we then approved it it would go to the parole board now mind you the parole board's already looked at these people that's kind of where it came from but the parole board would then make a decision do we release each one of them or not and again these
are folks who already have a hard set release date they might be released a day early or 300 and 60 days early those were non-violent as the years went by that didn't prove to be as effective as everybody wanted and a new epa or an amendment to it came through and i don't recall which year off the top of my head but it was for all inmates and again if they'd been good followed all the rules they could be released up to 90 days early and again that's when a date had been set for them
to be released kind of set in stone if you will but that was much broader it wasn't just non-violent offenders it was offenders who had behaved well and done what they were supposed to do supposed to do while incarcerated but again that might shave a day off their time or it might shave 89 days off or whatever but um the board's role in that it's kind of the middle part of that process once those have been put together by the director and if we move that along then the parole
board would look at it and if there's somebody they didn't think should be released they would take them off the list and that's been in place for the first version of it for 40 years so that lets you know that we've had a county jail backup problem and a capacity problem for well over 40 years probably closer to 50 and and it's why when i was talking about earlier this is you know we can play catch-up and get to where we need to be for
thank you for that answer we're we're continuing
to rehash what we uh members uh i i'm always the last person at an auction uh but if we don't get to the other people that came to testify today we will either not hear them or we will be here all night and i know most of you are not going to stay all night i'm going to go we've got one more member of the committee that i can see representative uh let me get the name right because it's backwards on here uh representative mccullough
uh and then i'm going to ask these gentlemen to stay if they will i don't think we're going to get back to you but i'm going to ask you to stay so just in case we get past everybody else and we still have members that won't ask you questions
Representative Tippi McCullough
Unverified
54:18
uh that they can't uh rush into mccullough you're recognized thank you mr chair um we know the protect arkansas protect arkansas means many people would be incarcerated longer before that law was enacted did the board advise policymakers
exactly how many additional beds those sentencing changes would eventually require and do we know do we have any data yet
Speaker 36
54:46
i know the nobody on the board was uh consulted when that when the protect arkansas Act went through. We were there. We visited with the legislators, but we were not consulted on that. Second question was? Do we
Representative Tippi McCullough
Unverified
55:01
have any numbers now? Do we realize how that's affecting
Speaker 36
55:05
the beds? No, we don't. I did speak with somebody from the intake unit at Malvern, and they said, and it was just their opinion, that they are noticing an increase. It's already beginning to take effect.
Representative Tippi McCullough
Unverified
55:19
Okay, thank you, sir. Just quick follow-up, Mr. Chair, if you don't mind. We've got several different capacity numbers in our materials. We've got current capacity, design capacity, board-rated capacity, and operated beds, and there can be a difference in some of those
between 500 and 1,000 beds. As committee members, which numbers should we consider when we're talking about beds that are needed i don't know i don't
Speaker 149
55:49
know what what numbers you're looking at now there are at times there
Speaker 36
55:54
have been temporary beds added just like at malvern i think there were 60 temporary beds added in a gym but they're probably going to be permanent so Well, temporary beds tend to be permanent.
I don't know what the rating capacity. There is a rating capacity on that report I mentioned to Representative Springer. It lists what the approved beds are, but it's normally above capacity. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Gentlemen. If
Speaker 31
56:31
point of personal privilege? I'm recognizing
you for a point of personal privilege.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
56:42
Mr. Chair, I just want to say on behalf of these two gentlemen, the anecdotal answers without owning any of the responsibility and action, inattention, and indecision about the expansion of the need for beds. The only truthful and important thing they've said today is we need more beds. And they've had the juice. They've had the power to expand these programs that Vice Chair Dubbs or Dubbs was talking about as far as recidivism and to reorient that department and Department of Corrections, and they've done nothing.
So at some point, they need to take responsibility for their inaction and why we are here today. So I thank you
for allowing me to make that statement. I have allowed you to make that statement. Don't expect the rest of you to have the same courtesy. Mr. Majority Leader, if you want to have a committee meeting on that subject, we will be glad to entertain that. The gentleman, if you would stay, I would appreciate it. I'm going to
ask the sheriffs and Taylor Hanford Association of Counties
to come to the table, Representative Dalby, if you would
help get them started i'm going to step out for just a
Representative Carol Dalby
Unverified
58:21
moment gentlemen once you have the opportunity to have a seat if you'll just push the button and identify
Speaker 179
58:25
yourself for the record I'm Sean Holloway I'm
Speaker 128
58:34
the sheriff of Benton County Mike Nadal sheriff of Dallas County Scott Sawyer sheriff of Polk
Speaker 180
58:42
County Taylor Hanford AAC legal counsel thank you
Representative Carol Dalby
Unverified
58:46
gentlemen for being here today I'll I'm assuming that you have gotten together as to who's going to speak first second or third or how you're going to do it so you are recognized to make your presentation thank you chairwoman dalby
Speaker 183
58:59
i will begin i'll read a opening statement and then i will pass it off to the sheriffs and then i think we'll be open for any kind of questions so we appreciate the opportunity to raise awareness and continue the conversation regarding the need for prison beds in arkansas county jails are meant to house misdemeanants and pre-adjudicated defendants that have felony charges. Once a felon has been found guilty, they are to be sent upstream to the state, to ADC. A judge sentences
them to the custody of ADC, not to the custody of the county. Counties cannot declare a crime a felony. Counties do not make sentencing decisions, nor do counties make parole decisions. Counties run and operate jails. Sheriffs are the keepers of the jails and see firsthand the impact that an overcrowded county jail has and the impact that the state inmate backup has on their facilities and on their communities. The current numbers show that the inmate backup is increasing and
the projected numbers show how much more of an increase is likely. The 2024 CGL projections projected an ADC jurisdictional population of 21,803 by end of year 2029. The 2025 projections projected an increase to 21,497 so a little bit less but the numbers that are less there have already been added to our jurisdictional population from those 2024 numbers. Either number represents an increase of over 2,000 state inmates from our current jurisdictional
population of 19,454. With the current backup of around 2,300 state inmates there are currently 27 county jails that have 20% or more of their bed capacity taken by state inmates waiting for an ADC bed. As the state backup increases, the ability for county jails to manage the population will decline, which will lead to dangerous criminals being left on the streets due to an inability to detain them. Counties have spent millions of dollars on jail construction and expansion since
2015, adding over 2,200 beds to county jails. If not for those beds and the efforts of the standards administration and the department of corrections in adding 1500 beds the county jail backup would be truly unmanageable but without further state action and state resources the county jail backup will become truly unmanageable because it is on an unsustainable path additional community corrections beds are welcomed but they do not solve the truly
Gordian parts of this issue, which is the growing ADC population. Currently, there are open community corrections beds. The community corrections beds population, that is not the population that is going to drive the misdemeanor justice system off the cliff. It's the ADC population, a population that has become more and more violent over time and is expected to have the biggest increases in that population. The characteristics of the state prison population have changed dramatically over time from primarily non-violent offenders to over 70% violent offenders in ADC. This also means that
the county jail backup is composed of more and more violent offenders and managing the jailed population becomes more and more difficult. There are also over 195,000 unserved active warrants in the state, over 26,000 failure to appear warrants. So people are saying that there are no consequences and our criminal justice system, and they're essentially flouting it. Without further state action and sustained state action, these issues will continue to grow and negatively impact local communities and the state as a whole.
Speaker 190
1:02:49
Thank you. First, I'd like to thank you all for passing the Protect Arkansas Act. I believe
Speaker 191
1:02:54
that was the most comprehensive and important piece of legislation I've seen in my career. I came to speak today about the need for prison beds. Today, the state backup list is 2,506 inmates. That's inmates that are in the county jails waiting for a bed in the prison. Some of them will sit there for six months waiting to be called for a bed to prison.
Seventy percent of those offenders are violent, so we're dealing with violent convicted felon offenders. In county jails are not designed for that. When I took office in 2017, I had a 27-bed jail. Every day I met with my staff, sometimes Saturdays and Sundays, to find out who I had to let out of jail, which one of my offenders, which one of the people in my jail was least likely to harm the public because I'd be running 35 and 40 inmates in a 27-person jail.
Every day I had to decide whether a guy that was in for DWI third offense was more likely to hurt somebody than the guy in jail for residential burglary or domestic battery. And we had to make those tough calls because I didn't have room. In 2022, I added 32 beds, more than doubled my population. I went to 59 beds. I started holding misdemeanor inmates in September of 2022. My crime rate dropped. The misdemeanor offenders that before they'd come
to jail they'd immediately get cited and released because we couldn't hold them they'd fail to show up in court repeatedly because they knew i didn't have room to hold them um we had inmates or guys with seven eight nine failure to appear warrants because they just blew it off there's no punishment when i finally had a method to punish them hey i've got room for misdemeanors in my jail my crime rate dropped the misdemeanor thefts the things like that dropped uh significantly enough that that that even people in the public were coming to me saying man you guys are doing a
really good job um it was it was a very nice four years but I'm at the point now where my jail's full again I've got uh 19 state inmates waiting for prison beds they make up 35 percent of my population um I don't have room for them I need them out so I have room to hold those DWI third offenders that got sentenced to six months in jail um because I you know we can send them home on house arrest because that's the option but they've already shown they are repeat offenders
they're not going to follow the rules and it's only a matter of time before they kill somebody in dwi rec and i'm i'm to that point where i'm getting ready to have to start to have those meetings with my staff every day because i'm overpopulated um i need those beds for for misdemeanor inmates that are that are sentenced to jail and i also need those beds for pre-trial pre-conviction inmates that are that run a risk to my public and i just don't have that room right now um i'm tasked with the job of protecting my community and and we need the the tools to be able
Speaker 193
1:06:03
one of them thank you thank you mr chairman committee i'm going to kind of repeat some of the same things he said i'm sheriff dallas county it's a small rural county but i've always tried to live by a motto we can deal with consequences or deal with problems or we can deal with the consequences and consequences usually suck and we're here so with that said I have about 100 and I can hold about 130 inmates but in order to keep my operation running I've had
to retain federal prisoners so they pay about twice as much they do pay twice as much as state prisoners but I still stay at capacity and like he said I'm having to decide every day what misdemeanor offense i want to let out whether it's a dwi burglary that's under the threshold or whatever so i'm putting these people back in our community and that's on us so i know we're here
and i heard you loud and clear mr chairman about talking about beds but the next thing is is we have to talk about what we're getting
Speaker 195
1:07:10
paid for those beds by the state okay i'm gonna stop you okay
as a former chair of city county local and a former quorum court member and one of the people uh of many here who helped raise it from 20 something to 40 and i know what's happened what happened with inflation during covid etc that is a subject and city county local may be able to take that up in the next few months uh because they're not on my schedule uh and so i very much
Speaker 195
1:07:38
appreciate what you want to say uh and it needs to be said but not here city county local i'm confused explain that to me city county local is
a different committee i got that i've been around well that's where that city county locals who led the way to get y'all money before not uh not judiciary and and while it would be okay to discuss it here we just don't have time to okay but it's a legitimate issue and i'll just say
to the chairs of city county local uh holler at these guys if y'all want to talk
Speaker 193
1:08:12
about it absolutely okay so moving right along
like i said the the immediate need for these beds you have to think about it as we said he said just a while ago 70 of the people incarcerated right now are violent offenders and i don't know what kind of process or protocol is used to determine who gets an early release or who doesn't but i think that's something that needs to be looked at because i'm not that guy i'm not that sheriff that believes you you lock everybody up and throw away the key that's not the answer and we talked about the programming sheriff's office does not have the money nor the
capability of doing the programming i have an inmate right now that has served pretty much his whole sentence in my jail and i can't get him over to diagnostic to get him out his mother's ill he's wanting to go home to help take care of his mother and i truly believe this individual is be one of those persons that's going to try to do the right thing but that's that's sad that he served his whole sentence in my jail and we can't get him into diagnostic and programming to get him out back in the public so those are some of the things that when we can talk about beds all day and i and
i get your point um but we need to look further than that because we can deal with the problems we can deal with the consequences the consequences suck and here we are so we need some prison beds no five months is
not nearly enough but five months is what we've got so
Speaker 201
1:09:49
i hear you thank you committee i'm the sheriff up in benton county one of the larger counties
Speaker 202
1:09:54
i have the same issues that the other sheriffs here have mine are on a much larger scale obviously
we do play this game i've been the sheriff for 10 years if you look at the dynamics of what my county jail looks like today versus 10 years ago it's the type of individuals that we were holding in our jail when I became sheriff we had misdemeanors area that we could hold people we have not had that system in place for almost seven years and I'll speak to that here in a second but what I'm getting to if you go in my county jail now it looks more like a prison the type
of individuals that we hold and the evidence is in the fact I've always been a big component of work detail crews inmates that go out and do pickups trash do construction type projects I have six different deputies that do that I'm having a hard time now even filling those crews to meet community needs that are that we do provide as a sheriff's office because the individuals I hold now are that 70 percent that they were speaking of I don't feel safe letting
them outside the walls so there's times I have crews that don't go out because I can't fill those that's one of the issues going on my county currently was able to save 20 million dollars and we have a project we're working on now i'm going to build 300 beds for misdemeanors in my county i need more felony beds but i do recognize what sheriff sawyer was talking about and the results that they saw when they started addressing this issue in their their own communities and We're going to try to address that issue and hopefully redirect some individuals
that would be potential future felons, and maybe they won't be a felon if we can address their behavior at a misdemeanor level and give my district judges the power to be judges again and give teeth back to the judicial system that affects those individuals when they first enter into the criminal system so that we don't have to worry about bigger, larger prisons in the future. This is one of the many solutions I believe that we need to do. But I'm not naive looking at today in my county jail.
I had 150 people last night sleep on the floor, which is an issue. I need an expansion on that based on our county growth, but it's also an issue going on with the state. At any given point, I have 150 or so inmates that are waiting on beds at the state level. So it's a twofold issue for me. I'm dealing with a population growth and the issue that's going on right now with the state prison system. uh i don't envy you uh you guys as a body on what this solution is going to be but
i ask as a sheriff and all the sheriffs that you guys please find a solution for us to get these individuals out of our county jails so so that our county jails can operate what they're intended to be and not be a holding spot for the department corrections we're not in the business of corrections that's the job that they're supposed to do it's a it's a multifaceted issue and problems and I just hope that we can come to a solution
as a body oh you guys can and the sheriff's with some something that's meaningful that will actually happen and not be talking about this five years later
thank you thank you mr. Lanford have you spoke you did I hated I
missed it all right I'm gonna go to senator McKee member of the committee thank you mr. chair thank you gentlemen
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
1:13:38
for being here talked a little bit about what it
costs the state to incarcerate folks and you mentioned what it costs counties to be holding state prisoners would you like to talk a little bit about what it costs our communities when you don't have beds for folks that should be
Speaker 208
1:13:57
behind bars i've told this story several times and actually did a video on it um we had
Speaker 191
1:14:03
an inmate in polka county detention center we sent him to prison five times over 19 year period he served less than 15 percent of his total sentences he was released on the epa three times during those that 19 years um in 2017 he got
out again on the EPA after serving less than 15% of his sentence, absconded immediately from the county he paroled out to, showed back up in my county, killed his girlfriend, her 67-year-old uncle, her nine-year-old son, and her two-year-old daughter in a span of about three days. The worst week of my life. My first term as sheriff. That's what it's costing the counties. That's what it's costing the citizens of these counties is we are not holding inmates
responsible. If he just served 20 percent of the sentences he got during those five trips down to Arkansas Department of Corrections, he would not have been out to kill four people. And that's what it's costing. And I've told that story a bunch of times, but every sheriff in this state has those same stories. Every sheriff in those states have nightmare scenarios of inmates that should have been in prison, that were sentenced to prison. The prosecutor did their job. Law enforcement did their job the juries and the judges did their job but we didn't have the beds to hold them and they
had to kick them out early and they got out to terrorize our communities so that's
the biggest cost i see thank you i'm going to exercise privileges chair uh senator mckee you were on the quorum court in garland county for a number of years uh what year did we build the
jail did y'all build a jail is that 14 something like that
uh back when they the judges were releasing
many many a week what happened to the crime rates in garland county they went
up they went up yeah so um thank you for love the chair have a follow-up mr chair yes thank you
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
1:16:13
we we appreciate the work y'all do would you say that the current operation of the department of corrections make your job easier
Speaker 191
1:16:24
or harder over the the last several years um they're they're doing the best
they can i do believe um they work hard they're very responsive usually for what they can do if i have a problem inmate waiting to go to prison i can call them and they will they will make rangers. If I have a medical issue with one, they will bump him up in the list and help me out. I think they're doing the best they can with what they have. I think we have failed them by not providing them with the bed space that they need
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
1:16:55
to do the job that we expect them to do. You mentioned that the individual that absconded and ended up killing those folks was released on EPA. Was he the only individual that you know of that was probably violent that
Speaker 191
1:17:06
was released on epa no sir i i think like i said i think every sheriff in this state that's had any time at all has has had a similar story maybe not
Speaker 190
1:17:15
with the the the four the four homicides but they we all have those stories and he's not the only one that i've dealt
Speaker 200
1:17:20
with in my county either okay thank you i could i could tell you
Speaker 202
1:17:24
of one of my county uh individual lady who was out on bond on a drug charge i believe it was her third time to be arrested has not had not been sent to prison yet based on what i had in the county jail at the time she was considered one of my lower level
threats to the community therefore she was out on bond again a few months later officer in p ridge arkansas kevin apple on a traffic stop approaching the car was ran over by this individual she was charged in our county and convicted a little personal for me because he was a friend of mine trying to think of something I could have done different. But if we'd been back 10 years ago, that lady would have been in my facility and not out on the street.
But based on the current conditions and overcrowding that we have in our
Senator Matt McKee
Unverified
1:18:19
own county jail, she was out. One more. Go ahead, Senator. If y'all had to choose between a reimbursement rate that reflected your actual costs and freeing up those beds. Free up the beds.
Speaker 193
1:18:33
Thank you. Senator McKee, if I could, kind of following up his, I want to say something about Department of Correction and Director Payne.
They're always willing to work with us. If I make that call, like he said, I don't want it to sound like we're here against them because we're not. They're doing the best they can with what they got. But I want to
Speaker 199
1:18:53
take that opportunity to say that. Senator Simon. Thank you, Mr.
Senator Brad Simon
Unverified
1:19:03
Chair, and thank you, gentlemen, for coming, and I especially thank you for the work that you do. It's extremely important. Misdemeanor justice is, that's the gateway drug to felonies.
I think we'd all agree to that. We've got to figure out a solution to that. And, you know, Sheriff Holloway, you mentioned basically you haven't had misdemeanor justice in seven years. Is that correct? And, yeah, Mr. Hanford, you did mention that some of the counties are expanding and have expanded their jail space. Two counties in my district have actually built new prisons or built new jails Within recent years. Can you speak to what the larger more populous counties are are doing and how they're addressing that with their jail space?
in particular Counties such as Northwest Arkansas where populations doubled recently and so it's projected to double again So this is an
Speaker 202
1:19:54
issue I've been dealing with basically for a decade seeing what was coming For my county jail At one point we tried to pass a tax in my county To expand our facility that would serve us for 20 plus years with an operating tax on it failed miserably There's not an appetite in our communities for any more taxes. So there lies the issue
Some counties have a tax for operations of maintenance. Mine does not so we've had to get creative As I mentioned, we're building 300 bed expansion that I'm going to use as misdemeanor as long as I can So many of you may not understand the difference between the misdemeanor and felony. By Constitution, we have to hold the felons. Misdemeanors, we do not, but we need to hold them. So when we get a capacity, we have to start turning our misdemeanors away for constitutional reasons.
So for my county, you know, we're doing this 300 bed. I'm calling it a misdemeanor pod, uh, with, uh, hoping that my local, uh, cities will help us fund the operations of that, but I'm not naive, uh, to know that if something's not addressed at the state level to relieve me of some of the, the state units that I have, that, that pod will eventually be a felony pod, not a misdemeanor pod, uh, because I won't have a choice constitutionally. Um, that's one of the things we're doing. we're looking at grants uh for expansions uh building a hard facility as we know looking at
this prison it's not any different for a county jail those those type of facilities are very very expensive it's about 22 million dollars per hundred beds that's a lot for a county to take on versus the misdemeanor pod at 20 million dollars i'm getting 300 beds so the stark difference in the type of construction that is going on so it's a it's a very difficult thing what i face is the same issue that every sheriff faces regardless it's just different scales of it representative
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:21:55
baity thank you mr. chair the the real reason we're here today i i believe is because these gentlemen sitting in front of us i appreciate the comment i appreciate the job that you guys do i think this committee uh wholeheartedly supports you and and how you've kind of been handcuffed so to speak, with the system that you've been placed in and to operate and discharge your duties and protect Arkansans. And I appreciate the comments that you made on the Protect Act
and how that's changed. And what I would say is you have friends in the legislature, and we will address the issues and concerns that you have. Is there anything else that you guys want to tell us today that we need to place our attention on outside of just the reimbursement rate, and we'll do that in a separate meeting maybe in the future. I
Speaker 208
1:22:55
came today just to express the importance of our need for more prison beds.
Speaker 191
1:23:01
That's what I came up with. Reimbursement rate, it's great. I don't budget that money. It goes right back in my county general. But the bed space is more important to me than the money. If you offered me $100 a day per inmate or said we won't have any state inmates in your jail, I would take that because I need the bed space to administer misdemeanor justice and hold pretrial detainees, violent offenders, keep my community safe. Thank
Speaker 193
1:23:28
you, Senator, and I'm with him. The money's not going to fix the problem.
You could pay us $200 a day. It's not going to fix the problem of overcrowding. But one of the things that I didn't say earlier that I want to make clear, is everybody in this room understands you see the the inmate population as it is it could be so much worse because every court date it was brought to our attention today there's a guy with a rap sheet this long but they'll plea bargain down to one charge one charge if all those charges were put in place on these people we would be 10 000 beds probably short right now but i'm i'm with the
sheriff here the money is not the issue i mean it is we can't keep going like like we have been and i know the senator mr chairman said don't speak about it but we can't keep going at the rate we are either and that's a whole nother story for another day but money's not going to fix the problem
Speaker 202
1:24:29
thank you sir and there is one other area not so much for this committee today but it is an issue with overcrowding in our jails uh inmates who have mental health issues that are waiting on
evaluations uh my county right now has 35 those individuals have to be housed in individual cells that are intended for two people so right there i've lost for every one of those i get i've lost a bed so at some point we need to address uh from the state level at the at the hospital what we're going to do it's very expensive no one wants to be in that business and i but that is an issue that is backing up our county jails as well as the inmates that have mental health issues thank you
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:25:13
i want to say again thank you gentlemen for being here today and i hope the two board of correction members that sat at that table earlier and insulted this committee with their comments took notes and heard your voice and what you said today
so thank you you're the majority leader and i love you but you're out of order
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
1:25:36
uh senator tucker thank you mr chair and thank you gentlemen for the service you provide to people
your county in this state my question is about uh state prisoners in your county jails and uh it's been
said to me though not by a sheriff which is and since y'all are here i want to give y'all a chance to answer this question i understand you can't speak on behalf of the entire state maybe taylor can, but you can only speak on behalf of your counties. But it's been said to me that the sweet spot for the number of state prisoners in county jails across the state is somewhere between 700 and 1,000. So my question for y'all is, is that true? Or is your ideal number zero state prisoners in your jail? Or is it something more than zero? Or what percent of your capacity? Or do you have
any knowledge about that sweet spot for a number of statewide prisoners, not just in your counties, but across the whole state, or what are y'all's thoughts on that? Me,
Speaker 191
1:26:28
personally, my sweet spot would be zero. My sweet spot would be zero. We are paid $40 a day per inmate. I think the last audit they did where we went through and looked has costed me about $70 a day to hold them. So I'm losing $30 a day per inmate. That $40 you're giving me is just offsetting my loss already, but I need the beds. I need the beds.
I would prefer not to have one. the day that they're convicted, we bring them to Malvern or wherever the intake is and drop them off would be
Speaker 193
1:27:02
my ideal situation for my county. It would most definitely be the safest. As he said, the day they get convicted, if we could roll them out of there, because that's going to give us the opportunity to hold those misdemeanors that we talked about, the DWIs, maybe misdemeanor drug charges or whatever that resulted in violence, domestic crimes, things as that, but zero would
be that sweet spot for me too. That's just my opinion. Thank you
for that question. I would go somewhat the
Speaker 202
1:27:33
same, but it'd be naive to think that we'd ever have zero. There's always going to be those in process, but a lower number would be much
Speaker 211
1:27:44
better. Again, thank you, Senator Turk, for
the question thank y'all for the answer the and that's why we're not dealing with that is the more important subject is the one that we barely have
time to deal with between now and January is how do we get them out and the the other one is a very important subject as like I said again as a former quorum court member it is not fair for the state to put the cost off on you or on your counties but that's not our uh that's something for somebody to look at at another time if we get them out like you said then that's not an issue anymore uh senator tucker were you done
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
1:28:26
i just really was curious if taylor wanted an opportunity to respond or if any of the sheriffs
know of other counties where they maybe they built a county jail with an idea that they they need some number of state prisoners and i i think that is the case in some counties maybe not in y'all's counties which i totally respect but but taylor can you
Speaker 183
1:28:46
speak to speak to this so i always love more opportunity for us to have conversations senator tucker uh there are going to be some counties who do mutual good there are some counties that are going to uh look at the cash flow as uh critical to their operations but as we've discussed i don't want to belabor this point
because I know this isn't the hearing, the $40 doesn't meet the cost. As far as preferring to, if there's a number between $700 or $1,000, as the sheriff said, zero would be their preferred number. I think that's theoretically possible but functionally impossible. There's always going to be some delay in moving people upstream to ADC for whatever reasons, But those reasons would at some point hopefully not be because of lack of capacity, but maybe just logistical or transportation issues.
Historically, the ADC backup for the past probably 10 to 15 years has been a little under 1,700. I think that backup number historically, if it's under 1,700 to 1,000, You're going to have less counties calling with needing Director Payne or somebody else to take an immediate action to get somebody out of the county jail. So I think historically, as you said, the sweet spot would be much lower than it is now, probably closer to 700 than 1,000.
And I would like to say that when the EPA was amended at one point, they benchmarked 500 as the state backup, and then the EPA could be used. So there is some kind of precedence for 500. Thank you. Senator Blake
Speaker 239
1:30:33
Johnson. Thank you guys for being here and taking the time
Speaker 240
1:30:37
away from what you do daily. So, I mean, this is just a matter of discussion.
So mental health evaluations, mental health issues is a problem inside our prisons and inside what you guys are doing. Do you feel like if a state, rather than us building a bunch of facilities to do that on a local level or regional level, should we help you guys in that funding? I'm not sure that would be a solution.
Speaker 202
1:31:10
So what you're looking at, you're looking at most of the time this is a pretrial person
who needs a mental evaluation to determine whether they can even go to trial. there's times, I know Washington County had one for five years. I've had one for two years. Individuals in my facility for two years who has not even been to trial more likely served more time in my county jail than what they would have been found guilty of of the original charge. So I don't know if more money is a solution. We just need, there are some solutions that are coming, but that has been one of the backup problems
is when you have hundreds of individuals that are backing up county jails, and mine, 35, that's a lot. So I don't know how money would really solve that solution. We're just waiting on an eval for someone to determine whether this person's fit for trial or they're not fit for trial so that we can move on
Speaker 240
1:32:05
and get the system rolling. What's slowing
Speaker 191
1:32:10
down the eval? I believe that under Arkansas law, there's only, I believe, two right now?
Two folks with PhDs in psychology that can do the evaluation. the whole state. It's almost standard operating procedure for defense attorneys to file for a forensic on every felony case. So we have a huge backup. I want to say it's something like in the area of 85% of them are cleared to proceed to trial. Many of them don't even need a forensic eval. It's just kind of a stall tactic is how we see it. I believe there's some legislation coming up maybe this next session to maybe address who can actually do those evaluations. But that's a
problem right now we only have two folks that can do it and it takes months and months i've had several that have spent two plus years uh sitting in my jail waiting for an evaluation waiting to go to trial 87 87 i'm sorry sounds like a good
start okay i've got three non-members on the list and then we're going to move on center king thank
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
1:33:18
you mr chair i've got two quick questions uh one of them is to the uh benton county sheriff
and i appreciate you taking my phone call the other day one of the biggest things is population growth we talked about northwest arkansas that is different than other state uh you know the sheriffs i talked to over there all are like in this space issue but getting things done to get them to the space that we need looking down the road we need an intake facility up in northwest arkansas do you still agree that
Speaker 247
1:33:45
that would be excellent for us up there it would be
Speaker 248
1:33:50
beneficial i don't know how how that's going to free up beds for me but yes
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
1:33:56
no i mean it's not bed space but it just would make it easier for us up there to have an intake facility up in northwest arkansas i mean yeah versus having to drive all the way down yeah so it would save you man hours of transport and it would save you cost it would save you a lot of different things okay the second part is about misdemeanor justice and we're having these county jails and addressing this before they get to felonies and trying to address that so we're having these county jails now we got counties out there that are going to need expansions
because of population growth there's there's no way we're going to get taxes passed to do that so you guys would not be opposed to looking at state grants to deal with misdemeanor expansion situations out there with counties that would could ultimately save us because if they if we can correct them in misdemeanors it's a lot cheaper than letting them be felonies so for us to provide money for you to apply for grants as what you're doing or an expansion for the state that would be
helpful in the process too just for misdemeanor justice i
Speaker 201
1:35:00
believe that would be beneficial and helpful uh to other areas but what's going
Speaker 202
1:35:05
to be the real issue for any county it would be the operating cost going forward because that's where the real cost is in the long term building is one thing but there'd be some challenges it would have to come with some some type of operating mechanism for the counties going forward to build up keep those facilities up and running yeah that's and
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
1:35:26
that's my whole point about even if we had a magic prison genie come down here
and plop a 3,000-bed prison down open January 1, there's not the money down here in the budget that is going to be allocated to be able to fund that. But this would be just grants to allow you to expand county jails, do what it needs. But as I do, it would also have to include stuff for operating costs to help do that. I mean, I agree with that. You can't just help
Speaker 140
1:35:54
with the building. You're going to have to help
Speaker 202
1:35:58
with the whole thing. Yeah, and I believe in my situation, building it wasn't the issue,
and I realize that my county is in a different situation. We have a lot of tax money coming in. We're in a different school for lack of a better reason. But at the end, trying to figure out what's been holding us up is how are we going to operate this long term without breaking the county. So there would be helpful if there was grants out there to help with operations of whatever the facility would be. yeah i agree senator king
Speaker 193
1:36:32
i definitely wouldn't be opposed to that but i think the the main thing
is we have to look at is it sustainable long term because if we build something like that you hire people to run it and everything and i'm going from a very large county to where i'm at is a very small rural county 6 000 people overall is it sustainable these grants that you're talking about and i would be for them but you know i'd have to be assured they were going to be long term well as
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
1:37:05
i do things don't worry you can't as you say you can't operate it's just
like in 17 when i was like
wanting to put people away that had been correct convicted four times to serve 80 percent of sentence it came with a cost at that time to pay for it amazon was voluntarily preventing the internet tax so i went to governor at the time and several legislators i'm like we're going to have to put this in there had we done that we wouldn't be in this mess so you're exactly right you can't just give a grant and then give a tank of gas to get started and then not do the operating
part but i'm willing you'll be finding out more about how to do both those for me
Representative Tara Shephard
Unverified
1:37:42
representative Tara Shepherd thank you mr. chair thank you gentlemen for being here today I have one quick question that's multiple I would like to know if your jails are accredited when was your last audit and as a result of your audit were there any findings due to overcrowding i'm assuming you're talking about the jail
inspections done by the state yearly or aca if you're aca accredited you may not be i am not okay but any state so
Speaker 202
1:38:27
every year for the last six to seven years i believe that it's been noted that we needed to increase personnel and increase space based on our population. Due to
Representative Tara Shephard
Unverified
1:38:41
the overcrowded? Yes. And who does that information go to? State legislators? It goes to legislative
Speaker 202
1:38:46
audit and it comes to the sheriff and to the quorum court,
Representative Tara Shephard
Unverified
1:38:49
I believe. That's correct. Okay. So AOC
is aware of the overcrowdedness. Okay. I'm sorry.
Audit. Audit. Audit. Okay, and the same for you all gentlemen you okay. Thank you for
that. Thank you Okay, see no more questions Gentlemen,
I appreciate you being here today. I appreciate your testimony The we're
moving on to Kayleem Hazeem, I hope I've got that right
If you folks will turn your mics on, make sure they're pulled up close where we can hear you and uh identify yourselves and who you're
Speaker 269
1:40:05
representing for the record my name is colleen nazine uh co-director of decarcerate uh and i'm representing the organization decarcerate uh
Sarah Moore
Unverified
1:40:22
good afternoon my name is sarah moore i'm the co-founder and executive director of the arkansas justice reform coalition and a lifelong arkansan glad to be here and i appreciate
the subject matter today if y'all have a presentation we're ready yes we do
Sarah Moore
Unverified
1:40:42
can you guys see it sorry we can't see your
screens is it loaded for you we don't see the screens on
Speaker 274
1:40:48
at the moment that's what i was thinking it was loaded earlier
Sarah Moore
Unverified
1:40:56
sorry about that i think there's a printout too so we're happy to use the printout if we're having technical difficulties does everyone have have a printout
okay super okay does arkansas need more prison beds is that is that this piece right
here sarah yes sir okay you should have that at
your desk is that okay yeah that's good and we're
Speaker 274
1:41:19
working on the screens okay we'll go ahead and and get started if
Speaker 269
1:41:24
you guys are okay with that we know the time is up first of all i'd like to thank this committee for allowing us to be here today uh as i said my name is kalim nazim um and i want to speak against
Speaker 282
1:41:36
um bid expansions in arkansas i think we don't have a um over crown problem i think that the main problem that we're having is a it's a policy pop problem if you were
We're just like in crime, crime charges have gone down in Arkansas from 2014 to 2025. If you look at the paperwork, it says that crime has gone down 17%. However, the prison population has grown by 9%. Inflated growth is due to loan sentences and some more determining factors like it was discussed EPA's not being utilized and also people are being held past their parole eligibility date.
Speaker 269
1:42:27
I think you turned it. Oh, okay, we're
Speaker 282
1:42:30
okay. And people are being held past their parole eligibility date. Between 2014 and 2025, criminal charges failed 17%. However, the population in Arkansas has rose 12%. So crime has went down, the population has went up. However, the prison population is steady growing.
If crime is not the driving factor, then what is? This is a question that we must ask. What
Speaker 269
1:43:04
is the driving factor of our prison population going up? I look at three things. People are receiving longer sentences. The parole eligibility isn't working as
Speaker 282
1:43:21
far as 83% are staying past their transfer eligibility date.
And for those who aren't familiar with transfer eligibility date, well, when guys come to prison, there's a projected date when they're supposed to be released. So instead of releasing guys on the projected date that the state has certified the state projected date of leaving, they're staying much longer. And this is not only jamming up the prison, but it's also costing the state money. And then the Emergency Power Act has stopped being utilized. On the paper, it's 2020, but that's a typo.
It's 2023, the last time the Emergency Power Act has been used. And this, on a regular basis, when it was used, it released more than 2,000 people. And then the Protect Arkansas Act projects to add more than 2,800 bids, and this is about the state's own forecast. Arkansas sent about the same number of people to prison in 2024 as in 2014.
However, the number of people in prison rolls by 21%. Crime rates are not the determining factor. And that's our whole point in this presentation, that we really don't need more beds. We need ballot policies and implement the things that we have in place. As I said, the Emergency Power Act start, you know what I'm saying, really looking at the parole eligibility, the parole board, and releasing people when they're supposed to be released. We're not asking that people just, you know, get out of jail card for free.
We're asking that the people that really do need to be released because they're eventually coming home in a way be released in a timely manner, and that wouldn't overflow our prison system. Then when we look at the cost efficiency, I think everyone in this room as a legislator is keyed in on spending the state's money in a proper way. So when we look at the amount of money that we are spending on the people who are parole eligible,
when we just look at the numbers pertaining to the money from 2009 to 2023, in 2009, $40 million, 2011, $40 million, so forth and so forth, we're spending a lot amount of money to hold people in prison that has red state parole eligibility. date. And I'm trying to kind of go fast with this here because I don't want to take up
too much of you all time because a lot of, when I was sitting back there, just to be honest, I almost went to sleep because the process was so long. But so I'm trying to go fast. So let's look at our border in states, states that border Arkansas and what they are doing to decrease their prison population. I don't know exactly what they're doing, but they have to be doing something because Alabama, since 2014 to 2023, has decreased
their prison population by 38%. Texas, they have decreased their prison population by 18%. Arkansas, 1%. And the only state that is bordering In proximity to Arkansas, Mississippi, their incarceration rate has raised 9%. So I beg to ask the question here, what are our bordering states doing to decrease their population,
and what can we be doing in Arkansas to do the same thing? I think we've been kind of talking about building prisons in Arkansas, But building prison isn't really addressing the underlying issues of the things that we really need to be focusing in on. Building prisons, we can't build our way out of this problem. It's simple as that. My philosophy, in a way. Okay. So we talk about the problems.
Let's talk about some of the solutions. I think we need more expansions of specialty courts, alternative sentencing pathways, investing in housing and health care and reduced court involvement, and programs in prison. Some of the ADC people, they talked about programs within prison. I think if I'm not quoting wrong because I could have misheard it, I think the guy from the ADC said that they have basically 200 programs for vocational programs.
Well, we have 9,000 people in the Arkansas Department of Correction. Another thing that I would like to add to this conversation and also in the way I present myself, And I saved this for last because I didn't want the information that I'm sharing with you all to be discredited. I'm formerly incarcerated. I did 28 years and 11 months of incarceration. I got out in 2018. I was a juvenile lifer. I had a life without parole sentence, did 28 years and 11 months of incarceration.
However, this is what I understand for a fair fact, and I know for a fair fact. It didn't take me 28 years and 11 months to hold me in prison to become the man that I became. So what am I saying in that statement? I'm saying in that statement that people change, people mature. And a lot of times when people are locked up young, the natural process of maturation happens. So when I think about bed space in the Arkansas Department of Correction, I think about a lot of guys that I left behind.
The sheriff's work just up here told a lot of horror stories. Well, what about the success stories? I consider myself a success story. I've been out since 2019. I moved to Jonesboro. I haven't reoffended. I went to college, got a degree in energy control. I'm a working citizen. But then, when I think about when I was incarcerated, during 28 years and 11 months of incarceration, how much does that cost for the state?
We estimated that it costs $70 a day to incarcerate someone. I did the math on it. The state of Arkansas, by the estimates today, spent over $700,000 to keep me in prison when I didn't need to be there. Since I've been out, as I said, I've been a productive member of society. I participate in civic activities in my community. I remember one time the easement in my neighborhood was overflowing,
and we as a community came together, talked to our different city councilors, and got them out there to fix the easements in our neighborhood, and that made me feel like $100. I voted in each election cycle since I've been out. So let's talk about those stories also, why a lot of times we can fair mongle, wow, we need to just be in more prison. No, the things that we really need to be doing, and if you hire me for the state of Arkansas, consider this a job, because I can give them a lot of information about what needs to be done
inside the prison to make individuals coming at home better individuals and more productive members of society. I think another thing that needs to be implemented within our prison system is this. As soon as an individual comes into prison, there should be an individual treatment plan developed for that individual. And markers, during the time that they're doing their time, markers should be set for that individual.
Whatever that treatment plan is, markers need to be set so they can prepare themselves to come home. That is not what's being done in the Arkansas Department of Corrections. Right now as I speak, right now as I speak before you all, the only significant programs that individuals can get into is when they're 36 months for their parole eligibility date. So what if a person has 20 years? Like I said, I did 28 years. If I had a date, I would have had to wait 23 years before I had, before I received any significant treatment.
So we're talking about bed space, true enough. The best way to increase bed space in the Arkansas Department of Correction is to be tough on crime. And the way to be tough on crime is to educate the individuals when we have them capacitated in the Arkansas Department of Correction. Mr. Nassim. Yes, okay, I'm sorry. No, I've been giving you
a lot of leeway. And I appreciate that. And because you're the
only ones here. OK, speaking on the other side and also because I found it quite interesting.
Yes, although a lot of it is and it was on subject about needing less prison beds, although September's meeting would be a good time to present a lot of those things. Yes, sir. So are you already or Sarah, you want to speak to take questions? We're
Sarah Moore
Unverified
1:53:01
happy to take questions. Yes, we'd be happy
to. OK, Representative Gonzalez, you've been waiting. i pulled a johnny rye sorry
Gordon Watkins
Unverified
1:53:15
so i've heard this te date mentioned a couple of times even before
before y'all got up here but just to be clear the te date is not a release date right it is a date that you're the very first date that you're eligible for parole
Sarah Moore
Unverified
1:53:30
absolutely and the release date that you're given because so many folks are in poverty in the state of arkansas and actually get our public defender system many of these folks over 90 percent will actually not go to trial and take plea deals so when they're sitting with a sentencing order and they're making that consideration of their plea deal they are being told that there is not a hundred percent yes you're
going to leave at this date but this is the date if you do the things that we've asked you to do you're in good classification you will be able to leave the department of corrections i can tell you firsthand i have a parole project that's actually a part of the arkansas justice reform coalition and it is very common for people to be in appropriate classification to have done the classes that they're supposed to do and get a year or two year deferral. You have a study that's in your packet that we gave you and has kind of some academic research to kind of lay out some of the
factors so I won't belittle the points today but would love to follow up with you and hope that there will actually be a study done by the ALC to look and investigate and study why people are staying so long past their release date okay but
Gordon Watkins
Unverified
1:54:36
just to be clear like you you said release date again discretionary yes sir discretionary this is not like the end of the sentence or the end of a plea deal release date this is the first time that they are eligible for any type of release or any type of parole correct yes sir you are correct okay all right thank you just wanted to clarify that
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
1:54:55
representative Springer thank you again mr. chair and thank you all for being here this is very interesting to me the question
I have is well you all were present when the other group the previous group was they were up testifying and they talked about the process for releasing and it seemed to me that there's some kind of red tape and for lack of a better word, it takes longer to be released
than when you actually go into. Can you speak to that? Can you explain to me how it is that it seems that you are eligible for a certain release date, however it seems like it takes longer for you to be released from the time that you enter the prison. Can you speak to that? It seems to me there's something wrong with that it
Speaker 282
1:55:53
lot of variables that go into that down when we when we talk about parole issues you know you
can be denied parole for for merit of reason serious nature of the crime institutional record and just different things and then like like just I say about 10 years ago, and I could be wrong on my timing, that the parole board started giving guys, instead of one-year denials, where you get a year of denial and then next year you'll go back up, they'll start giving guys two-year denials where they stay in prison for two extra years and then go back up again.
So this also congests the prison system. So like I said in the beginning of this presentation, I think a lot of the situations and issues that we're doing with the overcrowding of prisons is the implementation of bad policies so want to add on add
Sarah Moore
Unverified
1:56:46
on to that there are required programming but the programs can be incredibly hard so as we're thinking about the 70 million dollars that was originally allocated to go towards expansion that i think was pulled back and has the possibility to reduce recidivism we really
have an opportunity what was talked to earlier about vocational training we know there's data evidence actually came out of the jail standards folks with Sterling Pinnock several years ago that as people get educational pathways they actually exit criminality and you know folks to be able to actually be released we have a gentleman who has gotten two one-year denials and as his family has reached out to us because he can't get into an anger management class that he keeps trying to apply for and Kaleem himself in his own story if you chat with him further
can tell you about you know how often so many people he was incarcerated with apply apply apply they they want to better themselves and cannot get into things that would would benefit them so that they would be better individuals for the state of Arkansas
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
1:57:46
thank thank you for your response because that's what I've gleaned from this is the process that's
in place and it seems that it's broken it's a revolving door it's not to allow you to get out it's to keep it's to keep you
Sarah Moore
Unverified
1:58:01
there and to follow up we really would encourage that those release officers at that day
one really have a pathway plan and that you really have a team that's around you truly cheerleading and wanting you to have success because ultimately they are coming back to the community so to do that more efficiently to spend less tax dollars and then to pour into someone that's able to come back and have additional vocational training so that they can get a better paying job for their family you know instead of a minimum wage job which we know in the state of Arkansas about half of jobs are not a living wage job which is going to put people potentially right back into the
system and we don't want to rehash things but i hope that y'all will come back in september
when we hope to dive as deep as possible into these subjects it's certainly real issues and thank you for the question representative springer uh representative baity thank you mr chair i was kind of waiting i
Speaker 227
1:58:55
thought maybe you weren't going to call on me no thank you sir thank you representative baity don't do it anymore
i'm gonna be i'm gonna play nice
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:59:07
until we get those guys back to the table um what i what i
want to say is i heard you talk about the programming uh during your incarceration in your time there would would you say your rehabilitative state was that led by programming and things that happened while you were incarcerated or was it just a change of mind that you
did on your on your own was it what what aided in that was
Speaker 282
1:59:37
question because and if i if i get somewhat emotional please forgive me uh and answering that question
about what kind of made me into the man that I am today. It was the other guys I was incarcerated with, the older guys, and a lot of those guys have passed away now, but I consider them better men than me that deserve to have the opportunity to be free. And the only reason I'm saying before you all today is the United States Supreme Court in Miller v. Alabama said that it was unconstitutional to give a juvenile a life without parole sentence.
And by way of that ruling, it led to my freedom. However, when I was incarcerated, for all of my incarceration, really, I tried to get in different educational programs, from vocational programs, college courses, all the programs that they have in the ADC. I tried to enter those programs, but I was denied those programs because I wasn't 36 months before my parole eligibility date. So I wasn't able to get in.
I would have liked to be in them programs, but I wasn't able to get in them programs. And as Sarah just shared, a lot of guys try to get in programs, but it's not enough. It's not enough programs. The gentlemen that were sitting at the table earlier today said that the vocational programs I think he said it was 200 vocational seats but we're dealing with 9,000 individuals 200 vocational seats is not enough vocational or educational avenues for
for people who are incarcerated who we are looking to return to society as whole and healthy citizens So we're talking about spending, well, we were talking about spending $700 million on a mega prison in Franklin County. Why not divert some of that money to the prison system? And I hate to say this here because I'm not trying to make a perfect prison, but I think individuals who are incarcerated, and I'm going to share this little jewel of information with you.
The same man that created the problem cannot change the problem. So if you're not infused in education material into the individuals that we have incarcerated, when they are released, a lot of times you're releasing the same person that you locked up. However, when individuals are infused in educational programs, whether it be college course, vocational courses, anger management, whatever it is,
the statistics say when a person has a secondary education, when they're incarcerated, they have a much lower recidivism rate. The statistics also say that individuals who are 60 and older has aged out of criminality. Thank you for all those. You answered my
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:02:45
question. I'm trying to be respectful and let him go on. So my question is, I didn't hear you say anything about the programming at the prison that changed your life and got you out.
So thank God you're living a productive life out in society now where you can make a difference and be an example. And so I appreciate that, but I know there are some of us that we passed the Recidivism Reduction Act that covers some of the programming at prison to try to focus those programs on folks while you've got a captive audience so that you can return them back to society where they can do as you were doing. So some of that programming, was it denied because of violations
and disciplinaries that you had while you were in prison? No, it just wasn't denied by the amount of time that I had. Did
Speaker 311
2:03:37
you have a good, clean record while you were in prison? Oh, no. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Representative Beatty, that's actually
Sarah Moore
Unverified
2:03:43
a rare thing for most folks to not get an infraction of some sort in the prison system. I mean, because insubordination or a number of things, if somebody, you know. I'm looking at
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:03:53
them right now, so I see what they
Speaker 282
2:03:56
are. Let me share this with you, Representative. If I can just add on to what you just asked me about my institutional record.
Quickly. Quickly, okay. The thing is, it's like Sarah was saying, you can get a dictionary just for saying no. Gambling operation? No, just saying no. Oh, okay. You know, like looking at the TV, count time. You didn't hear the officer say count time. And then the officer asked you, did you not hear me say count time? No, I didn't hear you say count time. Well, I'm going to write you up.
So I can't say I had a clean institutional record, but I can say this here. Anytime I testify before this committee, I will be honest with you all, and I will not be intellectually dishonest with you all. And what that means is when I know the facts, I'm
Speaker 269
2:04:51
going to state the facts, and sometimes people tend to be intellectually dishonest. Well, we wish you the best and keep doing
Speaker 317
2:05:00
what you're doing out in the public. Yes, sir. Thank you.
Speaker 282
2:05:04
And Representative Lateman, I appreciate all that you do in the Jonesboro area. i'm
up there with you one up yes we've got one non-member uh with the
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
2:05:19
question senator sullivan thank you mr chair my comment would be to you first i heard from this uh from the table out here that china and cuba were doing better than arkansas and i just heard that alabama and texas are this looked it up alabama is building a new prison 4 000 beds 1.25 billion they have a second
4,000-bed prison being planned for another county. Texas is expanding 5,600 beds in a typical facility, 400-bed dorm style. So the idea in Texas, Alabama overcrowding, they're built for 12,000, and they have 21,000. So just to keep the record straight on what Arkansas is doing versus comparing us to other states and other nations, just want to make that statement for the record. Thank you. Thank you, Senator Sullivan, and we
will hopefully at the next meeting have some people from those other states, whatever their record may be.
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
2:06:16
Senator Tucker. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Isn't it true that in Texas, when Rick Perry came into office, so not exactly a Stark-Raven liberal so far as I'm concerned, at least, they closed 10 prisons. They saved more than $2 billion in taxpayer money in the process, decreased their prison population by 17%,
Speaker 321
2:06:48
and at the same time their crime rate
Sarah Moore
Unverified
2:06:53
dropped by 29%. Is that true? That would be true if you're reading that. Thank you, I appreciate it. Oklahoma also has closed, I think, four prisons with some of the reform, sentencing
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
2:07:05
reform and some of the efforts that they've placed. We have seen some states like Texas, like I just said, when they're smarter about how they incarcerate people and rehabilitate them, then their incarceration rate goes down at the same time their crime rate goes down.
Yes. Is that fair? All right,
thank you. Yes, that's true. I think that I hope, let me say, I hope that as we dig in and find
more facts, especially in the September and October meetings, we'll find that a lot of us have a lot of agreement that both it's you can't put people back out on the street when they shouldn't be put back out on the street and you shouldn't keep people in prison unnecessarily.
That being said, I am surprised that no members of this committee asked this question. I'm looking here at what I think, and it says it's page four. It says criminal charges have gone down. Now, when we passed truth in sentencing laws, wasn't my legislation, but when we passed truth in sentencing laws, we were told, and it certainly made sense, that the number of people in prison was going to go up and that was going to get more expensive.
those things are true however when you you know i love statistics it's all how you look at
them so this says here criminal charges have gone down and then it says between 2014 and 2025 criminal charges fell 17 this is with a 12 increase in population growth now again
i don't know that we can sustain what we're doing, but does that cause and correlation are not
the same thing, but the
correlation is that we've had a 12% increase in prison population growth, but the reason that we had truth in sentencing laws was because that people would stay the amount they were supposed to and that we were trying to reduce crime, and it It looks to me like, regardless of where we feel like we have to go, and I think it's both, actually, it looks to me like in increasing the prison population by 12%, we've decreased crime by 17%.
Sarah Moore
Unverified
2:09:29
How am I wrong? That's definitely one way to look at it. I
mean, data can be looked at in many different ways. But we also know that there have been, you know, areas and pockets of the state who have had less folks that are being incarcerated. And, again, the criminal charges are not going up in those areas. So I hear you with trying to make that connection, and I could see someone trying to make that possible argument. Yeah,
I just – because I want us to look at everything.
Yeah, absolutely. And that's one of the reasons I'm glad that you're here today. And I believe as we get into September and October, I think that folks with all kinds of divergent thinking can come to a lot of agreement. I certainly hope so. And we can't, if I was chair, I'd get on to myself. But I'm going to
let Representative get on to me. Afterwards. Senator Clark has one
Sarah Moore
Unverified
2:10:30
more response, too, to that question that you brought forward.
I guess the one thing that was brought forward that I've heard a lot too across the county, especially in Northwest Arkansas, is that correlation directly of population increase is a causation that crime rises or we have to lot more people up. And I do hope that we'll dive into that and have deeper discussions of that because we have broken down and looked at countywide what the population changes have done year to year and what the crime charges have done, and they don't one-to-one correlate. There's oftentimes the population increasing while the crime charges are going down.
And so I don't think we can go to that, what might be kind of a simple solution that we might want to
look at. I think there's just a lot more to it. So I do appreciate this conversation.
And I'll just say, and then slap myself, I'll just say that what Mr. Hazeem said about as folks get older, especially past 60, some of us are past that now. that there is, for some people, not everyone,
some people are going to be mean until the day they die. But for a lot of people, there certainly is a less tendency to commit crime and to be violent. And that's certainly one of the things I hope we look at in September, October, and I am sure somebody's going to bring that. And especially if people are sick. If they're very ill, it's difficult to commit crime. And so I think we will find lots of agreement from all sides as we get into these meetings,
and hopefully then we can figure out not just some of the answers but ways to accomplish them. But if we don't have beds, if we don't have beds for people assuming we had mental health or ministry or whatever will help them, if we don't have beds and we've got them languishing in a county jail uh where we have lots the it is important that we have beds so that we can reach them and then
don't you think if we had beds so that we can get them the services that they need that then that we would be much more likely to be able to reduce beds does that i'll try to do a
Sarah Moore
Unverified
2:12:50
quick response but i would say we have the beds county jails oftentimes half or more are pre-trial So they're charged but not convicted. They're too poor to buy their freedom. I hope that we'll talk about the state doing a grant program for pretrial services across all the counties that have a jail so that hundreds and thousands of people can safely be released because they're too poor and get supports to be able to return to court.
There have been pilots done in Pulaski County and in places like Douglas County have this in place that are wildly successful. It's a best practice by the Department of Justice since the 90s. And I think those would be available beds that would pop up in county jails across the entire state. And then those could be for misdemeanors if we want
to plan those, or those could be for other purposes. Well, we're very much having a September discussion. Okay, thank you. But I'm as guilty as you are. But I happen to agree with you on that, except for it can't be like San Francisco or New York City,
where people are free to go in and shoplift and stores are actually closing and just walk out the door because they have made the restrictions so lax that they can't be kept. So there's got to be a happy medium in there somewhere that we don't just allow people back out on the street. But you are not incorrect about sometimes people, because they're poor, languish in jail who who maybe should not while they're waiting while they're waiting for trial
so thank you so much for your time so uh thank y'all thank y'all for being here i hope that you will get uh with staff about the the
meetings where we talk about solutions uh and we're going to go to the prosecutors, Bob McMahan, Tom Tatum, David Etheridge.
Committee, I appreciate you staying. I don't expect that we're going to be here a whole lot longer, but I hope you stay because I've got a really important question to ask you and you're going to want to answer it. If you're not here to answer it, then we're just going to assume that you want to do what I proposed. Gentlemen, you'll turn those mics on and each one of you
Speaker 57
2:15:30
introduce yourselves for the record. Bob McMahon, prosecutor coordinator.
Speaker 332
2:15:33
I'm David Etheridge. I'm the elected prosecutor in the 14th Judicial District and president of the Arkansas Prosecuting Attorneys Association. Tom Taiten,
Speaker 333
2:15:41
prosecuting attorney for the 15th Judicial District. Thank you all
for being here. You knew that you'd be late on the agenda and that we would have already covered a lot of this, but what can you tell us
Speaker 336
2:15:53
about whether we need prison beds or no? Thank you, Senator. The primary responsibility of a prosecuting attorney is to seek justice. Sometimes that justice means giving someone a second chance. Sometimes that means an alternative to county jail or prison.
But sometimes, as long as people continue to commit violent crimes against citizens, Commit those crimes that we value in the Protect Act to be 50%, 85%, and 100% crimes. As long as people continue to commit those crimes, seeking justice for a prosecutor is sending someone to prison. And so we believe, as an association, we had a meeting 10 days ago. 26 of our 28 elected prosecutors were there. I let them know, Senator, that you'd asked us to be on the agenda. And all 26 prosecutors at that meeting felt like we needed beds. There was not one person that said we did not.
So those are my basic comments. I know we'll be happy to answer any questions, but we believe, as most everybody that's testified today, that we do need beds to continue to
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
2:16:53
seek justice. Y'all ready for questions? Senator Rice. Thank you, Mr.
Chair. Thank you all for being here. One of the white paper that says the current state of Arkansas criminal judicial system that's on our exhibits
pointed out and it's been touched on a little bit today about the misdemeanor warrants the unserved misdemeanor warrants it showed in that data that oklahoma is 90 percent less unserved warrants when this was put out missouri is 95 percent less than arkansas do you know what's different in those two states or there are there more more criminals running around there they're
not going to mess with or what's the difference now they had some of the other states there wasn't there wasn't that vast a difference do you know anything or
Speaker 333
2:17:53
do you get any feedback from other states well first off none of us here serve warrants uh you know so that's not not really our deal i i can tell you in in the courts in my district that that i prosecute and that my deputies prosecute um that um there's i think part of our problem is and has been traditionally
was lack of space to put these individuals uh most of these individuals that have outstanding warrants in my jurisdiction they don't have a warrant they have 25 warrants or 25 fta's failure to appears and uh so you you see a lot of that also they they know everyone that goes through our district courts know that that our counties were rural uh we don't have a lot of tax base we
don't have a lot of funding we can't afford to house them you know scott county is probably the oldest jail in my jurisdiction and the smallest but you know they've I don't know what the number is I would say they have several hundred outstanding warrants and bed space for 27 people and those bed spaces are already filled and so all you can do is recite this person to come back to court and you know they may show they may not most of them aren't going to show because they know
no one's going to no one's going to hold them accountable you know and it's like anything else that's one one of the problems in the system is is the inability to hold people accountable for their actions and you know just like my kids if I ground them and then then unground them the next day you know there's there's no no lesson for them to be gained and i sometimes i ground them for a week and they do the same thing two weeks later you know but but i would say that's one of
the issues that the sheriffs were trying to relate to you is that we don't have we don't have capacity to deal with those people and quite frankly as a prosecutor right now i'm not i'm not we're not trying that's not one of our goals we've got too many other things that we've got to deal with that we deem are a higher threat but but that's the position all law enforcement and incarceration jailers jails is we're having to triage everything and so for years i've talked to
sheriffs about they'll call me and say hey i've got this guy this guy this guy this guy this guy i need to release three of them who do you think are the best three to release and and so you're you know and that's just part of your day that you're spending on these issues that that back up but i i think the simplest answer is there's no way for us to hold these people who aren't paying their fines who aren't paying their restitution accountable and you know without without that uh you know i don't i don't know i wish we could have work programs i would be
in favor you know there's lots of things i could say that we could talk about on another date that i'd really be in favor of but you know right
Speaker 339
2:21:17
now if they're full of of prison inmates our county jails then
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
2:21:22
we can't do anything about misdemeanor warrants right and i i think bottom line is beds
is the answer we we know that beds in right place beds at the level they need to be community correction and some other things being much less costs than maximum security type
stuff but the the i just wondered about the oklahoma and missouri that that's that's
just quite a bit different it's got to go to the prosecutor to be a warrant
Speaker 341
2:21:52
correct uh most the most of the time but not
Speaker 333
2:21:57
really for misdemeanors a lot of those
Speaker 337
2:21:59
are going to be citations okay from a district judge you clarified that for me but you know there's other things
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
2:22:06
for whoever's remaining here just to get it on the the the agenda for future meetings that i i want to look into
is our geriatric population what is what is needed for them that we can be doing different that may be free up some beds i talked to you about one a while back amputee and and i think he's out
now But he had been in before, and he's out now. So there's some of that. And it's
clarified in here. The Emergency Powers Act hadn't been used since 2023. So we've got a lot of reasons.
We know we need beds, and y'all need alternatives too. And I know you're fighting it all the time. So I appreciate your work. You're always attentive to me in getting back with me, and I appreciate that. Thank you. And we will reach out to Oklahoma and
Speaker 332
2:23:00
to Missouri and see what they're doing. And, again, some of that's a difference in how their charges are made versus an Arkansas charge. But we'll reach out and get you some information before the next meeting. I think it would be good just to
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
2:23:13
include in the discussion. We can do that.
Speaker 344
2:23:16
Thank you. Yes, Senator, I will reach out to my counterparts in both of those two states. Are there any other states that you're aware of in that report? That was the two glaring ones. Okay. We can certainly reach out to both
of those states. Okay, Senator Tucker, I was excited because we were going to move on, but you're up. It's an
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
2:23:35
easy one, and these gentlemen know I respect them and the work they do, and thank you all for being here today. And I understand y'all's position. I mean, I do. I mean, clearly we have too many state prisoners in county jails. I mean, you have to be blind not to see that,
even if you see different paths forward from that, right? My question for y'all is, do you think we can build our way out of this problem, or will it require other paths? And we can save what those paths might be for another day per the chairman's request. But is it y'all's position that we need more than just beds? We
Speaker 332
2:24:09
definitely need more beds. Do we need other alternatives besides just beds? Yes. I think there are other options that can be some future for the state of Arkansas.
But presently, we need the beds. You know, the Protect Arkansas Act changed the dynamic. And what we're seeing already is that dynamic is going to increase because of the changes in the sentencing about people being held longer in the Department of Corrections. And we're not getting the full view of that at this time yet. That's coming. And so we know we're going to have more beds. But we do need to have alternatives. And prosecutors are keenly aware of that and would love to participate in that. I'm talking about more than
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
2:24:46
just diversion, which I feel like you may be referring to.
I'm also talking about programming in prisons for workforce training, education, mental health, substance abuse, to make sure we're rehabilitating people so that they don't come back once they're released, which 95% of them are, that sort of thing. Senator, I believe we
Speaker 344
2:25:03
support anything that would help an individual get out and not have to go back. Absolutely. Is it
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
2:25:10
fair to say, and y'all may tell me that as soon as PROTECT was signed into law that it affected criminal behavior, But we passed it in 23, and it actually had an effective date of January 1st, 2025.
And usually those are on the back end of the sentences. So we really haven't fully seen the
Speaker 344
2:25:31
impact of the Protect Act yet, have we? No, Senator, I don't think that we have. Now, part of the
Speaker 336
2:25:36
Protect Act did apply the year before that. I think part of it applied in 2024, the rest of it in 2025. But I would still
Speaker 332
2:25:43
agree we haven't seen the full effect yet. I think what we are seeing already, though, is how it's looked at by defendants. because they know what's coming, and I think it's made a difference in the conversations we have about police statements and about having to have jury trials on those same charges
because, you know, you went to 100% on certain particular crimes, and so your discussion is very different. What do the years
Speaker 352
2:26:03
look like now versus having a jury trial to see what a jury would do
with that same charge? Thank you. Okay. Thank you, gentlemen, for being here and for all that you do. We'll have Lindsay Wallace, Secretary of Department of Corrections, Dexter Payne, Director, Division of Corrections, to come up and finish up, unless this committee wants to recall anybody.
While they're coming, I've got an important question for the committee. I
appreciate all of you that have stayed and tried to follow the rules and be attentive.
September 30th, we are set for a 1.30 meeting right now. Uh, what I want to know is it is, this room is available if we took it now, uh, to meet at 10 in the morning. If we meet at 10 in the morning, that does not mean that we're, if you want to do that,
that does not mean we're going to meet till noon and go home. That means we will meet till noon to 1230, however it works and go to lunch and come back. We're talking about possibly an all-day meeting. As you have heard, this is going to be a lot of witnesses, some really important subjects about how do we reduce the beds. And so you tell me, do you want to come in at 1.30 and stay as late as it takes, or do you want to come in at 10 in the morning and stay as late as it takes?
Any discussion from the committee? Senator Rice?
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
2:27:43
Mr. Chair, I'm fine with coming in 10 in the morning or 9 in the morning, either one, doing a whole day, whatever is
needed, and you can lock the doors until we can thrash some stuff out is fine with me. But we need to get as many people's input on this and get some broader things. I appreciate today. I think it's just what it should have been the first day.
But we need some more in-depth conversations, and I think those are coming, so I'm for whatever time it takes. Thank you. Representative Beatty?
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:28:22
I was late arriving, so I didn't hear the layout of the following meeting. So September's meeting will focus on?
I'll go over it again for everyone. Okay. September's going to focus on how do we reduce the number of prison beds we need. October is going to follow up on that.
We're going to take some of those ideas and go deeper in October. Maybe we'll have to meet as long, maybe not. But September is going to be the real brainstorming. It's going to be when we're going to have everybody. And then November is going to be about possible solutions. What do we do? From more prison beds here, big prison, all those type of things. December will be still more of November, but if this committee can agree on things with not a thin majority,
trust me on this, not with a thin majority, if this committee can agree on some things, and they don't have to be major things, they can be minor things, but if we can agree on some things, we'll make some recommendations in December. If we can't agree on anything, we will just go into January with more knowledge. But that is the plan as it is today, and we're still open to ideas that you have, but that's the general plan so that when we get to January that this committee and hopefully the legislature has the knowledge they need to really make some good decisions going forward.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:30:00
So just a question, you said that September meeting would be on how to reduce the
beds that we need. Have we determined what number
of beds we need? Well, we're not looking at a number. We're looking at things we can do. I'll just tell you, Missouri has a, and I don't know anything about it, but Missouri has a step-down program reentry. Their recidivism has dropped dramatically. The discussion about geriatric and sick people, do they need to continue to stay?
There's, you know, just so many different things that can. I understand where you're going now. Okay. And I'm good
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:30:43
with that. That's something that every meeting, these guys know I raise that point. So it's all good. Okay. 10 o'clock. 10 o'clock.
Is that the general? Okay. We're going to move
the meeting until 10 o'clock and set it for as long as we need to go with a break for lunch. Unless for some reason we come, no, I'm not even going to say that it ain't happening.
So it's going to be a long meeting. Okay. Thank you all for waiting. Would you turn your mics on and introduce
yourselves and what you represent, who you represent for the record? I'm Dexter Payne. I'm the director for the ADC. Lindsay Wallace,
Speaker 359
2:31:23
I'm the Secretary for the Department of Correction,
Speaker 361
2:31:27
and thank you to Senator Clark. I asked if it was
Speaker 363
2:31:30
okay to bring my Director of the Sentencing Commission with me. Since Wendy Ware wasn't able to attend
Speaker 361
2:31:37
today, I thought she might be able to help answer some of the questions that you guys had.
Speaker 365
2:31:43
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm Elaine Lee, Director of the
Sentencing Commission. Okay. What would you all
Speaker 363
2:31:50
like to tell us? So I didn't prepare a statement, but there were several questions that kind of came up during some of the earlier presentations. Some of those, again, were about the population projections. I know that there are questions about the type of beds that we need. Specifically,
Speaker 366
2:32:05
Senator Rice asked about those that are held beyond their transfer eligibility date. Apologies. Those that are held beyond their transfer eligibility date. There
Speaker 363
2:32:14
were some questions about the EPA, Protect Act impact, some of those things,
and I felt like Ms. Lee could help answer some of those. So I'm going to let her touch on some of those,
Speaker 367
2:32:24
and if you have questions, happy to follow up on any
Speaker 368
2:32:29
of those. Thank you and I will just let you know on the front end the projections that I'm speaking about today ended in calendar year 2024. So when I say these numbers that is the last year that we have a full calendar year of data for. Ms. Ware will have her most recent report to us probably in November of this year. That will cover through the end of calendar
year 2025, which is where we will see a lot of the full impacts of the Protect Act. So the things that I'm about to speak of ended in 2024, which again is the last year that we have those full projections on. I know that there was a question or a statement made about individuals who stayed in custody past their transfer eligibility date, which is the first chance that they can transfer to parole. And our most recent count was 88% of people that were committed in 2024 did stay past
their transfer eligibility date on an average of 9.6 months. So from the first time that they were transfer eligible until they could get out was almost 10 months past that initial date. And I think the number that was given was 83%. I'm not sure when that was from, but the 88% is from 2024. Another set of numbers, talking about EPA, our most recent data shows that for the year 2013 through 2022, there was about 22,547 individuals released, and that would average about 2,250 a year.
and the last year that EPA was utilized was 2023 when 95 individuals were released that has not been utilized since 2023. Let's see we have 1,653 individuals currently in our custody who have a controlling RE date. You've heard about TE date which is transfer eligibility date. RE is release eligibility date which is language that was implemented with the passage of the protect act
so when we say that individuals have a controlling re date 1653 of those as of today have a controlling re date which means that they have a sentence that is directly impacted by the protect act and again i expect that that number will grow it has grown as time has gone on since 1-1-25 and more and more offenses are subject to those sentencing requirements. Sentencing has remained stable. The projections do show that. The length of stay has increased
slightly. Average ADC sentence was 9.5 years and it's up a little bit to 9.6 years but we still have about 80% compliance with our Arkansas sentencing guidelines which is great. And the last bit of information, there is a jurisdictional count as of today, 19,510 individuals in unit. That is 16,782. And the five-year projection at the end of 2030 is 21,980 individuals in the Department
of Corrections. And that would be the jurisdictional count, which is the
Speaker 364
2:35:51
first name number i gave you any any
questions for me about numbers uh yeah i'm going to go to
central ross quick but first those last numbers you gave you gave a higher number a lower number and then the projection yes sir the projection is based is reflects
Speaker 368
2:36:09
which of those two numbers that would reflect the jurisdictional count which
is what they use in their projection jurisdictional
about a 10 increase is the projection I trust your math yes
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
2:36:24
about 2000 yes sir about 2000 okay central rice thank you mr. chair thank you all for being here uh and I do realize te date is is just a national but and I probably didn't state that Good, but I had received
reports of people thinking that they were being held longer. Your testimony today is roughly 88% was within six months of the TE date.
Speaker 368
2:36:56
Is that not what I heard? No, sir. Okay. 88% of individuals that were committed in our last projections stayed past their first TE date. Okay. So just hypothetically speaking, if someone has a TE date of 1-1-26, they went in front of the post-prison transfer board on 1-1-26. They were denied transfer to post-release supervision. So anything past 1-1-26 would be time spent in custody past their initial TE date.
and the average of that 88% is
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
2:37:40
date. No one's, has anyone's release date been changed if they were already incarcerated, sentenced and incarcerated? Has anything changed in their release date with this legislation we passed that is for stricter incarceration terms?
Has that changed anybody that was already in
Speaker 363
2:38:05
the system? Only if they received new time. So then they may have a blend of different laws that governs their sentence. Okay,
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
2:38:15
and have any of y'all been instructed or received any direction to change any release dates, in other words, to hold people longer than you have in the past. No, sir.
So anybody that has that in their mind, your testimony today, that's not happening. We're not backing people up in county
jails by that day. Okay, I'm getting that in public statement off the board. Mr.
Yarra, the last thing I'll just relay has to do with prison beds. I recently went to Louisiana to visit family. Happens to be in the same parish as Angola Prison.
And I've got a relative down there that's leading law enforcement, and I was inquisitive in that because we had proposed a large prison. That prison was designed for like 6,200 beds. I said, what's it holding right now? He said, pretty steady at $3,500. And I said, have you got it? I said, no, he's not in that part of law enforcement. I said, do they have employment problems? He said, yeah, just like everywhere.
I said, what's your other industries around here? They've got a small nuclear plant. They've got a coal-fired generation plant. They're building one of the big data centers down there. and then they've got their tourism and all that. This is a half hour or more out of Baton Rouge, so they're close to the city. And I got on the website and looked, and they're recruiting people from $51,000 to $92,000. They have a need.
So when we're talking about beds, just sticking a big prison in one place, If you can't get people every day to work, it's not going
to fix it. That'll be our subject in November. I realize,
but I'm getting that out. I appreciate the discussion because it's going to take all of the above, and I'm openly receiving all the input, so thank you. Senator King. Thank
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
2:40:32
you, Mr. Chair and Ms. Wallace. I noticed with the emails that just came out about you're looking at expanding other options right now
and uh so have you included all the border corrections members in on that conversation were they included in that uh senator
Speaker 363
2:40:50
king thank you for the question uh not at this juncture because i i feel like it's premature um obviously since our plan to to build a new prison wasn't funded we needed to start looking at some alternatives because as everybody has heard today we we obviously need bed space so this was my staff director pain included um several other
folks just discussing ideas that might be available um we haven't vetted all of those and obviously when it gets to the point of presenting to the board ideas uh we're going to do that we just had not gotten to that point
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
2:41:28
yet so what's your internal deadline and looking at the session coming up and you got budget hearings that
are fixing to start here pretty quickly uh what is your timeline on moving about discussion options are you within three weeks going to include all
commission members are you what's what's the uh including public comment because i've got now let's open back up there's counties that are wanting facilities center king i don't think that's on the subject
of do we need more beds well it's it's about these counties
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
2:41:58
wanting to step up and build more beds or have be in the mix i don't know what else in that in november we're going to
get into those issues okay well i'll send you a private
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
2:42:11
email but i'm disturbed that you're not including everybody in this but hopefully you will representative gonzalez thank you mr chair
Gordon Watkins
Unverified
2:42:21
so the malvern facility is y'all's intake facility right so every state prisoner has to be processed through that facility yes so males yes okay so that seems to be like a point where it's kind of a roadblock there that we've hit have y'all looked at any ways to to be able to discharge people straight out of the county jails uh that they don't have to be processed through transferred over there and processed through that so
Speaker 388
2:42:47
there's actually already a process on the books um the post-prison transfer board sort of governs
Speaker 363
2:42:52
that process obviously if they have never been to the
department of corrections they have to come through intake so we can fingerprint them so we can do their assessments and all of those things with the protect arkansas act um obviously in the recidivism reduction system act that representative baity mentioned earlier there's a programming component so the goal right is to to fix the recidivism problem and there's not a lot of county jails that offer programming for whatever reason there are some garland county was one that i was actually going to give kudos to because they do offer programming and we just had some conversations
with our committee that assigns programming credits so that when inmates come to us from garland county and they've completed those programs they get credit for them so they don't have to come back in and and take things they've already taken at the county level but that kind of creates a little nuance if they're not able to get the programming at the county level i mean you've heard all of the county sheriffs sort of testify that's not what they're designed for typically so there is a mechanism in law that does allow that but there are some issues with with doing
Speaker 368
2:44:00
that so you don't use that at all um i don't know do you know if kevin if they use that or not I know that we have had two that we have released straight from county whose jail credit covered the entirety of their DOC sentence, but those were for offenses that were pre-protect act. And so as Secretary Wallace mentioned, the programming component is something that is just sort of a roadblock for us. And Garland County has made steps to alleviate that by their educational programming that they completed the county.
They can carry over, if you will, when they come to Department of Corrections. But those Pre-Protect Act who have completed their sentences in county jail, we have had
Speaker 376
2:44:45
two recently that have released straight from county. I
Speaker 361
2:44:49
think part of the problem, if I can just expound, because I remember having a conversation about this, was that the post-prison transfer board, they send commissioners out. They like
Speaker 363
2:44:58
to interview these folks in person to kind of get a gauge on whether or not they feel like they should be released. And so they are statutorily independent from anything with the Department of Corrections, so they would be able to answer you more clearly related to that.
Gordon Watkins
Unverified
2:45:15
Okay. Yes, sir. Well, it just seems like I hear this T.E. date and the people being held past the T.E. date in county jails, and so it would just make sense to me if you could discharge them from the county jail and not hold them there. If you can discharge them at their T.E. date, and that's, you know, an appropriate thing to do. I realize that's not like a set-in-stone release date, but if that is your goal, and it seems like that's what y'all are talking about too, like it is your goal because you know how many have been held past that.
or what percentage whatever anyway that's all i was wondering thank you
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
2:45:53
senator tucker thank you mr chair this is partly on what you were talking about ms lee and this would probably be more for ms lee and secretary wallace mr pain you're off the hook uh and this may be partly for another meeting mr chair and so i just i kind of want to ask if if this is something that y'all want to have a further comment or at least interested in having a further conversation about it and that is some reform to the grid um and i'll tell you a little bit about what i mean
a lot of our boxes in the grid like if you're convicted of a class c felony for example then your presumptive sentence the statutory sentence length is three to ten years and so the box would say 36 to 120 months i don't think we should completely uh emulate the federal system there are some good things some bad things about the federal system but in the federal this is one place where maybe we may want to take a look at it in the federal system the presumptive sentence range would be much narrower than that and of course judges have the authority to go outside of that box but they need a reason for doing so and they can't just do
it willing nilly and um i've long wondered if if maybe our sentencing grid should could use some reform in that kind of way and i'm just curious
about y'all's thoughts on that senator tucker would you mind if you
help me get them back in september and october for that discussion sure do y'all mind waiting okay uh but great question i just uh uh still got a long list here and uh some of us want to go home senator simon
Senator Brad Simon
Unverified
2:47:26
thank you mr chair my questions revolve around staffing and in particular security officers staffing um can you speak to how the difficulty of retaining security offer officers
Speaker 31
2:47:40
of impacts you know how many beds we actually need yes sir thank you
Speaker 401
2:47:48
for that question uh of course we are short staffed uh that's no secret at all so in order to uh adequately secure those facilities yes we definitely need uh to hire
staff. So that's definitely a problem, staffing them. And that pertains to the number of inmates you have at each facility, too. So if staffing is down, then we cannot house as many? Do they
Senator Brad Simon
Unverified
2:48:14
have to be transferred to other places that have more staff? Or how is that handled? Well, hopefully we won't get to
Speaker 401
2:48:24
point at one time at the Tucker facility. I think it was spoke of earlier today but uh we hope not to get to that point we have to transfer them to
Senator Brad Simon
Unverified
2:48:33
other facilities okay and i was looking at the shared services report comparing them from like march march and june and i noticed there were as far as security security positions in march or in february there were 2472 security positions total in june it's listed there's only 2078 security positions so why did we lose almost 400 security positions in just a few
Speaker 363
2:49:01
months so right now we have about close to 400 probably entry-level security positions that are vacant
as part of the annual aop is what we call it annual operations planning we look at what we have on the books obviously if we are not able to sustain keeping those positions filled consistently um i know director pain would love to have 800 people that are working for him but what happens when you have those vacancies and you don't continue filling them there is a certain dollar amount that is tied up in your budget whether you fill it or not and so when
you're looking at budgeting and and where the money makes the most sense um what we landed upon was getting to a certain number of positions because you put that $8,000, $8,000 per position, whether they stay vacant for a day or an entire year, that money has to remain open. And when you've got that many, that adds up to millions of dollars. And so when you're talking about trying to spend money in the budget appropriately, for me, it was until we can get to sort of this
baseline position where we can keep these filled or start even getting close to them then it made more sense to unbudget them there's a process for going and getting them back into our budget we just have to divert funding elsewhere this is complicated I know it took me a long time to understand this so I'm happy to talk through it or my CFO is here if you want better understanding of it but that was essentially what we did during our annual operations planning where we have to
Speaker 407
2:50:36
present a balanced budget and get our money where it needs to be to operate sure would it be fair to say these
Senator Brad Simon
Unverified
2:50:45
vacancies are mostly because most of the facilities are out in rural areas where there's not a lot of population and it's very
Speaker 384
2:50:53
difficult to fill a lot of them a lot of them are for sure a lot of them is turnover you know um retention
Speaker 363
2:50:59
is a thing i think we have sort of discussed at this committee and and other places with the board uh finding people to hire isn't necessarily always the problem it's keeping them after so this is not a great business to work in in a lot of cases but i think that goes to culture i think it goes to a lot of things that we at this committee are
talking about programming creating safer spaces for inmates and officers to work in it's looking at a holistic approach to corrections so we're looking at all of that and addressing all of that thank you and thank mr chair just
Senator Brad Simon
Unverified
2:51:29
one last question if i may just to kind of follow up on what senator king said to understand if we need more prison beds i think it's important for this committee to know if there are other plans in place already and just i just want to read this directly so i don't misquote it but the article last week said franklin county prison proposal
canceled officials working on plans to expand existing prisons is that an accurate statement as far as the
Speaker 363
2:51:57
franklin county project being canceled i don't believe that is an accurate statement um i think we like i said earlier given that we did not have funding to move forward with that project we had a governor's letter governor sandard very clearly said we cannot use that 75 million whatever was remaining of that on the franklin county project so that being said we're looking at other alternatives while we talk about the larger issue of the bed space the funding for
the franklin county project or whatever the case may be um so the the email exchange i think that was quoted as it being canceled that was from one of our fiscal folks they saw it and quite frankly that's probably what they understood it to be because they're numbers folks and that is very clearly we can't spend any more money on this project so in their mind i think that's what they expected it to be but nobody has said that we haven't discussed that we very clearly need to have more beds thank you yes sir okay we've got a few more people I'm gonna
say it one more time and then we're gonna start early next time the I we had one subject today do we
need prison beds i do not care where i appreciate center simon being from franklin county
and i allowed some leeway but i do not care where they are i don't think it helps the discussion today where they are uh what we want to what we want
to know is do we need prison
beds and then we want to know what we can do to reduce
prison beds and then we'll get to solutions uh and so i hope nobody left in line has got anything other than on whether we need prison beds or not uh and along those lines uh representative mccullough thank you
Speaker 166
2:54:05
mr chair uh i just wanted to ask about our current condition of our facilities
Representative Tippi McCullough
Unverified
2:54:12
are we in good shape to where we're not going to between aging or hvac problems or plumbing problems or everything that you need to maintain our current facilities are there any problems that as we talk about as there's talk about building new prisons are our current facilities in any jeopardy of losing prison beds in the process thank you for the
Speaker 384
2:54:37
question obviously we have some very old prisons
Speaker 363
2:54:40
and we have some infrastructure issues. Uh, we are assessing
those sort of as part of this process as part of an ongoing process. We have a director of maintenance and construction. Um, he is working constantly to try to figure out what is going on. We have, we have some roofing issues, but we're working on addressing those roofing issues. We recently advertised to hire a specific licensed roofer in the department. Um, and, and you guys talk about workforce and programming we are trying what we can to try to figure out how to address those issues as well and the one thing we talk about specific to roofing is hiring a licensed
roofer because that's an expense when we put something out for bid on a roof we need to replace an entire roof we have to hire a roofer to come in even if we self-perform it then it's an added expense for us that we have to have a licensed roofer that comes in and oversees all this so what we are proposing to do specific to roofing that's just one example is hire a licensed roofer that can embed with us we can we can use inmate crews which we do now we use that to to create cost savings and and get them some certificates too so that when they do leave
that's one of the things we do teach is roofing but get them some certificates so that they leave and they have a certificate and can go to work immediately roofing um our wastewater we i think everybody knows we have aging infrastructure on wastewater we're working on addressing that it's a pretty significant amount of money that we need to address and we're working on getting a loan so that we can just tackle all of those issues some of the the questions I think about capacity and if there's anything else we could do at any of our existing facilities if we can fix some of those
specific infrastructure issues some of the answers to some of those are yeah we could probably do some more we've got some north central unit has been mentioned a couple of times there's a wastewater issue there if we can address the wastewater issue then there is an opportunity for us to put something up there we've talked about re-entry uh re-entry is something that we need more of and given the staffing up there i think it would be a great and they've got a lot of community support too so having something up there i mean all options are on the table at this point it's just trying to figure out where it makes the most sense most efficient best place
Speaker 361
2:56:58
to put it, and the most bang for our buck, for lack of a
Speaker 240
2:57:07
better term. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Senator Blake Johnson. Thank you guys for being here.
Speaker 239
2:57:14
I just kind of, on the infrastructure issue, so I just Googled some of your facilities, and the Cummins unit started in 1902, from what history tells me. There was not a brick-and-mortar facility there until 1949. It was tent wood, and what you have now is about 1980.
Is that correct? Yes, sir. It's pretty close. So that thing's about as old as I am shortly. And Tucker started in 1916, and some construction was in 72, and 83 was when it became a max. Is that right?
Speaker 240
2:57:59
That's two different facilities. Yeah, I know Tucker, but it's Tucker began in a different time frame.
Speaker 239
2:58:07
1960, yes, sir. And what you have now is about 1983, right? Yes, sir, that's correct. So that's your facilities no matter what. Your newest facility is about my son's age, which is 98, and that's a north central unit, is that right? Ouachita. Ouachita, okay. 2002? 2002, yes. I didn't Google. Sorry. But still yet, that's what you're dealing with is almost 30 years on everything.
So it's pretty easy for me to tell that no matter if your population is not being fitted into what you have now, You have almost 50-year-old facilities, between 50- and 30-year-old facilities. So if no other answer comes along, that tells you you need a facility. Yes, sir.
Speaker 384
2:59:04
To that point, if something does change, the recidivism is cut drastically, we
Speaker 363
2:59:10
change the way policy is handled in the state,
it would still be phenomenal from us, from our perspective, that we would have a newer facility to pivot if we had the opportunity to. But let me just say, while we're on that, yes, they're old. We do great work. Our offenders, our maintenance staff, we do phenomenal work keeping them up. We are ACA accredited, and we are working on our PREA compliance right now. So that
Speaker 361
2:59:36
is, I wanted to put that feather in our cap out there because that's a big deal
Speaker 240
2:59:42
too. Yeah, we appreciate, you know, what y'all has done to maintain those facilities.
Thank you. we also have a responsibility in updating something also. Thank you. Representative Ledeman, you're going to be last. Thank
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
2:59:58
you, Mr. Chairman. And I'll try to stick to the subject that you wanted us to
talk about. Y'all may not remember this, but back, I think it was Director Payne, you may remember this, back when Governor Hutchison, back in 2017, 2019, ask us and the legislature approved to send people out of state to private prisons because we needed
beds back then what what happened to that we don't do that anymore what what's the situation here do you know about
Speaker 401
3:00:29
that yes sir i appreciate the question uh we did a contract with the bowie county uh texas to send inmates out but that contract ended during uh covet uh there was a contract dispute about them following the guidelines that we put in place for vaccinations and medical care. And the contract was the end of that at that time. So is that still an option?
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
3:00:55
Um, not, not just that prison or that company, but maybe other companies, uh, to, to help us not have to build more beds, uh, or maybe as a short term, you know, we've talked about the problem but the problem is now to build a prison we're talking a number of
years representative the uh i hope you will help me have people here in november to talk about the possibility is that going to be out-of-state prisons private prisons all those uh are solutions and all right uh and so
again i realize y'all don't know what all's in my mind but
that's i i want to talk about all of So, again, I'll help to have help to get anybody
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
3:01:40
to talk about those things. I'll hold that back until then. I've got one more question, if I might. And I don't know whether you all have this or not. So when we talk about the need for beds and the numbers, there's a handout here. It's H3. It's on page 16. And my question is the growth of people in prison.
So from 2012 to 2021, the number grew by 1,000 in that 10-year period. In 22 to 31, they say it projected to grow 2,000, twice as much. But my second question is, from 2021 to 2022, the number grew by 2,000 people in that one year, according to this chart. Well, what happened in 2021? I apologize. I'm
Speaker 392
3:02:32
not sure what handout you're talking about.
It was one of the attachments,
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
3:02:37
the exhibits. Yeah, it was E3 on page 16. At the bottom, there's two charts there. Well, one chart, two pages. This one. Oops, I'm sorry.
Speaker 428
3:02:52
So that would have probably come from...
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
3:02:56
Prison population chart, historical. COVID. I think
Speaker 388
3:03:01
that's the rebound from COVID. From the COVID years, there was a kind of
Speaker 363
3:03:07
a slowing down of the court system and processing things.
So we had a lower amount of folks. I mean, it kind of tracks with our county jail backup numbers. I've got a chart dating back to 2020, and I can show you this afterwards. It is a huge dip in county jail, and I think that that will correlate with the time frame you're talking about with our population. I believe that's
Speaker 407
3:03:32
the COVID rebound that you're seeing there because our prison population was reduced drastically due
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
3:03:38
to COVID. Thank you for that. So do you all have any reason why the past 10 years was up 100%
over the previous 10 years? Do you have any idea on why that is, the growth? It went from 1,000 in 10 years to 2,000 in
Speaker 377
3:03:57
10 years. I don't know the answer to that. I really do think that at an
Speaker 363
3:04:02
upcoming meeting, if you can give her enough notice, that it would be truly helpful to have Wendy Ware here. She's been doing our prison population projections for probably two decades now. So she's very familiar, and she does them at a lot of different states.
She knows things on a national level, and I think it will be very beneficial to you all to be able to ask a
lot of these questions of her. All right. Thank you for that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Unfortunate that she could not be here today. We had planned on her being here, and she had to be out of state. so we will definitely include her at a later time members uh thank you uh thank you for your diligence uh and your patience september 30th at 10 o'clock a.m is the plan if you know people
who are associated with re-entry ministries, anything that has to do with how we would reduce recidivism, that's one of the things we can do. If you know somebody that can come talk to us about ankle bracelets for minor offenses, Anything we are interested in because more prison beds is not going to be the only answer.
We're not going to be able, in my opinion, to afford all the prison beds that we're going to need if we don't do a lot of alternate things. And so we need to look at what those alternate things could be, should be. And we want to hear from everybody, and that will be tiring, but hopefully productive. So thank you. Any questions regarding this next meeting or going forward from the committee?
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
3:05:55
Representative Beatty, I just saw you were lit up. Mr. Chair, I just want
to know if we got the answer, do we need more beds? I thought it was
a resounding yes. that's all i needed thank you sir uh i think it was a resounding yes which gives us the foundation then to go forward to uh how do we reduce the number uh and we will talk about all the things that we could possibly do and you know how those things meet you know do you do more beds first
before you can get to the point that you need less beds etc uh you know we'll we'll that's where be in november uh to talk about all uh which will be another robust discussion uh and then we'll see in december if we all hate each other or or if we can actually come up with some answers without objection we are adjourned
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Comments by Chairs
C. Consideration to Approve September 30, 2025, Meeting Minutes [Exhibit C]
D. Consideration to Approve December 11, 2025, Meeting Minutes (House) [Exhibit D]
E. Discussion of Prison Beds in Arkansas [Exhibits E1-E3]
F. Other Business
G. Adjournment
Documents
Speakers
Senator Alan Clark Chair
Unverified
Senator Jamie Scott
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Lee Watson
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Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
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Senator Terry Rice
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Senator Clarke Tucker
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Senator Brad Simon
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Representative Jimmy Gazaway
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Senator Bryan King
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Senator Bart Hester
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Representative Joy Springer
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Representative Tippi McCullough
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Representative Carol Dalby
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Senator Matt McKee
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Representative Tara Shephard
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Sarah Moore
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Gordon Watkins
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Senator Dan Sullivan
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Representative Jack Ladyman
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