Our View

Our View

No easy _x to Arkansas’ prison problem

This kinder and gentler approach to tackle Arkansas’ troubling prison overcrowding now being suggested by a group given the task by the Legislature more than a year ago of examining problems in the criminal justice system is creative, but it must be understood that it can’t be used as the panacea.

This group, calling itself The Legislative Criminal Justice Oversight Task Force, wants to limit prison stays for parole and probation violators while using funds to hire more caseworkers and provide treatment for addicts and the mentally ill.

Committee members feel that their plan could offset costs from building and operating new prison facilities and save the state about $144 million during the next four years.

What should be of concern to this task force, as well as the law abiding citizens, is that previous directives that allowed for “early releases” of felons and a more lenient parole policy as means of addressing overcrowding did not go over well.

Because of the fact that Arkansas’ skyrocketing prison population grew faster than any other state between 2012 and 2014 dealing with the situation this situation has become a priority of Gov. Asa Hutchinson. He has said he intends to consider every option available before ever considering the possibility of coming up with a financial plan to build and operate a new prison. Currently there were over 16,000 inmates housed by the Department of Corrections, surpassing its 15,157-person capacity, and that doesn’t take into account another 1,368 housed in county jails throughout the state, including Crittenden County.

It is difficult to argue with Department of Correction Director Wendy Kelley who said, “Unless we build additional beds, or people suddenly decide to stop committing crimes, these policy recommendations are not going to get us where we need to go.

Let’s remember, the Board of Corrections just last month approved a plan to ask lawmakers next year for $39.2 million to expand the North Central Unit in Calico Rock by 576 beds.

So seems The Council of State Governments Justice Center the task force’s plan could save the state about $144 million during the next four years but went on to say the proposal to reduce the workload of caseworkers would require hiring about 100 probation and parole officers at a cost of $41 million over six years.

And then there is another $21 million needed to be spent on community-based treatment programs for drug addicts, and yet another $3 million for a fund to reimburse police departments for training to help officers recognize and coddle people deemed to have some sort of mental illness.

The one redeeming factor in all this mody coddling is that changing Arkansas’ Medicaid program to cover patients whose main treatment is for substance abuse would allow the state to receive federal funding covering up to 85 percent of the costs for treatment programs. But get this, changing the state’s Crime Victims Reparations Program to allow victims with criminal convictions to receive compensation from the fund would cost $600,000. Victims still would not be eligible for reparations if their own crimes contributed toward them becoming victims.

Oh, and this soft-on-felon approach also calls for us, the taxpayers, to build “crisis centers” to house the mentally ill temporally instead of being thrown behind bars. Now, these task force members didn’t have a cost on such facilities but we can bet that will run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars with no absolute guarantee that they will be effective in dealing with these criminals.

Whether or not any or all of these recommendations will have that much impact on dealing with this situation is anyone’s guess, but we have to concur with Director Kelley that in the end the powers-that-be will have to face the fact that additional prison beds will be necessary to deal with the projected increase in inmate population that is expect to be over 20,000 by 2023.