While Gov. Asa Hutchinson, about to depart to travel abroad looking for new industry, won't comment directly, he has to be thinking about prisons.
And hopefully he is, hoping, as we all are, for a landmark report from his Task Force on Prison and Probation.
That report may be due out soon, but will this report actually contain anything to help a state already bursting at the seams in putting its own citizens in prisons?
Arkansas, sadly, has one of the fastest growing prison populations in the country.
Just a year ago, in 2015, the state admitted 70 percent more people to prison than it did in 2012. That growth was driven by parole and probation violators, a researcher recently reminded the Legislative Criminal Justice Task Force.
This rate of prison growth came from policy changes, sweeping policy changes from the state Board of Corrections that were enacted in 2013. These changes came in the wake of the revelations surrounding the parole history of Darrell Dennis of Little Rock, who was convicted of murdering 18-year-old Forrest Abrams of Fayetteville.
This particular killing was in a bad section of the state's Capital City -- but, still, the outcry rose that Dennis, a probation offender, should have been behind bars and not out on the streets.
A recent presentation from Justice Reinvestment in Arkansas, a project of the nonprofit Council of State Governments Justice Center, highlights the latest data on how tragic the state's prison, parole and probation systems are.
For example: In 2015, there were 18,965 prisoners under Arkansas Department of Correction supervision, 4,243 more than in 2009. Of that number, 4,158 came from parole and probation violators.
In 2015, around one third of parole and probation violators were sent to prison for technical violations. These people had not actually been arrested while under supervision, but sent back due to violations of their conditions of parole. Those violators in 2015 spent between 12 and 15 months in prison. It costs the ADC $20 million annually to house them.
Another astonishing finding from the Justice Center: Arkansas' vague sentencing criteria caused the state to send more than 1,000 people back to prison in 2014 that were not supposed to be there. That cost: $7.2 million.
Arkansas can save millions by moving offenders to probation rather than lockup.
It costs $2.25 per day to supervise someone on probation -- compared to $62 per day to house someone in prison.
But here is the rub: Arkansas probation and parole officers average 129 cases per parole/probation officer.
Can one person, working for state wages 40 hours a week, actually monitor and effectively supervise 129 cases?
A figure from North Carolina, which recently revamped its parole system, has set a limit of 60 cases per parole/probation officer.
Still Gov. Hutchinson is facing a prison overcrowding issue that few other state chief executives in the United States are facing.
As of last week, state prison units in Arkansas are designed to hold 15,157 inmates.
The head count of people in those institutions was 16,361.
And do not forget, there are another 1,000 state prison inmates sitting in county jails around the state waiting, of course, on bed space at an already over-burdened prison system.
There are only 22 cities in Arkansas with more population than our prison system.
To illustrate this crisis: these cities have smaller populations than our prison system: Maumelle, Blytheville, Siloam Springs, Forrest City and Bryant.
And there are a lot more cities and towns and at least six entire counties (out of Arkansas' 75 counties) with less population than we have behind prison bars.
Building a new 1,000 bed, $150 million prison, yes, seems out of sync with the problem.
But governor, we have to talk about the crisis.
Whether you want to or not.
MAYLON RICE, AN AWARD-WINNING COLUMNIST, HAS WRITTEN BOTH NEWS AND COLUMNS FOR SEVERAL NWA PUBLICATIONS AND HAS BEEN WRITING FOR THE ENTERPRISE-LEADER FOR SEVERAL YEARS.
Editorial on 07/13/2016