LITTLE ROCK — Expanding the intake process for new prisoners in Pine Bluff is one of the ways that corrections officials are seeking to lower the growing backlog of state inmates in county jails across the state.
Department of Correction officials are mulling opening a satellite intake center in the Pine Bluff complex, which includes of the Pine Bluff Unit, the Jefferson County Jail and Correctional Facility, and the Diagnostic Unit, within the next few weeks.
Another option may be adding a second shift of intake processing.
No one is willing to discuss how many inmates the possible changes may take out of county jails and into state prisons, but all agree the current number, hovering around 1,000, is too many.
"Having 500 [inmates in county jails] isn't that bad, but when you have more than 750, that starts to get critical," said Benny Magness, chairman of the Board of Corrections, on Thursday.
After two years of manageable backlogs averaging at or below 500 inmates, the volume has quickened over the past year, leading to an average of 696 in the fiscal year that ended in June.
Getting new inmates through the initial weeks of matching their medical needs and work skills with the appropriate prison could help ease acounty jail backup that stood at 981 late last week.
"It would help a little bit," said Dina Tyler, the department's spokesman. "We have some empty beds in the system and we need to be more efficient in getting new inmates into those beds as quickly as possible."
The state's prison population, currently at 14,287, is constantly changing with new inmates taking the place of those being paroled. The trick is to fill the beds of exiting inmates more quickly, she said.
Men make up most of the backlog: only 103 of the 981 were women. The addition of 200 beds for women at the Wrightsville Unit has helped, as will an additional 200 women's beds at the McPherson Unit in Newport, scheduled to be available in January, Tyler said.
Large counties such as Pulaski, Washington and Sebastian have the largest number of state inmates in their jails, according to Correction Department statistics.
After an initial assessment at intake, inmates are transferred to a parent unit, a large prison such as the Cummins Unit in Lincoln County or the East Arkansas Regional Unit at Brickeys. From the parent unit, many move on to a smaller prison, such as the North Central Unit at Calico Rock or the Delta Regional Unit at Dermott, called a secondary unit.
"We have to make sure we're moving from the parent units to the secondary units as quickly as possible," Tyler said. "We want to make sure we're not causing the bottleneck."
Another shift of daily intake may also help grease the bureaucratic wheels and move inmates through the system more quickly, said Ken Jones, the Union County sheriff and a member of the Corrections Board.
Jones' jail in El Dorado had close to 40 state inmates earlier this month. Now, fewer than two dozen inmates waiting for a prison bed are bunking in the 210-bed facility.
"That's really not too alarming to me," he said.
The Correction Department has used expanded intake measures before, most recently when the Ouachita River Unit in Malvern opened in 2003.
While acknowledging tinkering with the intake won't eliminate the backup, Jones said, any improvement will be welcomed by his fellow sheriffs.
"It's not a big solution, but it may give us a little ease."
Arkansas, Pages 7, 8 on 10/29/2007