VARNER - Arkansas prison populations “exploded” in 2013, according to a report given to the Board of Corrections on Tuesday at its regular monthly meeting.
“I have been doing this for 20 years. This is unprecedented growth in the prison system,” said Wendy Ware of JFA Associates, a nonprofit research institute that studies and evaluates state and federal correction systems across the nation.
In December 2012, the Arkansas Department of Correction’s population was 14,627. By the end of 2013, it had shot to 17,211, according to Ware’s report to the board.
That’s an increase of 17.7 percent, Ware said, adding, “That is more than substantial. That is record-breaking. It’s also unsustainable.”
Ware, who has studied Arkansas’ prison system for the past 20 years, addresses the Board of Corrections each year. The goal is to keep members apprised of the inmate population and its trends. She also offers projections regarding future population growth and insight into contributing factors.
In 2013, two such factors came into play, Ware said. The first was an increase in the number of parole-revocation hearings, which, in turn, led to a sharp rise in the number of parolees sent back to prison. “You see that everything turned on its head in June 2013,” Ware said.
The second is an increase in “new admissions” - offenders who receive prison sentences instead of probation for “low-level,” nonviolent crimes, she said. Such offenses include theft by receiving of more than $1,000 but less than $5,000; theft of property of more than $1,000but less than $5,000; breaking and entering; forgery; residential burglary; and possession and/or delivery of drugs.
The number of those sent to prison for theft by receiving or theft of property nearly doubled, Ware said. The length of prison sentences hasn’t changed. Rather, the courts currently are more inclined to send nonviolent offenders to prison instead of putting them on probation.
“These are very petty crimes,” Ware said, adding that she’s not used to seeing so many Arkansas level-one offenders heading straight to prison.
“If you look at probation, those numbers are going down,” she explained, prompting board members to begin a round of whispering.
“The courts are not using probation,” Board Chairman Benny Magness said. “I’m not saying that’s good or bad, but now it’s all on us to slow the [prison-population] growth.”
If 2013 had been a normal year, Ware said, she would have spent more time talking about the increase of new admissions. But the biggest problem is the number of parolees being sent back to prison, Ware explained.
New and more stringent policies - created after the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette highlighted parole absconder Darrell Dennis’ arrest in the May 10 killing of Forrest Abrams, 18, - are responsible for the glut.
The agency fell under scrutiny after the newspaper published articles about Dennis, a parolee who remained free despite 14 arrests and 10 felony charges.
In May, when Dennis was accused of killing Abrams in Little Rock, the newspaper questioned how Dennis had managed to avoid both his parole officer and a possible parole revocation. State legislators began investigating the agency’s practices.
Soon afterward, then-Community Correction Department Director David Eberhard abruptly retired. His departure was followed by that of Steve Arnold, the assistant director of parole and probation services. Arnold also left the agency by way of retirement.
After Eberhard retired, the Corrections Board named Sheila Sharp as the new director.
Per Arkansas lawmakers’ demands, Sharp made immediate and sweeping changes in the parole system. As a result, the number of parole-revocation hearings ballooned.
“This is the most dramatic-response scenario I’ve ever seen,” Ware said, noting that there was a 300 percent increase in the number of revocation hearings held.
While the number of hearings increased, the percentage of revocations per hearing didn’t change - averaging 74.6 percent for all of 2013, Ware said.
However, the sharp rise in the number of hearings per month - from 29 to 170 - was enough to send the prison population spiraling.
“We had to get parole violators’ attention,” Magness said. “We were lax, and now we’re paying for it.”
Sharp asked the board Tuesday for permission to form a committee of judges, prosecutors and law enforcement officers to look into reasons that probation isn’t being offered to nonviolent offenders. Board members voted unanimously to approve her proposal.
Both the Department of Correction and the Department of Community Correction are considering new and unusual approaches to help quell the burgeoning number of new admissions and parolees returning to prison.
Prison officials, for example, are attempting to overhaul facilities no longer in use so they can house inmates in those buildings. They also are scrounging for funding that would allow them to open up space that’s not in use. The reason that space is unused is because of a lack of funding for staff, they said.
Meanwhile, the Department of Community Correction is working with Pine Bluff officials to create jobs for parolees that would benefit the city. The plan - still tentative and dependent on several grants - would result in a construction company hiring parolees to either demolish or renovate 600 homes in historic parts of the city.
The agency also is studying the feasibility of creating a boot camp for parole violators who aren’t eligible for the Technical Violator Program. Such a boot camp would keep an estimated 400 parole violators out of prison - as long as they completed the proposed 90-day incarceration.
Parole violators who return to prison, on the other hand, remain incarcerated for at least six months.
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 04/30/2014