State bucking inmate trend

Arkansas’ prison population has risen as South’s has fallen, report says

The total number of state prison inmates held in the 15 Southern Legislative Conference states has declined in recent years, while the number imprisoned in Arkansas has increased in three of the past four fiscal years covered by an annual study, according to a new conference report.

Arkansas was also one of four states in the region where the inmate population exceeded the maximum design capacity for the state's prisons, according to the report.

The "comparative data report," which was presented at the conference's meeting in Little Rock on Monday, covered all the conference's member states over the past fiscal year. The conference includes Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.

The report also comes two weeks after state prison officials told the Legislature that they would request up to $100 million for construction of a new prison during the forthcoming legislative session.

Stephanie Blanchard, a fiscal analyst for the Louisiana Legislative Fiscal Office, which prepared the report, said stricter sentencing implementation led to inmate population gains in the conference states in the mid-1990s, but there were declines in the number of inmates in 2010, 2012 and 2013. The total inmate population was 577,067 in July 2013, up from 325,232 in July 1993 but down from a peak of 606,223 in July 2008.

Fiscal 2014 totals weren't included in the report.

Blanchard said some states, including Louisiana, have explored drug-treatment programs and reducing the percentage of a sentence that an inmate must serve to qualify for parole as a way to reduce prison populations.

Shea Wilson, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Correction, said the report was "consistent with the trend we're seeing" in the state. She said the agency has seen an uptick in the prison population since last summer.

"Policy changes concerning parole violators, as well as new commitments, are what is driving prison population growth and overcrowding," Wilson said in an email.

Rep. Patti Julian, a Democrat from North Little Rock who attended the meeting on the report, said that while the Legislature is considering funding a new prison during the forthcoming session, other diversion programs and drug-treatment efforts should also be considered.

"You can't build a new $100 million prison every other year to house [more inmates]," Julian said.

Among the other reports presented Monday was a conferencewide survey of transportation statistics and news.

John Snyder, a staff administrator at the Kentucky Legislative Research Commission, said all of the states in the region were closely following the availability of money through the federal Highway Trust Fund. The fund is used to reimburse states across the country for transportation programs.

Snyder said the fund has been dwindling in recent years because it relies on revenue generated from a per-gallon tax on gasoline that hasn't been raised since the 1990s.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted July 15 to send $10.8 billion to the trust fund to make it solvent through May. A spokesman for the state Highway and Transportation Department has said that the agency is trying to determine what projects to put out for bid, because the extension is scheduled to end in a matter of months.

Snyder said Kentucky also reported it would delay projects, while other states were focused on maintaining highway fund reserves to offset delayed reimbursements from the federal government.

The panel was part of the third day of the Southern Legislative Conference, which runs through today.

Metro on 07/29/2014

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