Arron Lewis had a long criminal record, though not a violent one.
He was sent to the state penitentiary most recently in 2011 on theft of property and theft by receiving charges from Benton County. He was sentenced to six years.
The state Parole Board, made up of political appointees of the governor to full-time paying employment positions, let Lewis out in 2013, four years early, subject to parole supervision until 2017.
Real estate agent Beverly Carter is now dead. Lewis is under arrest.
On a perp walk, Lewis told reporters he didn't do the killing, but an accomplice did. He did icily explain, though, that Carter was targeted because she was a "rich broker" and "worked alone."
Authorities said the accomplice didn't exist, as far as they could determine.
Hindsight is perfection, of course. I'm not blaming. I'm explaining.
The first thing about parole: It's an early release of someone who would be released otherwise anyway, just later. Lewis would have been let out in 2017 at the latest, perhaps to kidnap and kill. But, if he had not been paroled in 2013, but kept in prison for the fullness of his sentence, Carter presumably would be alive.
This case differs from last year's outrage based on chronic parole-absconder Darrell Dennis. That offender was charged in a murder committed after he'd assured parole officials he was determined to do better and was on his voluntary way to turn himself in to a detainment center.
The parole-supervision system has been tightened and improved since then. While a good thing, that reform has exacerbated the overcrowding of jails and the prison system. And that has increased the pressure on corrections officials to find--or make--available space.
We cannot lay blame on the parole-supervision system for every bad deed by every bad guy let out on parole.
Some guys should never have been let out early by the Parole Board.
Which ones? The incorrigible ones.
But, of course, no one can always tell.
So it seems to come down to this--to making the best effort to tell. A better effort.
What this state desperately needs is a system that is more equipped to identify and incarcerate for full terms the really bad guys, not mere drug or alcohol offenders.
All of that must be accountably transparent to the free and innocent public, because free and innocent people are the ones endangered by failures in the system.
A volunteer prison chaplain was quoted the other day as saying Lewis was a very bad guy. As it turns out, that minister tells me he was overwrought because the real estate agent was a friend and he was talking only about what he'd read of Lewis' record rather than what he'd actually observed of Lewis in prison.
Fair enough. But the bigger point, developed the last few nights in a special report on television station KARK, is that the public is denied information about inmate behavior within the prisons. That's on a specific exemption from the Freedom of Information Act provided in a bill passed in 1997.
So let's say an inmate is up for early release. Let's say you are a relative or friend of the victim of the inmate's crime. Let's say you want to oppose the parole.
You would not have the right to file an information request for the file of that inmate's behavioral record in prison--barring, that is, any actual criminal activity referred to the State Police.
Shea Wilson, spokesman for the Correction Department, explains that such secrecy is vital to prison security. If records of snitches and guard reports were made available to the public, the information would inevitably get back to inmates, fueling vengeance-related violence and endangering the vital keepers of prison order, she said.
That sounds reasonable--if, that is, the convenience of prison overseers is a greater public-policy concern than transparency and accountability in a parole system in which mistakes cost innocent lives.
Given a choice between enhancing the risk of revenge-motivated violence in prison and finding out whatever we can about prospective parolees in hopes of lessening the risk to innocent people in the once-free world ... alas, I choose trouble behind bars instead of murder outside them.
State Sen. David Sanders, Republican of Little Rock, has been dogging these prison and parole problems for years. He seems fairly confident that this FOI exemption will be removed by legislation next year.
And another thing: He thinks we need to take a look at how we constitute our Parole Board.
Meantime, I'd point out that the Democratic candidate for attorney general, Nate Steel, has received "legislator of the year" awards from the police and prosecutors. He says he wants more drug courts to provide alternative drug sentencing and free up truth in sentencing--meaning fully served sentences--for dangerous offenders.
That's probably a more meaningful attorney general's focus than "standing up to President Obama," who'll soon be out of office anyway.
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John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 10/02/2014