Lawrence County officials are working with Gov. Asa Hutchinson in developing a regional jail in Walnut Ridge that would house state and county prisoners.
The facility would help alleviate overcrowding in state prisons and respond to the state Criminal Detentions Facilities Review Committee, which recommended closing the Lawrence County jail last year for safety reasons.
The state-county lockup idea is in the early planning stages, officials said, but the county has offered 10 acres behind the Lawrence County Courthouse for the new jail site.
The Lawrence County jail usually holds 40-45 prisoners daily. Half of them are often state prisoners awaiting transfer to Arkansas Department of Correction prisons.
The county jail, currently in the Lawrence County Courthouse at Walnut Ridge, has a capacity of 42, County Judge Dale Freeman said.
The detentions review committee inspected the jail in August and listed several safety concerns. The inspection found that the jail's sprinkler system was inadequate, there were no fire alarms, lighting was not adequate in some cells, female prisoners were not separated properly from male prisoners, and detainees often slept on cots in hallways because of crowding.
Freeman and Quorum Court members discussed building a new county jail and identified three possible locations for it, including an empty Black Rock school campus and a Walnut Ridge funeral home.
"We realized we would need to pass a half-cent sales tax to pay for a county jail," said Lawrence County Justice of the Peace Lloyd Clark. "We knew we'd have to run it through an election three or four times to get it passed.
"We didn't have time," he said. "The state would shut us down."
In August, Freeman applied with the Arkansas Department of Correction to consider his county when building a new 1,000-bed prison. He suggested that the county could keep its prisoners in the state facility if one were built in his county.
Quorum Court members offered land near Williams Baptist College, north of Walnut Ridge, and then proposed another 400-acre site near Portia for the state lockup. The prison would have created 250 jobs.
Later, though, Freeman withdrew that proposal and instead focused on building a new county jail.
Justices of the peace considered remodeling the buildings on the former Black Rock school campus for a county jail. Black Rock's school district closed and merged with the Walnut Ridge district in 2013, forming the Lawrence County School District.
Black Rock Mayor Bonnie Ragsdale, who is also a member of the county's jail committee, said she supported moving the jail to her town to help create jobs.
Other members said they were concerned about the 15-mile distance between the courthouse in Walnut Ridge and Black Rock.
"We clearly would have benefited if the jail was here," Ragsdale said. "But I'm for whatever works best for the county."
Justices of the peace also looked at refurbishing a funeral home next to the jail and using it as the county lockup but later realized that the building would need to be torn down instead. They also looked at building a new jail north of Walnut Ridge.
Earlier this month, Freeman, Clark and other county officials met with representatives of Hutchinson's office to discuss the regional jail concept.
Representatives of the governor's office did not return telephone messages seeking more information about the jail-prison concept.
But Lawrence County officials say that under the plan, the state would build several 200- to 300-bed regional jails around Arkansas at state cost. The state would pay counties $30 per inmate per day to keep state prisoners in them. The counties would pay for maintenance and operations of the jails.
The Arkansas Senate supported the plan 33-0 earlier this month. It is under review by the state House of Representatives.
According to the Department of Correction, there are 15,300 people incarcerated in its prisons and 2,600 state prisoners held in county jails.
"The regional jail partnership with counties is something we began looking at three or four months ago," Clark said. "They're doing it in Mississippi, and it's successful. We think it's a really good deal."
Clark said tentative plans call for building a 250- to 300-bed lockup in Lawrence County. He said county officials don't know the cost but that a 100-bed jail that they were previously looking at building would have cost between $8 million and $14 million.
With the regional concept, "there are county standards and state standards we have to meet," he said. "We'll have to have a kitchen, a health clinic, isolation cells. These all could drive up the cost."
If the regional jail is built, the county will renovate the current jail space in the courthouse and use it for more space for the sheriff's office. Currently, the county pays $2,000 a month in rent for office space in Walnut Ridge for sheriff's office personnel.
"This new jail won't cost our taxpayers a dime," Clark said. "This opportunity sprang out of nowhere. We need to take advantage of it."
State Desk on 03/16/2015