Conway’s mayor and police chief have met with the owner of the Phoenix Recovery Center in Conway, a transitional-housing program for parolees, because of concerns about its operation.
Police Chief Jody Spradlin said his issue is with some of the offenses that residents admitted into the program have committed in the past.
A city zoning ordinance, amended in 2013, allows the transitional housing but prohibits the center from accepting parolees who have committed firearms, violent, sexual or robbery offenses.
“There’s nobody that’s been a sex offender — we haven’t found any of those — but there’s been some firearm offenses, some robbery [offenses],” Spradlin said.
Spradlin said the Conway Police Department has a close relationship with parole and probation officers with Arkansas Community Correction, formerly the Department of Community Correction.
“Anytime anyone paroles out in Faulkner County, I get an email,” Spradlin said. If the address is 1224 Jersey St., he knows it’s the Phoenix Recovery Center.
Spradlin said that when he searched residents’ names a month or two ago, he found about eight men who had offenses in violation of the ordinance.
Mayor Tab Townsell said he received concerns from residents, “and we started investigating.”
Townsell said he has met twice with Matt Bell of Little Rock, the owner of the Phoenix Recovery Center.
“We’re in the discovery phase,” Townsell said.
Conway City Attorney Chuck Clawson said the facility can be fined $500 per day, per violation — and the fines can be retroactive.
Clawson said he has been asked by the city to “dig into the ordinance issues” and report to the Conway City Council. He said he is researching how many Phoenix Recovery Center residents violated the ordinance, what their offenses were and how long they were there. “We can go back a year,” he said.
The City Council has the authority to direct the code-enforcement office to issue citations for some or all of the offenses, Clawson said.
“It goes into the court system, and a judge can make that determination, if it goes that far,” he said.
Phoenix Recovery Center Director Dean Castle of Conway said a few men did slip through the cracks.
“Like any system, everybody does their best in screening who we get, but yes, there’s always going to be one or two who get through that shouldn’t get through,” Castle said.
He and Bell said last week that none of the current 87 Phoenix residents has charges prohibited by the city ordinance.
Bell, who was on business in China, said in a telephone interview that most of those parolees in violation of the ordinance were part of a re-entry program, basically an early-release program, that Gov. Asa Hutchinson authorized to help prison overcrowding. Bell said the program had “strict restrictions” on the men, including that they could travel only to and from employment for six months. They were to have classes, counseling and family-reunification programs.
“I thought, ‘This is great,’” Bell said, because as it is, men “are given nothing” when they are released from prison, and they often return.
“This [re-entry program] addresses a soft landing of going back into life,” he said.
“The one thing it did not do, it did not give me the ability to select or deny a client because of their history,” he said. “I did let [Arkansas Community Correction] know I had those restrictions,” he said.
Bell said that when he was notified by the city that a few of the parolees did not meet the stipulations of the rezoning ordinance, “we immediately stopped taking clients” through the re-entry program. Bell said he informed Arkansas Community Correction that he could no longer participate in the program.
“We had zero problems from those individuals. They were all employed; they were doing great,” he said.
Carrie Williams, assistant director of re-entry for Arkansas Community Correction, said the first placements in the state’s re-entry program were made Aug. 31.
“Phoenix is the first place we started putting residents,” she said.
Williams said Bell should have known, as part of the
licensing process, that he might get offenders who violated the city ordinance.
She said Bell had to sign an agreement to accept inmates with a “moderate to high risk of recidivism.”
“You agree to take X, Y and Z,” he said. Williams said the department would not send sex offenders to the Phoenix Recovery Center.
“We screen a bunch of people we wouldn’t put out there,” she said. “We look at the whole history.”
However, she said a past firearms or robbery offense would not preclude an inmate who was a good candidate for re-entry.
“We have not placed [parolees] since [Bell] said to stop — the city had pointed it out to him,” she said. “Instead of moving them, we let them graduate out of the program.” The last two men graduated in the past two weeks.
Williams said she has offered repeatedly to talk to the city of Conway on Phoenix Recovery Center’s behalf.
Bell said it is “disheartening” to know that some people in Conway don’t want the parolees in the community.
“It’s not because it’s intentional; I think it’s ignorance,” Bell said.“We’re going to have [felons] anyway.”
He said convicted felons in Conway go about freely with monthly check-ins to their parole officers “and get no help. A lot of people don’t know these people are next door to them, and there’s nothing they can do about it.”
Clawson said it is Bell’s responsibility to make sure the center follows the rezoning ordinance, which was amended to allow transitional housing.
“As soon as the ordinance was enacted, it was 100 percent Matt Bell’s responsibility to make sure it was followed. He said each and every person would be vetted and a criminal history would be run before they would be admitted,” Clawson said. “The zoning ordinance is a law he has to comply with.”
Spradlin said he agrees that it is Bell’s responsibility, it is a community-safety issue, so his department will keep a check on it.
“We don’t want violent offenders coming in,” Spradlin said. “It will be a burden on us just to follow up and make sure everything is in place like it should be, but it’s just the nature of the beast.”
Spradlin said he met with Bell once, and Bell was receptive.
“I think we had a good positive meeting,” the chief said.
Castle said vetting the applicants has been made easier, too, because access has been expanded to a felon’s file on the Arkansas Department of Correction website.
“We screen them, but until just recently, we did not have access to their entire file,” Castle said. “We have to go and
do the research ourselves.”
Katherine Daves, assistant director of the Phoenix Recovery Center, does most of the searches.
“We pay very close attention to charges,” she said. Daves said that as of January this year, she found more information had been made available on the Inmate Population Search through the Arkansas Department of Correction website. She also uses CourtConnect, an online portal, to gather information.
“I have pretty good communication with the IPOs (internal parole officers) at the prisons; they know who we can and can’t take here,” she said “They’re very good about emailing me and telling me the charges.”
Another concern from some residents is whether the parolees are causing an increase in crime in Conway.
Spradlin said he can’t make that connection.
“I can’t say they’re committing the majority of the crimes; we do have a record — 2014 compared to 2015 — you can see that ‘15 was higher in some areas,” Spradlin said. “Thefts were up last year. To say it was especially because of Phoenix Recovery, I can’t say that; it’s not true. We do have evidence that some of the people at Phoenix Recovery have committed crimes since they’ve been out; obviously, that’s an impact to the city.”
Bell maintained that it’s not his residents who are committing the crimes; it’s unsupervised individuals.
“We drug-test at the drop of a hat and search a room three times a day — when you can do all the things we can do, I assure you, the crime is lower, not higher,” he said.
Spradlin said it is “very, very complicated” as to how the parolees are approved to live in transitional housing.
Castle said that men leaving prison in Arkansas receive a list of transitional facilities they may choose if they decide to take that route, and they apply.
“John Doe says, ‘I don’t really have a place to go. I’m going to apply at Phoenix Recovery Center.’ He ends up sending us an application,” Castle said. “We pull up their charges, and we’ll take a look at it and say, ‘OK, everything looks good here. OK, you’re good to go,’ or ‘No, there’s something that flags.’”
Castle said the “vast majority” of the program’s residents were in prison because of drug-related offenses.
The recovery center, which includes townhouses and duplexes on Jersey Street and Shannon Circle in what is designated the Old Conway area, is approved to house up to 126 men, Castle said.
“That was a compromise between the city and ACC (Arkansas Community Correction). We could house a lot more people here, but we don’t believe in stacking people up here.”
Four men, two to a bedroom, live together in each unit. No children or spouses are allowed, Daves said. The most the program has had is 125, he said.
The men do not have to be prison parolees to stay there, Castle said. Some men are released from a treatment facility and have a plan that includes a “chem-free environment,” he said.
Daves, who started with the Phoenix Recovery Center for women in Little Rock, also owned by Bell, began working at the men’s facility in Conway when it opened in 2012.
“We started out with 10 guys, and we’ve worked our way up,” she said. It originally was funded with an Access to Recovery grant, and most of the original residents were veterans, she said.
Bell said he started what became the Phoenix Recovery Center just by enforcing a chemical-free environment in his duplexes and townhomes that he owns in the Pine Street community, where the transitional-living facility is now.
“I have family members who are in recovery. One of the needs in this program, immediately, was for safe, chem-free housing. There were no facilities in Faulkner County,” he said.
“The challenge in the neighborhood in that time, in 2012 — that neighborhood was historically riddled with violence and drugs. As a landlord, I had no ability to even control that,” he said.
Bell said the residents in his units then “were actually much worse than the population” that is living in the Phoenix Recovery Center now. “They were actively breaking the law.”
Bell said he set stringent rules of “no guns, no drugs, no violence.”
“I looked at this as a great opportunity to reinvest in this community,” he said. “I drastically improved the property and the area.”
Bell said he let the leases run out on every tenant he had, of whom 50 percent were unsupervised parolees, he said.
He said he did not go to the City Council for a change in zoning because none was needed.
“I was a chem-free living facility. There were no further requirements of me as a landlord. I didn’t have to do background checks, other than the person to be identified as having a substance-abuse problem,” he said.
Because of the structure he had in place and the supervision, Bell said, he met the Arkansas Community Correction requirement of being a transitional housing facility.
“The city was like, ‘Wait, hold on, this is different from chem-free living.’ I said, ‘I don’t think it is.’ I could have taken any offender as a landlord. … I can take an ax murderer from prison,” he said.
Bell said he still disagrees with the city that the Phoenix Recovery Center should be under restrictions because of its residents, and he believes it is discriminatory.
“I know for a fact there are 1,400 ex-convicts living through the city unsupervised,” he said.
The Phoenix Recovery Center was singled out “because it was funded, and because there was a concentration” of convicted felons, he said.
Bell said he went to a City Council meeting, where the members all agreed on the restrictions.
Castle, who joined the Phoenix Recovery Center in 2013, said the number of residents depends on how many men leaving prison choose the Conway center. The “vast majority” of the men are from outside Faulkner County. Parolees who are accepted into the center in Conway must stay 60 days – and they are required to wear ankle monitors during that time. He said Arkansas Community Correction pays $20 a day for parolees with an intermediate risk of reoffending, and $26 per day for those at a higher risk of reoffending, for 60 days.
Castle said that about 20 of the men at the center in Conway have been there more than a year, and four or five men have lived there two years.
“It’s their safe place; they feel safe there. And they know everything is going to be taken care of,” Castle said.
He said New Life Church in Conway offers a mentoring program for the men. “It has been tremendous,” he said.
Phoenix Recovery Center residents have a curfew — 9 on weeknights and 10 p.m. on weekends — undergo drug testing and must look for a job. The Phoenix Recovery Center provides transportation to work for a fee. If residents stay more than 60 days, they must be employed, Castle said, although they are not immediately released after 60 days if they do not find a job.
“We normally work with everybody,” he said.
“They can either go home, they can stay here, and then, of course, you also have the population that they have a job, they’ve been saving their money, and they have an apartment, or nine times out of 10, it’s a trailer, here in the city where they’re able to be productive members of society,” he said. “It’s not open up the floodgates.”
Castle said the alternative to parolees going to live in transitional housing is that they are given $125 and a bus ticket.
Spradlin said he is working on a procedure to be notified when the men leave the Phoenix Recovery Center. Bell said he would be willing to provide that information.
Daves said all but 10 to 15 of the residents are employed.
“These are just guys who want a second chance at life, and we’re trying to help them be productive,” Daves said.
Castle said the men have to remain drug- and alcohol-free to live there.
“About a third of our population is drug-tested every week, along with any suspicious behavior that we see, and they undergo a Breathalyzer. If they stay here, they can’t be drugging; they can’t be drinking,” he said.
A clinical treatment center is under construction on Jersey Street and is scheduled to be completed in a couple of weeks. It will be the first drug-and-alcohol treatment center in Faulkner County, Castle said. The program has been approved for 38 residential beds, he said, which will be filled with a combination of Phoenix Recovery Center residents and those outside the program.
If a Phoenix Recovery Center resident tests positive for drugs or alcohol, Castle said, they are referred to facilities in Little Rock, Russellville or Hot Springs, “which is another reason we said, ‘OK, we need to have treatment.’”
Castle said he has been sober for 10 years, and he understands the need for treatment.
Spradlin said he has met once with Bell.
“One of the things we always discuss is we’re not opposed to the facility and what they’re trying to do. We want these people to succeed when they come out of prison so they don’t go back, but we have to take the interests and safety of our citizens into consideration for having a facility like that,” Spradlin said.
Jenifer Hendrix, owner of Jenifer’s Antiques in downtown Conway, said she has several concerns about the program, including safety and accountability.
“People are walking around here with their backpacks trying to sell me stolen stuff,” she said. Hendrix said she has asked the men where they live, and some say the Phoenix Recovery Center. As far as knowing the items are stolen, “I know that you can only have so many grandmothers die,” she said.
“I am for rehabilitation all the way, but they don’t check in; they don’t check out,” she said.
Daves said that to the contrary, the center has staff on-site 24/7 to make sure the men meet curfew.
“We do several security rounds to make sure everyone is where they’re supposed to be,” Daves said.
The men are required to fill out employment information so the staff knows their work hours, Daves said. “We know when our guys are supposed to be here,” she said.
Castle said video surveillance is used, as well.
Hendrix mentioned the fact that most of the parolees did not commit their crimes in Faulkner County.
“As far as I’m concerned, they need to return everybody to their city where they committed their crime,” Hendrix said.
Castle said he believes the program is adhering to all city requirements.
“We’ve been working very diligently with the City Council and the mayor’s office, trying to get any of their
concerns resolved,” Castle said.
“That’s the real thing — it is in our best interest to do it correctly,” Castle said. “We have [residents] volunteering at The Salvation Army and volunteering at CAPCA (the Community Action Program for Central Arkansas), and we’re always involved in the Pine Street Community Association. I’m at every neighborhood association meeting.”
He said some of the Phoenix Recovery Center residents help with a community garden that is behind some of the center’s duplexes, and they give away most of the produce.
Castle said he understands people having questions about the program, but he said it is worthwhile.
“I don’t see anything wrong with helping people, and that’s what we’re doing. We’re trying to help them overcome the major stigmatization they have with being a felon,” Castle said. “I talk to the guys about this all the time. Once you are a convicted felon, you have to work twice, three times as hard as somebody who isn’t. We have guys, they’re fantastic; they really are. They just did something stupid.
“I have a guy that was there that … had a drafting degree and another one who was an engineer. They could not find a job. We ended up, we know enough people, that we were able to get them at least a decent-paying job so they can live.”
Castle said some people stereotype convicted felons as being “bad, bad people.”
“I think that’s probably one of the things I love about the neighborhood association, because they don’t see our guys like that. I think they were concerned when we first came in there, which would be a reasonable concern. But after being there and seeing what we’re doing and how much we end up helping and everything else, I think it’s kind of quelled their fears,” Castle said.
“As far as I know, they’ve been good neighbors,” said Linda Paxton, president of the Pine Street Area Community Development Corp. She said Castle is at every neighborhood-association meeting and hands out his business cards. “He welcomes you if you want to come over and talk with him about problems; he encourages that.”
Bell said he thinks most people in Conway understand what he is trying to do to help men with substance-abuse problems.
“I think logic will prevail overall. It’s frustrating to get this much push-back, and it’s very few,” Bell said. “Most people in the community do understand the needs and have family members who have suffered and have children who have suffered.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.