Lawmakers peppered state officials this week with questions about their plans to house up to 500 state inmates at a planned regional jail in southeast Arkansas.
In December, the Legislative Council signed off on the state’s $8.1 million-a-year contract to house inmates with the Bradley and Drew counties’ future regional jail. The intergovernmental agreement is projected to cost the state more than $163 million over its 20-year span.
In November 2019, officials in Drew and Bradley counties signed the deal with Louisiana-based LaSalle Corrections that calls for the company to pay for building the jail and then run it.
The correctional facility will be built in Bradley County near the industrial park in Warren at an estimated cost of $35 million, LaSalle spokesman J.R. Davis said Friday. In December, the estimate was between $15 million and $18 million.
Construction hasn’t started because LaSalle is in discussions with the Department of Corrections over its design, Davis said. The number of beds at the facility hasn’t been determined yet, he said.
The facility is scheduled to open Jan. 1, 2022, state Budget Director Jake Bleed told lawmakers Thursday.
The state’s projected costs are $4.08 million in fiscal 2022, which ends June 30, 2022, and $8.16 million for fiscal 2023, said Lindsay Wallace, chief of staff at the Department of Corrections.
“The plan is to reallocate the existing funds budgeted for the current Bowie County contract to offset a portion of the state’s costs for the regional jail,” she said Friday in a written statement. “After that reallocation, the department will need an additional $2.138 million in year 1 and $4.277 million in year 2.”
Corrections Secretary Solomon Graves told lawmakers that the department plans to reallocate the 336 state inmates authorized to be held in Bowie County, Texas, under contract with LaSalle Corrections to the regional jail.
SERVICES FOR INMATES
“The daily rate that we would be paying at the regional jail is higher because that facility will allow us to provide programming to inmates that is currently not available to the inmates that are housed under the Bowie County contract,” he said.
Rep. Rick Beck, R-Center Ridge, asked about the difference in the daily rates for each inmate.
“We are paying approximately $36 in Bowie County and the rate in the south Arkansas regional jail will be approximately $44,” Graves said.
Sen. Kim Hammer, R-Benton, asked whether the gap in the daily rates “is going to be for programming services that they weren’t receiving in Texas?”
Graves replied, “Yes, sir.”
He said the state has held inmates in Bowie County, Texas, since 2015, but “it was not the ideal situation.”
It makes it hard for families to maintain ties and it makes it hard for the department to provide reentry services to the inmates, Graves said.
“Bringing them back to Arkansas, yes, it will cost us more money,” he said. “But bringing them back to Arkansas is the right thing to do in terms of programming for the inmates and also the right thing to do for us to support their reentry into society, which connects to public safety.”
Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, pressed Graves for details of the additional services.
“I would like to see just what it is the $8 difference was going to be provided as a result of that rather than just a generic saying, ‘We are going to provide services,’” she said.
Graves said he would provide that information to her later.
Wallace said Friday in a written statement that “the contract specifies that ADC offenders will be supplied with educational programs consisting of at least GED programs” at the regional jail. Other programs would be provided too, such as some that help with substance abuse and coaching to stop sexual assaults.
COUNTY INMATES
The Corrections Department also will be able to use the regional jail to help reduce number of inmates in county jails, Graves said.
He said the department doesn’t intend to ask for more state aid for county jail reimbursement.
“We would expect that at worse, opening up this additional capacity would lead to having the population remain flat,” Graves said.
Hammer asked about pay scale for LaSalle’s employees at the regional jail compared to the state employees’ pay scale and how that would affect recruiting employees.
Graves said, “I don’t know that they have made a final determination as to what their final compensation level will be.”
He said the department has “a very sizable footprint already within the southeast Arkansas community” with several generations of families who have worked in state facilities. The department expects to be able to continue to recruit workers.
“I have challenged our new personnel and training administrator to really take things at a department-wide level with how we are recruiting staff,” he said “For the first time in several years, we actually hired on this week a recruiter whose primary focus will be on recruiting staff in our uniformed positions, our food service positions and our licensed mental health positions.”
Graves said the in-house prison population is about 13,813 inmates and about 2,000 inmates are backed up in county jails. About 800 of the inmates in jails were sent there by the Parole Board for 90 days in a short-term revocation program, so the remaining 1,200 are expected to go to prison, he said.
That’s the lowest in-house prison population in about 10 years, said Sen. Will Bond, D-Little Rock.
“We have been very intentional during this pandemic with the support of Gov. [Asa] Hutchinson and the Board of Correction to implement a modified release program,” to create additional capacity for quarantine and isolation within the department’s facilities, he said. The steps were taken in response to the covid-19 pandemic.
Bond asked if the department is “predicting another significant increase in population.”
“We do have contingencies in place that we could implement maintaining the level we are at, which … is sufficient for us to maintain necessary capacity to isolate and quarantine as needed,” Graves said.
The Department of Corrections’ general revenue budget for all divisions was $495.5 million for fiscal 2021, while funding was $475,663,173.09, Wallace said. The department seeks a $6.7 million general revenue increase in fiscal 2022 and a $13.7 million increase in fiscal 2023, she said.