05-03-2025
Arkansas Sheriff's Association head explains support for proposed prison
Video: Controversy stirring over new state prison coming to Franklin County
LITTLE ROCK, Ark . – The Arkansas Sheriff's Association executive director gave several reasons why his organization has been calling for a new state prison for years but said it ultimately came down to one essential thing.
'Our misdemeanor justice system is broken,' Scott Bradley said. A former Van Buren County sheriff, Bradley heads up the organization representing sheriffs in the 75 Arkansas counties.
Controversy stirring over new state prison coming to Franklin County
Bradley explained that the state-wide problem is a lack of capacity and everything that falls from that. The beginning of the problem is that as of Tuesday, the 71 county detention facilities throughout the state are holding 1,952 state inmates, beds that are not available for county needs.
He explained that those inmates ultimately move through the system, but not as fast as needed to meet capacity, even after the Department of Corrections recently opened up roughly 1,500 additional beds.
He explained that a county sheriff has to maintain the capacity of his jail. This means that inmates have to be released to make room for state inmates and, in some cases, federal inmates, along with county inmates charged with violent crimes being held on bond. This leads to misdemeanor arrests being released on recognizance (OR), meaning without bond and with the expectation they will appear for their court date.
Sadly, Bradley said, this is often not the case, and where the misdemeanor just system breaks down as Arkansas has thousands of Failure to Appear (FTA) warrants on file.
Arkansas Dept. of Corrections outlines new budget toward Franklin County prison plan
He gave the example of a person released OR who now has an FTA and moved to another county to avoid detection. The same person has a run-in with law enforcement in that county, resulting in a misdemeanor charge, and that agency calls the originating agency and is told they can not pick up that inmate to bring them back to the original county because they do not have room in the county detention center.
Because it is a misdemeanor and the second detention center is also crowded, that suspect is released OR again and does not appear for their court date, is assigned an FTA warrant, moves to another county, and the cycle begins again.
'We have people out there with seven or eight FTA warrants,' Bradley said.
Bradley said the cycle becomes self-perpetuating. Because the person can continue getting away with misdemeanor violations, they ultimately 'graduate' to a felony crime, he said. They are caught, go to court, are given a state prison sentence, and held at the county level until a bed opens up. Because of this a misdemeanor offender will not spend a possibly rehabilitating night in jail due to lack of space.
Legislation for $750 million new prison funding filed in Arkansas legislature
Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has been pushing to construct a 3,000-bed $825 million prison in Franklin County to alleviate the county jail backlog. Sen. Bryan King (R-Green Forest) has proposed alternative programs, including the state partnering with county jails to build additional capacity there instead of a stand-alone state prison, citing cost.
A $750 million funding package for the Franklin County prison is due for debate in the legislature's Joint Budget Committee during the current legislative session.
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