Arkansas prison officials, in defiance of a state oversight board, will proceed with adding more than 600 temporary beds for inmates in existing facilities across the state’s prison system.
According to Arkansas Advocate, the escalation of the dispute between the Arkansas Board of Corrections and Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her corrections secretary tests the limits of executive power and the authority of state boards and commissions that are written into the state Constitution.
Such limits have been pushed before but never to the point the Arkansas Supreme Court has had the final word on constitutional provisions enacted by the people more than eight decades ago.
The corrections board in recent weeks signed off on adding 254 beds in existing spaces across three prisons, but the board has been reluctant to grant Corrections Secretary Joe Profiri’s request to add 244 beds in a vacant building at the McPherson Unit, a women’s prison near Newport, and 124 beds at the Re-Entry Center in the Maximum Security Unit near Pine Bluff.
Board members cited a number of concerns with the expansions, but they’ve chiefly worried about whether the chronically understaffed prison system has enough manpower to safely supervise hundreds of additional inmates.
Sanders, though, has cast the board’s reluctance as obstructionist and pledged to move full-steam ahead in the name of public safety.
Sanders’ Communications Director Alexa Henning states, “Governor Sanders rejects the failed policy of catch and early release of violent offenders from prison for no reason other than lack of prison space. The Board of Corrections had plenty of time to do the right thing but chose not to act, so the Governor and Secretary, who has the authority to open certain bed space, are going to do everything in their power to keep Arkansans safe.”
The Department of Corrections plans to begin work on the expansions as soon as possible, and Profiri has estimated it could take roughly four months.
Some of the new beds will go into spaces that haven’t housed inmates, like the gymnasium at Ouachita River Correctional Unit in Malvern, requiring additional correctional staff and infrastructure; other temporary beds will be going into existing barracks, meaning new staff won’t be needed.
The prison system has 2,362 correctional officer positions, but 946 are vacant, a vacancy rate of 40%. Staffing rates at individual prisons vary, with vacancy rates above and below 40%
Profiri says, “As Secretary of Corrections, it is my responsibility to make sure staffing is adequate, no bed activations occur without the proper personnel resources to ensure the safe and secure operation of the institution.”
The unprecedented move has the potential to put the pillars of Arkansas’ criminal justice system on a constitutional collision course.
There have been past policy disagreements between executive branch officials and the Board of Corrections, but the board has always been regarded as the prison system’s oversight body with broad authority.
The board has gone through several names and iterations over the years, but it was cemented into the Arkansas Constitution in 1942 when voters ratified Amendment 33. As Corrections Board Chairman Benny Magness laid out in a Nov. 20 letter to Sanders, the amendment was the first of a series of amendments passed by the people of Arkansas in the mid-20th century to protect certain government boards and agencies from political influence and decentralize the executive branchs power.
In addition to the Board of Corrections, the amendments gave additional independence to governing boards of Arkansas’ colleges and universities as well as the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and Highway Commission.
Read more at ArkansasAdvocate.com
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