Implementing 12-hour shifts for employees at Arkansas’ six Community Correction Centers could reduce the state’s backlog of inmates in county jails to below 2,000 by Jan. 1, officials said Monday at the state Board of Corrections’ monthly meeting.
Arkansas’ residential Community Correction Centers are in Little Rock, West Memphis, Osceola, Malvern, Texarkana and Batesville. A women’s correctional center in Fayetteville closed after its inmate population dropped to an untenable low, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported in August.
Employees at five of the six centers, excluding Batesville, currently work eight-hour shifts. Extending shifts to 12 hours will solve two problems, Division of Corrections Director Dexter Payne said: it will reduce the need for the Department of Corrections to hire more staff, and it will ensure enough around-the-clock supervision to allow more inmates to be moved from county jails to the state-run centers.
Filling empty correctional officer positions has been difficult, particularly in Texarkana, Payne said.
“The better option… is to go to 12-hour shifts, where we won’t need those additional positions, and we can cut back on overtime and things of that nature,” he said.
Board member Lona McCastlain expressed support for the plan, saying it would “save a lot of money” by reducing the county jail backlog. The state typically spends roughly $30 million a year to house thousands of inmates in county facilities. Payne said that number is 2,046 as of Monday.
The backlog has motivated Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ plan to build a 3,000-bed prison, and the state advanced the plan last month by purchasing 815 acres of land in Franklin County. The prison board approved the purchase Nov. 8 after county residents and lawmakers both expressed frustration over the lack of advance notice.
In October, the board authorized a $16.5 million contract with California-based Vanir Construction Management to oversee the development of the prison. After more than an hour in executive session on Monday, the board voted to assign corrections department Deputy Director of Institutions William Straughn as the “point person” to communicate with Vanir regarding the project.
The corrections department has been one of the most difficult state agencies to maintain adequate staffing, Sanders said last month when she announced a restructure of the state’s employee pay plan.
Under her proposed plan, which requires legislative approval, correctional officers’ average entry-level salaries will increase from $37,589 to $50,845, and their average salaries will increase from $50,461 to $59,100. Implementing pay raises in several departments should make employees’ salaries competitive with the private sector and improve staff retention rates, Sanders said.
Corrections Secretary Lindsay Wallace reminded the board Monday that Sanders put much of the responsibility for funding employee raises on the agencies’ existing budgets.
“We need to prioritize that in terms of what we spend our money on, to be fiscally smart,” Wallace said.
She also said the corrections department is trying to hire both a psychological examiner and supervisor to evaluate sex offenders before their release from incarceration. The evaluation and community notification of released sex offenders are required by law, but the state has trouble hiring the relevant psychological professionals because of low pay, Wallace said.
While both positions have been advertised, the department is also exploring the possibility of adding them to its $235.5 million medical contract with Wellpath, Wallace said. The company, previously known as Correct Care Solutions, has had a contractual relationship with the corrections department for more than a decade.
A legislative panel approved a fresh two-year contract with Wellpath in September despite some lawmakers’ qualms. The Board of Corrections previously approved the contract in July.
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