New state leaders face difficult decisions on prisons
By Roy Ockert Jr.
Dec. 9, 2014
Getting elected is much easier than governing, especially if you have rich friends willing to finance your campaign. Trouble is, those rich friends don’t stick around to help with the governing.
That’s what the Republicans swept into the top state offices and Legislature are beginning to find as they learn more about actually running the state. They’ve made some promises they won’t be able to keep unless they make a lot of people unhappy. And if they don’t keep the promises, that will make people unhappy, too.
The private option — Arkansas’ unique alternative to implement the Affordable Health Care Act — is just one of the tough decisions facing our elected representatives. Although the private option was devised by Republicans and passed twice with bipartisan supermajorities, many new GOP legislators campaigned against it.
Now they can kill it, thus canceling health insurance for more than 200,000 Arkansas citizens, or pushing them onto Medicaid, which is more expensive for the state. That will require hospitals to provide more care for the indigent in emergency rooms, which the rest of us will pay for in higher insurance premiums and hospital costs.
But let’s put that issue aside and deal with another one potentially more explosive — how to pay for our ever-growing prison population.
Gov.-elect Asa Hutchinson has promised to cut the state’s income tax rates by a total of $100 million a year, which he says can come from an anticipated budget surplus, now projected at $126 million for fiscal 2015. That projection has already been revised downward once, but even if accurate Hutchinson’s plan would leave little margin for error. The normal increase in revenue for public education could eat up the remainder.
Gov. Mike Beebe has warned that tax cut plans already approved could cause a budget deficit for fiscal 2016, which begins next July 1. Of course, he’s a lame duck. What does he know, other than how to run the state efficiently for the past eight years?
Our prisons dilemma stems partly from the Legislature’s push since mid-2013 to correct some gaping holes in the state parole and probation system, precipitated by the Little Rock murder of a teen-ager by an 8-time parole absconder. Putting parole violators back in jail, certainly a proper thing to do, added to an already overcrowded prison system.
When space runs out, the state Department of Correction has a few alternatives. One is invoking the Early Emergency Powers Act, which allows for the release of certain inmates either 90 days early or one year early. That’s being done daily, Benny Magness, chairman of the Department of Correction board, told a Baxter Bulletin reporter last week.
The department is also working to open 600 new prison beds, as funded by the Legislature.
But the state’s “safety valve” has become our county jails. When the state has no place for an inmate, he or she stays in the county jail. Those jails now house more than 2,500 state inmates.
In theory the state reimburses the counties for their costs — $28 per inmate per day, which is at least $17 short of the actual costs, according to the counties. In practice, though, the state has fallen far behind on its payments to the counties because the Legislature shorted funding — by as much as $9 million.
Scott Perkins, communications director for the Association of Arkansas Counties, recently put the total debt on bills for housing state inmates at $6.15 million. Sheriff Marty Boyd said Craighead County will be owed $450,000 by the end of the year on a total bill of almost $1 million.
Similar reports are coming from all over Arkansas about jail crowding, unpaid state bills and the resulting burden on county budgets. Another part of that state surplus, you see, has already been spent.
A few lawmakers are enthused about an unbelievably good offer from representatives of LaSalle Southwest Corrections, a private company that operates prisons mostly in Louisiana. They say they would take up to 1,000 Arkansas prisoners (though not the hard-core criminals) at a charge of $27.50 or $28.50 per prisoner per day. However, as any Arkansas sheriff could testify, that doesn’t include the cost of medical care, which can add another $10-12 per day.
Before our legislators go too far on that offer, they should read an in-depth report done two years ago by the New Orleans Times-Picayune, as well as other articles available on LaSalle operations. One of those says, “LaSalle’s prisoners spend years in warehouse-like conditions with little opportunity to partake in vocational, educational and life skills courses that could assist them upon their release.”
Keep in mind Louisiana won’t keep these inmates when they’re released; they’ll come back to Arkansas.
Arkansas already has a high rate of recidivism — offenders who commit more crimes within three years of their release — and tighter parole restrictions will raise that rate to perhaps as high as 50 percent.
To its credit, the Legislature in 2013 directed the state Department of Community Correction to study areas that might reduce recidivism, which in turn would reduce the burden on the prison system (and presumably county jails). Last week the study came back with a total price tag of $16.6 million, which would eat some more of that budget surplus.
Next week’s column will deal with the study’s recommendations.
Roy Ockert is editor emeritus of The Jonesboro Sun. He may be reached by e-mail at royo@suddenlink.net.