Arkansas Gov. Sarah Sanders’ decision to build a 3,000-bed prison in tiny Franklin County is a metaphor for her administration: Top-down decision making, lack of transparency, an unwillingness to consider viewpoints other than her own and artful dodging on actual costs, writes commentator Rich Shumate in Arkansas Advocate..The new prison is the centerpiece of Sanders’ lock-em-up criminal justice policy in the Protect Arkansas Act, which eliminated parole for the most serious crimes and made early release harder for other defendants. A state prison system already more than 1,300 inmates over capacity — with another 2,200 parked in county jails — is facing significant new pressures that the prison which will be the largest in the state, is designed to alleviate. The facility would have more residents than its home city of Charleston, population 2,600.
Sanders touts the prison as an economic boon. People who live around the prison site made their response clear in the yard signs that have sprouted up: “Keep the country, country.” Local officials and legislators learned of the project around Halloween, when news started to leak that the state had agreed to pay $2.95 million for the prison site. Controversy over the prison raises several issues: How much is the prison going to cost? How will it be staffed? And is more incarceration and building more prisons a wise long-term approach?
Sanders says the prison will cost $470 million, but state Sen. Bryan King says Alabama is spending $1.25 billion for a facility with a capacity of 4,000, and Utah is allocating $1 billion for a 3,600-bed facility. The Prison Policy Project says Arkansas locks up more people per capita any state except Mississippi or Louisiana, with 912 prisoners for every 100,000 people. The Arkansas Justice Reform Coalition and decARcerate, a nonprofit that works to end mass incarceration, have both been organizing opposition to the prison.
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