State Sen. Bryan King, R-Green Forest, detailed an alternate prison funding plan at a press conference Wednesday.
King sees this as a solution to state prison overcrowding. His legislation would replace a current plan to build a large, controversial prison in the west Arkansas city of Charleston.
King says the state is at fault for overcrowding because they have long ignored increases in crime. His legislation would relocate existing state money to increase prison capacity in counties with the highest crime rates.
As previously reported by Little Rock Public Radio, state corrections facilities have been overcrowded for years. The problem was enhanced when a 2023 state law required prisoners to serve longer amounts of their sentences.
Land for the brand-new prison in Charleston was purchased on the site of an 800-acre cattle ranch. The 3,000 bed prison could have more people than the entire city of Charleston.
The move triggered an uproar from the larger Franklin County whose residents don’t want to share their town with a prison. Many locals question if there is enough water and electricity to fuel the buildings. According to residents, Charleston is a community struggling to hire enough workers to staff their current jobs, so many wonder if they will have the population to fill hundreds of additional prison positions.
King’s district does not cover Charleston, but is nearby in Green Forest. During the press conference he called the Charleston facility a “mega-prison.”
“This is going to fail,” he said. “There is no way they can continue to pay for it.”
King previously spoke against the prison at a town hall meeting in Charleston. He agrees with local concerns about infrastructure, but also thinks there is a bigger issue of the state spending more money than it has.
“LEARNS is going to go up in spending,” he said at a press conference Wednesday, referencing the extensive education legislation passed in 2023. “Medicaid, we know is not going to go down, and we know that corrections is going up.”
He estimated that the ultimate corrections budget would grow to 12% of state funds.
“Our state government is like a balloon. You expand in one area, you’ve got to subtract it somewhere else.”
He points to the construction of a slightly larger prison in Alabama as an indicator. The price tag for the Alabama prison was well over the $72 million the state initially planned and is now set to cost over $1 billion.
King provided reporters with documents walking through his view on the corrections budget starting in 2011. That year, the general assembly passed a 164- page bill with broad support to re-examine legislative spending on corrections.
“I was one of the few people who didn't support that bill in 2011,” King said.
King then brought up a similar bill in 2015, which aimed to cut down on the number of incarcerated inmates.
King said these pieces of legislation went against common sense. The rate of violent crime in Arkansas has generally increased while it has decreased nationally.
King called on Former Gov. Asa Hutchinson and Senate President Bart Hester by name for supporting the past legislation. He also expressed frustration with former state Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson, who sponsored the 2011 and 2015 laws. Hutchinson, the nephew of the former governor, is now serving over four years in prison for bribery.
“One of the staples that I've always known of the Republican Party is fiscal responsibility, local control, protection of FOIA,” he said. “Those things now we're having to fight, that I thought were commandments, actually, in the Republican Party that I got involved with over 30 plus years ago.”
King's plan would pull prison money out of the existing surplus and put in communities with the highest crime rates, instead of putting one large prison in Charleston. The legislative session starts January 13.
Sam Dubke for Gov. Sanders office "Placing the burden of long-term incarceration on county jails is a failed strategy and a disservice to communities and inmates alike." He went on to say: "The Governor and her staff have been in contact with Franklin County leaders and will continue to engage the community as the state constructs a prison that will bring hundreds of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in investment to Franklin County while building a safer, stronger Arkansas."
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