PINE BLUFF, Ark. - Arkansas Corrections officials are considering ending the state's contract with Bowie County, Texas, where they now house more than 300 inmates.
But on his last day in office Monday, outgoing Bowie County Judge James Carlow said if that happens, it shouldn't have "that much of an impact" on the county's coffers.
Arkansas pays Bowie County about $35 per inmate per day, Carlow said. This amounts to about $12,775 annually that Bowie County receives for each Arkansas inmate it houses.
Carlow said the number of Arkansas inmates Bowie County houses is approximately 325 annually. This amounts to about $4.15 million annually.
The county's total operating budget for the 2018-2019 year is $32.9 million, according to records.
The contract the county has to house Arkansas inmates has been in effect for about five years and renewed on a year-to-year basis. Carlow said the Arkansas Department of Correction "has been good to work with through the years."
He was not personally aware of Arkansas' intentions to possibly end the contract.
However, Carlow said he would be available to help the Bowie County commissioners and the incoming judge in any way he can regarding the matter.
The Arkansas Board of Correction on Thursday approved a 20-year contract to house as many as 500 state inmates at a proposed for-profit jail facility in southeast Arkansas.
The "on again, off again" discussions to build the new lockup - to be operated by Louisiana-based LaSalle Corrections - have been going on for several years, said board Chairman Benny Magness.
Magness presented the contract as an opportunity to move more than 300 state inmates housed at the LaSalle-operated Bowie County jail in Texas back into Arkansas, while also relieving some bed space at the state's overcrowded prisons.
No private adult lockups have operated in Arkansas since 2001, when the last private contractor left the state amid concerns about staffing and conditions at its prisons.
The proposed facility was drawn up by two counties - Drew and Bradley - that have sought to contract with a private provider to find space to house their own local offenders awaiting trial.
The Arkansas Department of Correction agreed to contract directly with Drew and Bradley counties. In turn, those counties plan to contract with LaSalle, Magness said, though they have yet to reach a formal agreement.
TEXARKANA TROUBLES
Complaints over a failure to conduct regular cell checks and a string of jailhouse deaths have dogged LaSalle Corrections' management of a lockup in Texarkana, Texas.
LaSalle, based in Ruston, La., has operated the Bi-State Jail in Texarkana since 2013. Down the street from the jail, about 325 prisoners from Arkansas are housed under contract with the Arkansas Department of Correction at the Bowie County Correctional Center, also operated by LaSalle.
In discussing the proposal, Arkansas prison officials said they were aware of issues with LaSalle, including lawsuits over the deaths of two diabetic inmates in recent years. Officials also acknowledged concerns that LaSalle, which plans to pay guards less than they receive at Correction Department facilities, will have trouble keeping a full staff.
"All these people have trouble. We have trouble," Magness.
More than 30 inmates have died of suspected suicides or drug overdoses at Arkansas state prisons since 2018.
"My problem with Bowie County is it's an older facility, and whether it's LaSalle's job to do it or the county's, I don't think the upkeep on it has been sufficient to continue," Magness said.
According to the Texarkana Gazette, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards twice found the Bi-State Jail out of compliance this year in regard to regulations that the staff conduct cell checks every hour. The commission's inspections occurred after the suicide of inmate Michael Rodden in July and the death of Franklin Greathouse of an apparent seizure in March.
Those deaths followed the deaths of Morgan Angerbauer, a 20-year-old woman at the jail in 2016, and Michael Sabbie, a 35-year-old who died after being pepper-sprayed at the jail in 2015, according to news accounts. Both of the inmates were diabetic, and their families each later reached settlements with LaSalle after alleging that the company failed to provide adequate medical treatment.
In 2017, a nurse for LaSalle pleaded guilty to misdemeanor negligent homicide for refusing to treat Angerbauer.
A spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Correction said that only one state inmate has died while in the Bowie County lockup. Oscar Garza died of natural causes in 2016.
In an email reply to a list of questions from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, LaSalle Executive Director Rodney Cooper said deficiencies related to cell checks were self-reported by the company to Texas regulators, and were not found to be related to the deaths of Rodden or Greathouse.
He added that the company responded by firing employees, adding additional supervisors and conducting training, as well as installing a new electronic system that logs when staff members conduct proper cell checks.
Cooper said he was unable to comment on the deaths of Sabbie and Angerbauer, citing litigation.
"A death of an inmate in custody is tragic both to their family and the staff who work in a prison facility," Cooper said. "We strive everyday to protect life of those who are in our facilities."
THE PRIVATE PLAN
The proposal for a private, for-profit jail in southeast Arkansas comes nearly 20 years after the previous private operator of adult lockups left the state.
In the intervening years, however, the number of state prisoners has continued to grow, straining already crowded prisons and filling county jails with a backlog of state inmates that state prisons have no room for. That backlog totaled 1,135 inmates Thursday, even after recent population declines.
Lawmakers in recent years have balked at the cost of building a new prison, or even adding significant bed space at existing prisons. That's where the plan for a regional jail comes in.
Under the deal, the state will contract directly with the counties to supply the bulk of the prisoners, while the counties will contract separately with LaSalle to operate the jail.
Arkansas Corrections Secretary Wendy Kelley told the prison board Thursday that a benefit of moving the state's inmates from Bowie County to a regional facility in Arkansas would be that LaSalle would be required to follow the state's rules and regulations, not Texas' rules.
As in Bowie County, the contract agreed to by the board calls for a "contract monitor" to ensure that the counties and LaSalle are abiding by the standards.
Those regulations include having a minimum number of staff members on hand, Kelley said.
LaSalle plans to pay its officers a lower starting salary than the $30,788 a year most new officers make at Correction Department facilities, Kelley told the board, which she said will limit the number of state corrections officers leaving to take jobs with LaSalle.
At the same time, LaSalle's lower pay could hamper its ability to find enough qualified employees, officials said.
Meanwhile, opponents of prison privatization have raised alarms about the project.
In a statement Friday denouncing the plan, the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas pointed to a state ombudsman's report finding abuses earlier this year at an Arkansas youth lockup run by an Indiana company.
"Profiteering has no place in our prison system," said Holly Dickson, the legal director for the ACLU of Arkansas. "Privately-run prisons are infamous for their brutal conditions, understaffing, and a lack of transparency and oversight. It is inexcusable that the Board of Corrections would rush to put taxpayers on the hook for a decades-long contract without meaningful public input or accountability."
For Drew County's County Judge Robert Akin, however, the plan holds the promise of ridding himself of the cost and liabilities of running a crowded county jail. He said other county officials would be looking at results of the project as they deal with their own jails.
"If this works, it's going to be great for the state of Arkansas," Akin said. "If this one works, we're going to have three or four more."
(Information for this article was contributed by Greg Bischof and Lynn Larowe of the Texarkana Gazette. The body of this article came from stories published by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Sept. 26 and Sept. 27)