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Does Arkansas need more prison beds?
Join us in demanding NO NEW PRISONS
Please sign this petition to Governor Hutchinson!
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Governor Hutchinson announced an expansion of 498 beds to the Calico Rock North Central unit as a response to the backup of state sentenced Arkansans being housed in county jails across the state. The project is slated to cost between $60 and $100 million and is made possible by the state’s billion-dollar surplus pending approval from the legislature There’s more at the link. Here’s a hint of what could happen instead of more prisoners: Arkansas’ punitive approach ignores data-backed solutions that have created better community safety and well-being in other areas of the country. Investments in these areas will be more cost-effective than continually building more jail and prison beds. When we no longer hold those too poor to buy their freedom, address the failure to appear in a different manner, and provide robust pretrial services we will see empty jail beds. If simple policy changes are all that is needed to reduce the population in the jails, why don’t we do these things now? State budgets are moral documents, indicating what a society values. Rather than propping up systems of incarceration and state control, Arkansas can and should redirect this money toward efforts that build and foster the community.
The estimated $60-$100 could provide:
● Affordable housing
● Redirect public funds to community organizations that provide social services and place social workers in our jails
● Pretrial services divisions in each county, funded sufficiently to ensure that there are sufficient case managers to properly interview defendants when they enter jail and make recommendations for the least restrictive release conditions, connect individuals to needed services and stay in contact with them throughout their case
● Pre-K expansion
● Provide better medical care to detained individuals
● Properly fund our current Crisis Stabilization Units and expand those
● Create more community based mental health facilities to provide for all levels of crisis care
● Provide grants to and funding for drug and alcohol addiction treatment
● Provide tuition-free community college
● Properly fund and oversee more public defenders and ensure they have reasonable caseloads that do not exceed the recommendations of the American Bar Association
● Offer job training and other educational opportunities to incarcerated individuals
● Develop statewide data-driven metrics
PLEASE SIGN the petition here