Arkansas DOC Seeks Special Needs Facility

December 9, 2005December 16, 2009 940 Views Security and Safety

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Administrators with the Arkansas Department of Correction system say the state needs more space for chronically-ill and elderly inmates, and has a included a $39 million to $60 million special needs facility in its list of capital improvement requests.

But the idea of building a new facility has yet to gain ground. For the past three legislative sessions – since 1999 – the department has tried unsuccessfully to get money to build a 850-bed unit.

The new unit, to be built adjacent to two other lockups in Malvern, would take over most of the functions of the department’s current 475-bed Diagnostic Unit at Pine Bluff. Officials say the project would allow them to consolidate and expand the prison system's housing for inmates with serious mental illnesses and diseases like chronic diabetes, advanced AIDS and heart disease.

The proposal would also mean twice as many beds for prisoner intake, a process that officials say is too rushed to be effective. The Correction Department's male population is more than 12,000 and is expected to reach 15,000 by 2009.

Besides getting larger, the demographics of the prison population have also evolved. At the end of fiscal 2003, more than 4 percent of male inmates were 55 or older, up from about 2.4 percent of the population at the end of fiscal 1993.

Prison officials say those changes have created an unmistakable need for more space dedicated to the needs of the mentally and physically ill. The Diagnostic Unit, they say, could then be used to house prison rehabilitation programs and additional bed space for other inmates.

In its budget request for the coming biennium, the corrections department asked for millions in funding increases to, for example, pay correctional officers more and to open 516 new beds at units in Newport and Malvern.

Gov. Mike Huckabee has recommended that legislators increase the department's general revenue budget from more than $209 million this year to $244 million in fiscal 2006 and $251 million in fiscal 2007.