Griffin: Time to wake up about state’s prisons, jails

HOT SPRINGS — Thirty-three of the 354 inmates in the Garland County jail Wednesday were waiting to be transferred to the Arkansas Department of Corrections, according to information the county provided in response to a records request.

Some have been waiting since early December. They were part of the more than 2,300 state inmates on Wednesday’s county jail backup list. Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin says that’s too many taking beds that could be used for misdemeanor offenders.

“Your county jails are worthless for the stated purpose of dealing with misdemeanor justice when they are filled with felons who belong in prison,” he told Hot Springs National Park Rotary Club Wednesday.

“There is no such thing as misdemeanor justice in Arkansas for the most part,” Griffin said.

“It’s been removed from the criminal code, because people know they can drag race. They can do whatever they want and they’re not going to jail because the jails are already full with felons that belong in a prison that we never built.”

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders recently announced plans for 3,000 more prison beds, an expansion Griffin said was long overdue. A lack of political will has contributed to the number of state inmates in county jails, he said.

“If you don’t like building prisons, when you wake up from your land of rainbows, unicorns and glitter and enter the real world, I’ll talk to you,” Griffin told the Rotarians.

“The reason we have a big bill for prisons is for 20 years nothing has been done,” he said.

“Where do you think the prisoners have been going? They’ve been filling up your county jails. You’ve expanded prisons the wrong way, out of the public eye and without a set appropriation dedicated to new beds.”

Griffin said a project he commissioned as lieutenant governor showed parole violators were responsible for a large percentage of violent crime. Many were paroled after serving a fraction of their sentence in confinement.

Twenty of the inmates on Garland County’s backup list had an intake status of returned from ADC or Arkansas Community Correction release, a designation the ADC has said is generally used for parole violators.

According to emails from previous records requests, Garland County jail officials said holding parole violators led to intake restrictions that required inmates to be released before new ones could be booked during parts of 2019.

They blamed the Criminal Justice Efficiency and Safety Act. The 2017 law allows the state parole and probation agency to punish technical parole violations, such as failed drug screens or missed meetings with parole officers, with up to a 180-day term in a state facility. But most violators serve their sanctions in county jails.

“I got to my position on this stuff with data, hard facts,” Griffin said. “If you took away all the parolees committing violent crime, our crime rate would be consistent with what you would normally expect. … The bottom line is your eligibility date for parole, that’s your sentence date in Arkansas. The judges and lawyers all know it.”

Griffin said the Protect Arkansas Act working its way through the Legislature will keep offenders locked up for a larger percentage of their sentence. The most violent offenses are parole eligible after the offender has served 70% of their sentence in confinement. The Protect Arkansas Act makes many violent offenses ineligible for early release.

“People say we lock up more people than anybody, but we push them right out with just a fraction of their sentence,” Griffin said. “… It’s interesting to me that we want truth in everything, but some people don’t want truth in sentencing. Because the deception in sentencing serves their purposes.

“Even if this is not even implemented well, it will be a million times better than the nightmare we have now. It’s a clown show. You think you can attract jobs to this state with lawlessness, you’re kidding yourselves.”

Griffin said limiting parole eligibility would make state and local enforcement less reliant on the federal criminal code. They refer many cases to U.S. attorneys because there’s no parole in the federal prison system.

“Instead of running to the feds every time we have a problem, because our system is so bad, fix your own system,” Griffin said. “Criminals are not scared of the state system, because they know they’ll be out soon. Criminals are scared to death of the federal system. These are not debatable opinions. These are facts.”