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Records show that crowded Ark. jails feeling the strain

Show that physical confrontations between officers and prisoners rose and employee turnover doubled last year

Associated Press

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — County jails across Arkansas have become more violent and tense as convicts and parole violators awaiting transfers to state prisons flow in, according to jail records.

Records at the Pulaski County jail — the state’s largest county lockup — show that physical confrontations between officers and prisoners rose and employee turnover doubled last year, with nearly a third of employees leaving, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported Sunday.

Elsewhere around the state, some inmates are sleeping on floor mats because not enough beds are available. Cells are crowded and officers are overseeing more prisoners.

In August 2013, the state instituted stricter parole policies after the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette highlighted the case of a parolee who had remained free despite 14 arrests and 10 felony charges.

The stricter policies resulted in a flood of parole revocations that, coupled with an increase in offenders sentenced to prison instead of probation, surpassed capacity at the Arkansas Department of Correctionby thousands of prisoners and shifted the burden of holding the overflow prisoners to county jails.

That shift has created problems in communities across Arkansas. In late February, Gov. Asa Hutchinson outlined a three-pronged plan for overhauling the correction system and for providing relief to county jails.

An Arkansas Democrat-Gazette review of hundreds of Pulaski County jail documents and statistics shows that since state inmates became about a third of the jail’s population in late 2013, jail employees have left at a higher rate.

Records also show that increasing the number of inmates in the jail has coincided with more frequent reports of use of force against inmates.

“We’re running a penitentiary instead of a jail,” Chief Deputy Mike Lowery of the Pulaski County sheriff’s office said.

Department of Correction spokesman Cathy Frye said the department tries to prioritize which state prisoners it moves first out of jails. Frye said the differences between state prisons and county jails are mainly in what the facilities are designed to do and who they are designed to detain.

“It’s a completely different environment,” she said of the two types of lockups.

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