LITTLE ROCK – The state Department of Correction has been in the news recently because of its efforts to build additional prison space, in order to improve public safety.
Much less public attention has been paid to the Department’s agency that supervises parolees and people on probation, even though Arkansas has many more offenders out of prison than inside. The number of parolees and probationers is more than triple the number of inmates inside prison walls.
The Division of Correction operates state prisons and has in its jurisdiction almost 20,000 inmates. As of early this week the official count was 18,989 inmates, with 2,046 of them being held in county jails. The state reimburses counties for the cost of housing inmates at a rate of $40 a day per inmate.
The Division of Community Correction is in charge of supervising people on parole and probation. At the beginning of December the Division had 70,148 offenders under various levels of supervision.
In the most intense category of supervision there are 4,244 people. About 23,000 were in the medium-risk category and about 27,000 in the minimum-risk category. Almost 4,000 were in a program for substance abuse treatment.
The state has 17 licensed facilities for transitional housing, with a total of 569 beds. Last month 248 of the residents had found a full-time job and 312 earned a GED.
Numerous others achieved smaller, but significant successes that most people take for granted. For example, 37 residents got a driver’s license, 99 got a government-issued ID, 114 got a Social Security card and 30 got copies of their birth certificates.
Similarly, the Division operates six licensed re-entry programs to improve the chances of success of former inmates when they get back into society. In October the facilities housed 164 residents. Two earned a GED and 10 completed a job training program.
The legislature created the Division of Community Punishment in 1993, and has since changed its name to the Division of Community Correction. Before creating the agency there was a two-year study by law enforcement, corrections, prosecutors’ offices, the judicial system and parole officers.
Elected officials and representatives of the criminal justice system said in 1993 as they say today, it’s imperative to close the revolving door of crime that endangers public safety and drives up the cost of operating prisons. One method of achieving that goal is treatment and rehabilitation in re-entry programs.
The agency has requested an appropriation of $123 million for the next two fiscal years. It has 1,141 employees. In comparison the Division of Correction, which operates prisons, has 3,017 employees.
In 1993, when the legislature created the first Community Corrections agency, it was authorized to spend $13.4 million in state tax revenue. Prisons spent $90 million. Combined, their spending amounted to 4.56 percent of all state general revenue spending.
Now, according to legislative budget analysts, the two agencies’ combined budgets are $540 million and represent 8.69 percent of general revenue spending.
