A dozen people told a joint legislative committee Monday that the Arkansas Department of Corrections lacks the resources and resolve to address inmate health and safety.
At the start of the House and Senate Committee on State Agencies and Governmental Affairs hearing, Dexter Payne, the director of the Division of Correction, said such complaints have come from relatives and loved ones of inmates who are members of the New Aryan Empire, which has been identified by the Anti-Defamation League as an Arkansas-based white supremacist prison gang.
“If an inmate sends us a request saying they have an issue or a medical problem, we investigate it,” Payne told the committees. “We have a grievance process.
“This group wants to go outside of that and form their own opinions,” he continued.
Payne, who is Black, also told committee members that he has received death threats from those associated with the gang.
LaDeana Bittle, a mother of a former inmate who leads the Arkansas Department Of Corrections Family Support Group, said the state’s prison system is “marred by inefficiencies,” adding that the ongoing “misconduct of staff perpetuates a cycle of despair and injustice.”
Bittle said her group is made up of about 400 members and insisted that it is not associated with any prison gang.
“We’re here in support of all inmates,” she said.
During the nearly four-hour hearing, Bittle and others sat before the committee and testified that the state’s prison system is in need of comprehensive reforms.
Bittle said her group strives to ensure safety to all inmates, as well as fairness and humane treatment. She alleged that the Department of Corrections leadership does not share that same commitment.
Instead they try to “shame and blame” those like her, she said.
“We’re treated as though we’re the criminals,” Bittle told the committee members.
Among the others who spoke Monday were three former inmates.
One of them, Albertus Murray, who is Black, said he was first incarcerated in 1991 and served a total of three stints in Arkansas prisons.
He said it was problematic to focus attention on whether one or more of his prison reform activists are related to gang members. Every inmate is someone who deserves basic human rights, he said.
“These problems are not going to be solved if we keep arguing over small things,” he told committee members.
Murray also contended that the racial divides that once were the norm inside prison walls are no longer the norm today. They all feel equally neglected by the system, he said.
Payne addressed the committee members again at end of the hearing. When he came up the second time, he clarified that not everyone with the support group represented inmates who are part of the New Aryan Empire gang — only some of them.
He, along with Department of Corrections Chief of Staff Lindsey Wallace, said the state is still dealing with severe under-staffing. This year, the department has reduced its under-staffing rate by 9%, but the state prisons are still 40% below the desired rate, Wallace and Payne said.
Sen. Clarke Tucker, D-Little Rock, who is vice chairman of the State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee, acknowledged that under-staffing is “a challenge with every state,” but added that Arkansas needs to “pull together” if it expects to reverse the trend.
Monday’s committee hearing comes a few weeks after Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders aggressively called for the Department of Corrections to add more beds to address prison overpopulation. She criticized the Board of Corrections for defending measures that she said results in the release of “dangerous criminals” as opposed to opening more beds to keep those inmates behind bars.
The Division of Correction reported last month an approved total capacity of 15,022 inmates, but the state’s prisons actually held a total of 16,288 inmates.
Roughly 2,000 more inmates were being held in county jails across the state because of the lack of prison beds available for them, according to the state.
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