BATESVILLE, Ark. — It has been four months into the job of running the Arkansas Dept. of Corrections, and Secretary Joe Profiri has already been digging into a crisis he inherited.
"We have 2,000 inmates backed up in county jails, we need capacity," Profiri, a native of Arizona, said to reporters in April in one of the first opportunities to tout an expansion since getting tabbed for the job by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders in January.
Profiri addressed a small crowd of supporters at a groundbreaking for an expansion of a former juvenile facility in Batesville. When done, there will be a place to put up to 300 low-level criminals, like parole and probation violators, without taking up bed space in local jails or more secure facilities.
Though that's a fraction of how much more space is needed.
"We've been in need for a very long time, and we've engaged in alternative bed strategies to mitigate that population growth when, in fact, what we need to do is add capacity so we can keep those offenders in prison that need to be in prison and work closely in rehabilitative capacity to get them in a better space," he said.
That push to build prisons and the efforts to improve rehabilitation are supposed to bring down violent crime rates, though the chance to measure results from those efforts will arrive at different times.
"I think we're on parallel tracks associated with programming and rehabilitation as well as increasing capacity because we've needed capacity for 20 years," Profiri described.
It has been more than 20 years since Arkansas made a significant high-security addition to the 22 facilities it has around the state. They range from minimum security work release centers to the Varner Supermax— which houses the state's death row inmates.
Varner is among a concentration of facilities in Jefferson and Lincoln Counties, where the DOC is the second-largest employer.
One of the larger prisons outside that cluster is North Arkansas Unit in Calico Rock. The division under former Governor Asa Hutchinson planned an expansion there to help boost statewide capacity by 2,400 beds.
Gov. Sanders has tasked Profiri with going bigger.
They see a need for more than 3,000 beds, and plans in Calico Rock and all across the state went back on the drawing board.
There's $471 million allocated for expansion, and the prospect of a huge new facility that's almost double the size of the current biggest prison units has had some local leaders wide-eyed.
"I can tell you right off the bat, it's employment. It's jobs," said John MacNichol, Mayor of Fordyce, who threw his city's hat in the ring when the DOC asked for land donations last year.
They offered about 10 acres for a small facility near the county jail, and now, with everyone thinking bigger— he said they should bring it on.
"Most definitely, I would entertain it," he said. "I've got some friends that have land. We've got land [to offer]. Several people approached me about a bigger jail."
Fordyce won't be the only one in the running. Hempstead and Nevada counties offered up the largest land donation last year, along with proposals for smaller facilities.
The "big prison plot" sits roughly between Prescott and Hope, but it envisioned only 1,000 beds. Leaders there have recognized that the governor's call for something three times as large complicates their proposal.
"It will be challenging, but I think it would be challenging anywhere in Arkansas," said state Representative Danny Watson (R - Hope). "Everybody's always concerned about a labor force, but I hear from my colleagues in all 75 counties, they're having the same concerns."
Officials in Northern Arkansas never made an offer, but they plan to make sure options at Calico Rock remain on the table.
"Everything is on hold," said state Representative Steven Walker (R - Horseshoe Bend). "But we definitely want to stay involved. Everyone is looking for that way to bring jobs home. A project like this can do so much for our school districts. It can do so much for our roads."
In Southern Arkansas, a big, new prison could also replace lost industries.
"When Georgia Pacific left here, it devastated the town," said Mayor MacNichol. "People had to get out, find jobs and it really made our town go down. It takes a while to get 400 jobs back in here, and so you got to do it by getting out, reaching out, and trying to bring things in here."
The money for expansion— and to some observers the impetus for needing new prison space comes from the passage of the Protect Arkansas Act.
It aims to tackle high crime rates by keeping convicted violent offenders locked up for 100 or 85 percent of their sentence, which means the demand for prison beds won't go down anytime soon.
Critics of the new law, which passed with overwhelming Republican support, have argued that it's based on a flawed premise.
"Incarceration of people is just a short-term fix. It's not a long-term fix," said state Senator Frederick Love (D - Little Rock), who said solutions come from investments upstream from the mouth of the prison pipeline.
"If we took almost 500 million dollars and put it into programs, like summer programs, after-school programs, and also recruiting companies to come in," Love said, "That's the comprehensive approach that I'm talking about."
Supporters of the new law explained how it does offer interim solutions.
Co-sponsor state Senator Ben Gilmore (R - Crossett) pointed to programs designed to rehabilitate inmates and enhanced educational opportunities.
"I think addressing prison capacity is a long-term solution for an immediate crisis that we're dealing with," he said at the Batesville groundbreaking. "But make no mistake, there's a lot of other functions in the Protect Arkansas Act that will help alleviate and address crime right now."
Sec. Profiri claimed he's eager to develop better case management plans for every inmate. He wants programs that make sentences that are "time well spent." For now, he's focused on preparing to house the increasing numbers of people that are spending time behind bars.
"I don't necessarily see the construction of prisons and the building of beds and adding capacity as a problem," the secretary said. "I see it as a solution to safer communities. And ultimately, that's government's responsibility is to provide safer communities."