LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Conditions inside Arkansas prisons have been dominating headlines the past few days but what started as a political debate has now been spilling into Little Rock neighborhoods.
On Sunday afternoon several organizations joined together to form a unity march to try and bring awareness to the state's prison system.
"We need to get back to the core basics of treating people with human dignity, and providing their basic rights and rehabilitation," said Ladeana Biddle, Founder of the Arkansas Department of Corrections Family Support Group.
The family support group helps to provide support to families who have loved ones that are incarcerated and it also helps to educate them on how the prison system works.
"It can be the simplest thing as helping them. We have some forms like visitation forms, and there's a certain way you have to go about setting up video visits, and phone calls. I mean, it can be confusing and when they come from county jail, their families are lost. So [we help answer] simple questions like how long is the intake, when can I talk to my loved one," Biddle described.
Many among those who participated in Sunday's march have personal connections with the prison system either themselves or through loved ones and Biddle said that as a community we need to discuss the health and safety of inmates more often.
"Right now, because the public's view is that's what they deserve. and that is what we've got to change the view on. And it changes really fast when it's one of your own in there, so we want to educate the public and show them they do not deserve they don't know half of what is going on in there," Biddle added.
Alvertis Murry the founder of a group called "R.E.F.O.R.M" explained how his purpose of going door to door is to be a voice for the voiceless by offering knowledge and solutions to bring change.
"By the time they get to ages 19 and 20, they won't make the mistake that I made first time ever being in jail at the age of 19 and going to prison for 50 years and doing almost 30 years of my life. I didn't get a chance to live but I educated my mind so that's one of the biggest things I want to stress to kids," Murry said. "That there's a lot of educational opportunities that you don't see because of the things around you that are clouding that."
Murry said the change needs to come from doing a reform from the top all the way to the bottom, and by changing the mentalities of those in charge and the inmates.
"When you look at the incarcerated because the mentalities of both people are clashing so you're going to forever have problems If you don't attack the problems from both sides. Train us and train them and then we can get along better because it has to be employee and inmate relations and if you don't have employees in a relation program to make us relate, then you're going to continue to have disciplinary problems. You're going to continue to have recidivism rates that are high and the state," Murry added.
Others like Dorothy Holloway attended the march, who advocated for her son's killer to be released from prison.
"Because I want them to understand that when other people have someone a loved one killed in their family, they're standing before the judge and they're saying, No, we don't want him out. We don't ever want him to see the sunlight again. You know, let him die, go to hell and bury them. I'm not that way. I forgave him. I have nothing holding over my head against him if I forgave him, and y'all keep them in there when somebody else says, Don't let him out, but I'm saying I forgave him," Holloway explained.
She believes that although an inmate is still behind bars they are still human. She wants to get back to the days when a society leads with love again by sharing a common goal of helping inmates rejoin society.
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