Arkansas became a state in 1836. The first
Governor of Arkansas,
James S. Conway, pushed the
Arkansas General Assembly to allocate funds for a state penitentiary in their first meeting, but he met strong resistance with many of his proposals, and a penitentiary was not funded. The
Second General Assembly in 1838 allocated $20,000 ($ today) to a state penitentiary in Little Rock. The state purchased a tract outside of Little Rock in 1839, and the
Third General Assembly allocated another $40,500 ($ today) in 1840 to finish construction of the Arkansas State Penitentiary. It held 300 prisoners. It was destroyed in 1846 in a prisoner revolt. From 1849 to 1893 the State of Arkansas leased its convicted felons to private individuals. After abuses became publicized, the state assumed direct control of felons. The state continued to have prison labor be hired to contractors, manufacturers, and planters until 1913. In 1899, the penitentiary site was selected for the new
Arkansas State Capitol, which supplanted the
Old State House. In the interim, Arkansas leased many convicts to companies, including the Arkansas Brick Manufacturing Company, for as long as ten years in an effort to house them while a new prison was built. Though officials agreed on the need to purchase a
prison farm, widespread disagreement about the new prison's location stalled progress further. Governor
Jeff Davis vetoed a plan to purchase the
Sunnyside Plantation in February 1901. However, ending the convict-lease system would remain an issue in state politics for the next 10 years. A new prison was simultaneously constructed on a new site southwest of Little Rock. Nicknamed "The Walls", the new prison opened in 1910. In 1913 act 55, signed into law, lead to the establishment of a permanent
execution chamber in the state prison system. In 1916 the state purchased the land which became the
Tucker Unit. In 1933
Junius Marion Futrell, then the governor, closed the penitentiary in Little Rock and transferred the prisoners to Cummins and Tucker, and the execution chamber was moved to Tucker. In 1943 the state established the State Penitentiary Board through Act 1. In 1951 the state established the State Reformatory for Women through Act 351. The state moved the functions of the Arkansas State Training School for Girls to the state prison system.
Legal challenges begin By the 1960s, Arkansas was infamous for operating one of the most corrupt and dangerous prison systems in the nation. Both Cummins and Tucker relied on the
trusty system, which created a hierarchy of prisoners, with some designated as 'trusties' who the guards trusted with many of the day-to-day duties. The
Tucker Telephone was a
torture device designed using parts from an old-fashioned
crank telephone used to apply an electric shock to an uncooperative prisoner's genitals at Tucker. Atrocious conditions in the prison system had long been known about in Arkansas, but rose in prominence during the 1960s. In 1965,
Federal Judge J. Smith Henley ruled in favor of Cummins inmates in
Talley v. Stephens, who sued claiming they were unconstitutionally subjected to
cruel and unusual punishments and denied access to the courts and medical care. Henley ordered the prison stop forcing prisoners to work beyond their physical ability, cease arbitrary use of corporal punishment by "blows with a leather strap", and to allow access to medical care and legal resources without fear or reprisals. The case initiated a long legal saga that would eventually lead to major reforms in Arkansas prisons.
Governor Orval Faubus ordered a study of conditions at Tucker, but suppressed the report when it found torture, violence, rape, corruption and graft widespread by both trusties and prison officials. The report also found "To make profits, the prisoners were driven remorselessly from dawn to dusk in the fields, especially at harvest time". Both farms were operated to generate revenues to the state. A 1968
Time article entitled "Hell in Arkansas" found the two farms "averaged" profits of "about $1,400,000 over the years..." ($ million today) using prisoners as forced labor.
Department founding 1967 and early history Winthrop Rockefeller, running on a
good government platform, released the previously suppressed report publicly upon election to the Governor's office in 1967. Rockefeller succeeded in reorganizing the penitentiary system into the Arkansas Department of Correction through Act 50 in the
66th Arkansas General Assembly. for "white and black adult inmates". although this was never proven. Fired after less than a year, Murton's aggressive approach to uncovering
Arkansas' prison scandal with its decades-long systemic corruption, embarrassed Rockefeller and "infuriated conservative politicians". In
Holt v. Sarver, Judge Henley ruled several aspects of Arkansas's prison system
unconstitutional and provided guidelines to get the system into compliance. The following year, Henley found the entire prison system operated by the ADC unconstitutional, as issues restricting inmates' access to court and cruel and unusual punishment remained in violation of his previous ruling. A 1969 case challenging many aspects of the ADC prison system lasted almost a decade, resulting in the
Supreme Court landmark case
Hutto v. Finney 437 U.S. 678 (). The case also clarified prison system's unacceptable punitive measures.
T. Don Hutto had been hired by Governor
Dale Bumpers in 1971 as the head of the Arkansas Department of Correction, with a mandate of "humanizing" the "convict farms". In 1974, Hutto resigned and moved to Virginia to become deputy director of the
Virginia Department of Corrections.
Recent history In 2014 the state made a call for cities to submit bids to host a new maximum security prison.
2019 State government reorganization Following state government reorganization in 2019, the State of Arkansas created the cabinet level Department of Corrections (DOC) as the umbrella department for several corrections-related state agencies. DOC oversees administrative functions for these several units, including the Division of Community Corrections (DCC), Arkansas Parole Board (APB), Arkansas Sentencing Commission (ASC), Arkansas Criminal Detention Facility Review Committee, and the Interstate Commission for Adult Offender Supervision. The primary duties of the old ADC is now under the auspices of the
Division of Corrections, with DCC becoming the
Division of Community Corrections, with both reporting to the Secretary of Corrections, a cabinet-level position. ==Division of Correction==