Arkansas Advocate

12/22/2025

“Overcrowded” is a four-part series that examines the cost of the carceral system on Arkansans, and how state policies and recidivism have packed the state’s prisons. Read all of this reporting from the Arkansas Advocate team here:

If Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders needed a sign that Franklin County doesn’t want a 3,000-bed prison, it wouldn’t be hard to find. Signs declaring opposition to the prison’s construction line fences and mailboxes along Arkansas 215 as the two-lane road cuts a sloping path through the rugged terra...

12/21/2025

Arkansas’ prison population, already on an upward trajectory, is set to climb even higher, according to Department of Corrections projections. Is building another prison the solution to overcrowding? Or is it better programs?

Ainsley Platt closes out our four-part series.

Over the next decade, the Protect Arkansas Act will increase the demand for prison beds, likely adding 2,902 offenders by 2036.

12/21/2025

In almost half of Arkansas’ corrections supervision cases over 10 years, parole was revoked and people went back to prison — or they got new sentences.

✍️ by Tess Vrbin for a series by Arkansas Advocate

Almost half of closed supervision cases from 2014 to 2023 involved revoking former inmates’ parole and returning them to prison, or giving them new sentences, according to a task force report.

12/21/2025

Expenses add up inside and outside Arkansas prisons, and some costs keep people who’ve left prison and may struggle to find employment stuck in the carceral system for years.

Antoinette Grajeda and Arkansas Advocate bring us part 2 of the series Overcrowded.

Expenses that accumulate inside and outside prison can keep formerly incarcerated Arkansans who may struggle to find employment stuck in the carceral system for years.

12/21/2025

Arkansas, as a state, incarcerates more of its population than any other democratic country in the world, research shows. And that was before a new law made it harder for people to get parole & probation.

Ainsley Platt tells the story in the first of a four-part series.

Housing convicted offenders is an active source of consternation for legislators, counties and state corrections officials as Arkansas continues to grapple with a growing prison population, fueled by recidivism rates that consistently see around half of released inmates return to incarceration withi...

12/21/2025

COMMENTARY: In just three short years, the Advocate has distinguished itself as a key player in covering Arkansas’ biggest stories about politics, policy and government. There’s no shortage of news to tackle in the coming year, including a midterm election season that kicks off just a few days into 2026 with two key special legislative races.

Arkansas is a great state for politics, and benefits from readers who want to know how their tax dollars are being spent.

12/20/2025

Arkansas regulators have asked that an Oklahoma city’s appeal of a wastewater permit get tossed, saying lawyers who filed the appeal are ineligible because they are not licensed in the state.

12/20/2025

The lawyer who has represented the Arkansas Board of Corrections in lawsuits over who controls the state’s prison system still hasn’t been paid despite a judge’s order, the board learned Tuesday.

12/20/2025

A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked new Arkansas restrictions of social media that a tech industry trade group argued are unconstitutional, including a measure that would have made it easier for parents to sue social media platforms.

12/20/2025

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News Friday morning the Department of Justice will “release several hundred thousand documents today, and those documents will come in all different forms, photographs and other materials associated with, with all of the investigations into, into Mr. Epstein.”

But Blanche also said the release will carry over into “the next couple of weeks,” which would be past the Friday deadline set in the law.

The Department of Justice is expected to release records Friday related to the late s*x offender Jeffrey Epstein, but questions remained over whether officials will meet the requirements of a law overwhelmingly backed by both Republicans and Democrats and signed by President Donald Trump.

12/19/2025

Joseph Schwartz, 65, of New York, was three months into a three-year federal sentence for tax fraud when President Donald Trump pardoned him in November.

A former nursing home owner must report to an Arkansas prison late this month to serve out the remainder of his one-year state sentence despite a presidential pardon of his federal conviction.

12/19/2025

Republican Rep. Ryan Rose highlighted Evident Change’s stance on transgender health care and an abuse case that sparked a review of maltreatment reports.

Rep. Ryan Rose, R-Van Buren, questioned the quality of Evident Change's work and whether the state has become too reliant on it.