Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, The Arkansas Times and KUAR FM 89.

And hello again, everyone, and thanks very much for being with us.

Crime in urban Arkansas and one city in particular Is there a companion solution to more police and bigger jails?

We'll go to that question in a few moments.

First, the crisis in Eastern Europe and how we're likely to feel it here in Arkansas.

The Biden administration has decreed that no American forces will be deployed in Ukraine to help it resist the Russian invasion.

But the economic sanctions it has imposed and the sanctions it could impose are another thing.

We're joined now by French Hill.

After serving in policy positions in the U.S. Senate and in the first Bush administration, he built a career in banking.

Then as Congressman French Hill of Arkansas, second district, he returned to Washington, where he serves on the Financial Services Committee and its National Security Subcommittee.

Congressman, thanks for joining us.

Thanks for making yourself available Good to be with you.

Where do things stand now?

We're taping, by the way, at mid-afternoon on Friday.

It's a very quickly moving story.

Give us your sense of where the situation is now and the likely fallout for consumers here in Arkansas.

Well, the dictator KGB agent, Putin, has kept to his word and he's now fully invaded the country of Ukraine, the sovereign country of Ukraine, from three sides.

And as we tape this is poised just in the suburbs of the capital city, Kiev, and is apparently going to make a full invasion and toppling of the Ukrainian government as his initial target He has telegraphed this for some weeks.

Diplomats across the country, around the globe had hoped that it wouldn't happen.

But all the signals were there so from here, where do we go?

Well, this is the key point.

And he's taken this step, in my view, Steve, because of a decade really not paying any economic or diplomatic price for his previous bad behavior and illegal activity.

Rather, it's taking Crimea without firing a shot at 2014 occupying and infiltrating eastern Ukraine for the past four years.

With about 14,000 Ukrainians already killed or backing the Assad regime.

So the Obama administration really did not drop heavy economic sanctions nor did the European Union.

And that's why we're confronted today with the toughest sanctions that have ever been applied to Russia, despite all their malign behavior over the last of the last decade.

And I suspect we'll see higher energy prices and disrupted energy markets as a principal impact of one of those impacts from the sanctions.

Congressman, you mentioned that Mr. Putin had gone about his his mischief for the past decade.

There was more than one president, was there not, during that decade.

Right.

Well, you're right.

Going back even to 2008, his incursion into Georgia was not met with, I think, the substantial response it should have between Europe and George W Bush.

Fortunately, during the Trump years, though, nothing.

Putin didn't try anything for a couple reasons.

Number one, during the Trump years, more countries added to their GDP defense appropriation as members of NATO.

We had new members of NATO.

Trump moved troops into Poland to protect the Baltics and the Trump administration armed the Ukrainians with defensive, lethal weapons, which had been not done by the Obama administration.

Until the very end of the Obama administration.

Well, he was also sort of given a pass was, you know, I don't want to get into the politics of the thing, but he was also given a pass, was he not, against the US intelligence community by Mr. Trump?

He chose to take Mr. Putin's assurances regarding election interference.

Was that giving Mr. Putin a pass a wink?

No, I don't I don't think it was right.

I think Trump was wrong about that comment during the Helsinki Accords visit.

But the real issue there was Trump blocked the Nord Stream pipeline permitting process, and Joe Biden greenlighted it just a few months ago.

So I think the Joe Biden, Biden, the Obama and Biden record on disciplining Putin and pushing him back and defending Naito is worse than the the Trump record.

But you're right, look, it's no reason to talk about the politics back and forth on that.

The facts are that Putin feels empowered to do whatever he wants to do in Europe and he's paid no price.

And the question is now, can we in a unified way with our Asian partners, including Japan and South Korea and our European partners, really make Putin feel that economic and diplomatic costs and isolation for this incredibly brazen move to attack a sovereign country and violate sovereign borders?

Breaking the law again or a numerous times over the past two decades.

Congressman, the immediate I guess the first thing that the consumers and the business community in Arkansas is taking a look at is fuel prices, gasoline and diesel.

Obviously, there's going to be pressure on the international petroleum market.

You want to make any predictions there I don't, but I think it could be worse before it gets better because the Biden administration also has curtailed supply here in the United States by discouraging oil and gas production.

We need to be ramping up production and get back to 12 or 13 million barrels per day And if we do that, Steve, we can turn down the 595,000 barrels a day we're buying from Russia.

I can't explain to my constituents why we're still buying today oil from Russia when we're trying to sanction them for invading a sovereign country in Europe.

That makes most well because it's cheaper, is it not, Congressman?

Or at least that's been the rationale Well, it can be cheaper possibly, but that's because we have driven the price of oil up here in our country by turning off supply because of the pandemic and by government policies that discourage production.

So we want to take money away from Putin.

We want to increase supply, which drives down the cost of oil and gas.

That's what hurts the Putin regime, is when oil and gas prices fall There is some you are right, there is a great many.

Or I would note that there is a great unanimity among many of not only the neato states and other nonmembers and Asian partners, but there is also a bit of discord, is there not, in some of or even among some of the the NATO members?

The Germans, for example, are having some reservations.

They lean heavily on on Russia for natural gas, for example, Well, the new chancellor, Germany and some some of the eastern some I'm sorry to interrupt, some of the other Eastern European states as well that are not.

They know it's a good point.

You raise a good point.

And it's been difficult to navigate the sanctions regime because of that.

40% of Germany's fossil fuel imports come from Russia.

They're dependent on Russian gas.

And that's true.

And some of the other Central European countries, like Poland, for example.

But we need to be exporting liquefied natural gas to the Adriatic and the Baltic and helping supply Europeans during this crisis.

This is something that we've all advocated since America became energy independent a few years ago, was that we could take the old card off of the poker table for Putin by making sure that Europe had a very diversified set of energy alternatives to just natural gas from from Russia.

So it's made it challenging.

I want to say you're right about that.

But Germany is on the same page with the United States.

And when Putin actually attacked the whole country of Ukraine, this week, the chancellor announced Nord Stream two is dead.

It's quote, the there was a suggestion anyway, in a number of journals today, sir, over the last couple of days that by invading Ukraine, Mr. Putin has essentially lost his bid.

I mean, it's a ferocious for fearsome and ferocious action that he's taken and obviously disturbing.

But it's also a signal of his inherent weakness and the weaknesses in the Russian system as he has been administering it for the past two decades.

Do you agree with that?

I do.

I think Vladimir Putin, he was a KGB agent.

Is an authoritarian dictator who's had himself in charge of the country now since around the year 2000.

This is he's at the end of his movie.

He wants to go out as a great monarch of the Russian the former Russian kingdom.

He's kind of living in an 18th century world here, but he's made a catastrophic miscalculation here.

He's now unified NATO.

He's now unified.

The EU is now showing the world exactly who he is, not the propaganda master from Russian today, television or TV, people will see him for what he is, which is a dictator, a thug.

And now, in addition to mass murder, in Syria is now conducting murder back on the European continent with to the people of Ukraine.

The Biden administration, sir, has a couple of at least a couple cards that it could still play, including the advocate of implementing a withdrawal from the Swift, excluding Russia, from the swift banking system, the high tech instantaneous financial transaction network.

Should he take that step?

Well, people have described Swift as something that it's really not.

It's a messaging system.

It's not actually a transactional system.

I certainly am not opposed to the Biden administration excuse me, working with European allies to take Russia out of Swift.

But a more sustained and more devastating financial sanction would be to sanction the central bank of Russia that would shut down all of the transactions, import and export payments for the country of Russia.

That's the kind of draconian sanction that we've applied to Iran, for example.

And I think that's how people should look at this.

Steve.

Are the sanctions at the same level?

We might do on North Korea or Iran, or are they something less?

So President Biden and Treasury Secretary Yellen, they have many more tools that they could use.

And I would encourage them to use them.

I don't see why wading bears any strategy, in my view, because Putin's taken this catastrophic action.

He needs to pay the maximum price now and the Russian people need to see the cost of what they're leader has done and pay the price themselves and try to take domestic actions to curtail what he's doing and get him out of Ukraine and have his troops withdraw.

Congressman God, I end it there because we are simply out of time.

We thank you very much for yours.

Thank you.

Come back soon.

We'll be right back.

And we're back.

As February drew to a close there was a predictable but still dismaying report about January.

Arkansas's capital city, its largest city, saw violent crime increase by more than 35% from the same month a year ago.

Its ten homicides represented a 43% increase.

Now having already declared a state of emergency and in search of solutions.

City Hall has entered into agreements Little Rock with ten nonprofit organizations with experience in urban outreach at a combined cost of about one and a half million dollars.

Cheap advocates say it is if the current explosive environment can be diffused So with us now, three men who believe it can be Paul Shepherd leads Restore Hope, Arkansas, one of the non-governmental organizations retained by a Little Rock Police Chief Danny Baker of Fort Smith, where Restore Hope has had a positive impact.

And Sheriff Eric Eric Higgins of Pulaski County, who sought the organizations assistance upon taking office three years ago.

Gentlemen, thanks for being with us.

Mr. Chapman, we'll start with you.

Restore hope.

What is it?

How does it work?

Well, thanks, Steve, for having me on.

Restore Hope is a nonprofit organization that was started by the governor in 2015 and it seeks to bridge the gap in between agencies and the nonprofit service providers that are in the community.

We started in Fort Smith a few years ago and we have a software system and a model that allows agencies to refer people that need help into service providers and but also keep it real time record of how that individual is performing.

One of the things that we saw on Fort Smith over the first two years of implementing this model was that a child that was taken into foster care was returned back home successfully, twice as often as what we currently experience right now in the rest of the state.

Chief Baker, Mr. Chapman likes to say that his organization is fact based.

It's evidence based You have the evidence there?

I think we do.

I think that many of the successes that we're seeing in Fort Smith in Somerset County, not only in the reduction of number of children in foster care, but also in the number of people that we are incarcerating.

And in in some instances, our crime rates you know, we nationally are seeing an increase in violent crimes and homicides.

We're not seeing that same rate in Fort Smith.

And I think that that's due in large part to the work that's being done.

But Restore Hope and a lot of other folks in trying to reach people on a basic need level.

We have a vision at the Fort Smith Police Department that we're trying to work for a day when our profession isn't needed.

And we've lined up several ways that we're going to accomplish that.

And one of those is that we use every encounter with someone as an opportunity to improve them.

And the services that Restore Hope provides the mindset, the change of mindset that that's sometimes required, especially in the criminal justice system and being able to embrace these concepts They have an impact.

They have an impact on people's lives.

Well, let me let me ask this, Chief.

The criminal justice system, one thing with the public at large, as as well, you are not.

I'm here.

I'm hearing you saying you are not being, quote, soft on crime.

Absolutely not.

There's a time and a place that incarceration is necessary.

Violent crime cannot be tolerated.

There are a lot of indicators that I think we can intervene before it turns into a violent situation.

And if we can spend a little bit more time investing in someone to get them to where they're not committing a violent crime, where they're not in being involved in self just behavior, we would much rather take that route.

It's money better spent.

You know, law enforcement across the nation has taken a tremendous hit in the last couple of years.

It's very difficult to find good people who are willing to be police officers these days.

And so just from that aspect alone, we have to be a lot smarter and more resourceful with how we approach policing in America today.

I'm a firm believer in and community policing is something that that we embrace.

But I've always had a problem with that term.

I think that community policing is just basic policing.

And I've always struggled with the idea that community policing is something separate Paul Chapman introduced me to a new concept that I think fits very well, and it has to do with the way the approach to restore hope takes and its collective impact.

Well, let me go to think what we're up.

Yeah.

Let me go to the sheriff there, if I can, Chief.

Evidently, you've used some three years ago.

You signed on to the concept right well, we've implemented some of the principles that restore hope.

Has the teaching classes of people in this facility to help people to come out and be successful.

You know, at a county level, when you when you look at recidivism, oftentimes we look at states in track recidivism but in a county where county jail has everything to do with with recidivism because, you know.

75% of the people that are booked into our facility will return to the community.

And so what we're doing, what we started doing is, is those individuals who are trying to get help bring resources together to them, teach some classes, help them to change their focus in their direction, in the hope of them being successful and bringing resources to the table.

Not only in the facility, but outside the facility, helping those who who may have the core issue, maybe addiction.

And so we can help them to recognize that and then connect them with the resources and not only while they're in the facility, but when they leave the facility, we increase the chance of them being successful and not committing a crime, because if a person has an addiction issue and they're committing crimes, they may do ten burglaries before the law enforcement catches them.

And those ten burglars represents 30 victims in our community as the people in the house and neighbors people at work.

And so what we're trying to do is go out in a different approach to to restore people to the community and reduce crime in our community and reduce the victims of crime in our community.

Well, share.

How would you counter that?

What would you say to those who argue?

Wouldn't it just be simpler, gentlemen, to toughen the sentencing grid, build a bigger jail and lock them up?

Would it not be cheaper and safer to the public in the long run?

Sheriff, what would you say to that?

No, I wouldn't say it would be cheaper.

You know, our county jails a 1210 bed facility, one of the fourth largest jail facilities in the state of Arkansas.

That's not the solution.

The solution is You know, crime is is the individual commits crime.

And so we have to dig down into the reason the person commits a crime.

And in those that weekend, we can help.

Let's try to redirect them.

Now, there's going to be some people that need to be locked in.

They're dangerous to our community and they need to be in jail and they can be locked up.

But there's others in our community who are committing crime, who have an underlying issue that need to be dealt with.

And if we can address that, then we can create a safer community.

We're not going to build our way out of this with just jails and locking everyone else up.

That's that's not the solution.

We have to do that and do more things.

We have to help those who are outside who before they commit crime, investing in our youth and then those who have committed crime.

We need to to try to assist them and redirect them so that they won't continue to commit crime.

Mr. Chairman, I suspect the sheriff and the chief would both concur, but I have yet to meet a law enforcement officer to include prosecuting attorney's prosecutor who who doesn't believe that substance abuse, drugs or alcohol is at the core of an enormous share of of of offenses, either violent or nonviolent.

So what how are you addressing that specifically?

Steve, you're right.

Substance abuse seems to be a common factor in all of our clients lives.

Whether, you know, they're they've started using substance to try to escape a situation, as many have done over the past two years of this pandemic.

Drug use is significantly higher now than it was.

And it was not low before the pandemic.

And so or because folks are using substances, they're breaking into your home to support a habit or they're doing something while they're high.

And so we must address substance abuse with recovering.

And there are many good recovery resources out there, whether they be the the associations and a the faith based organizations or licensed treatment.

And all of those things are a potential pathway that someone could go down to get clean.

And so what we do is we make referrals and make sure that the referral sticks to those options for recovery.

And I wanted to say something, Steve, here, that, you know, to the to the bottom up, I agree with both these law enforcement officers who I respect greatly and we work with and are really community minded.

But we must have safety.

If you knock safety out, it's a pillar that you can build things on without safety.

You can't build these these other vocational programs or anything else.

And so safety has to be first.

But there are unintended consequences to incarceration from 12 to 16.

We had the fastest growing prison population per capita in the nation.

And if you look at the fostered the rate of foster care increase over that same period of time, the growth curves are very, very similar.

And so what follows in is as we incarcerate mom or dad then the child has to go somewhere and they come into foster care.

And if you look at in fact in 2016 we had the highest percent of children who had had an incarcerated parent before they were 18.

16% of Arkansas children in 2016 according to the Annie Casey Foundation.

And so that's a traumatic event for the children and we will be seeing that in the future.

And so that that begs the question then what do we do if someone's not violent.

What if we're just mad at them and not scared of them?

And so then we must engage in trying to help them become the neighbor that we want.

Gentlemen, I have to end it there because we are simply out of time.

But I thank you very much for yours very very good program and I hope you'll come back soon.

Mr. Chapman, Chief Sheriff, thanks very much for being part of the broadcast.

He was a landmark figure in the law in the social and cultural evolution of Arkansas and arguably America.

He literally saved lives and perhaps not a few souls.

And as we conclude our observance of Black History Month.

Who better to profile than a man whose middle name celebrates his heritage The son of a slave, Scipio Africanus Jones, became a leading African-American defense attorney and activist who focused on civil rights and criminal defense advocacy.

A graduate of Bethel Institute.

Now shorter college in North Little Iraq.

Jones passed the bar in 1899 and was admitted to present cases at the Arkansas Supreme Court in 1900.

He became the first African-American to appear on a regular basis before the state's court.

Between 1913 and 1925, he disputed cases before the United States Supreme Court.

The most significant case was his role defending 12 black men tried for mass murder during the L.A. massacre in 1919 Though the defendants were convicted and sentenced to death, Jones appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court and in 1925 all of the defendants were released alongside the Thurgood Marshall Jones trial of his final case which was won after his death in March 1943.

A high school in North Little Rock was named in his honor and existed from 1928 until its closing in 1970.

A life sized portrait can be viewed in the U.S. Post Office at 1700 Main Street in Little Rock that now bears his name.

Scipio Africanus Jones lawyer activist trailblazer Now that's our broadcast for this week as always.

Thank you for watching.

See you next week.

Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette The Arkansas Times and KUAR FM 89.