Welcome to Arkansas week I'm Michael helpline.

Arkansas's attorney general is visiting college campuses around the state, sharing a personal story of addiction which took the life of his brother.

Coming up later in the program, I'll talk with Tim Griffin about his One Pill Can Kill and it should have.

But first, Arkansas has one of the highest prison recidivism rates in the country.

Data shows within three years of their release, about half of all state inmates end up back behind bars.

The pattern is not only bad for inmates, who often don't get the needed support to change their lives, but expensive for the state, costing about 2000 a month per inmate.

New efforts are underway to change this cycle.

Joining me are State Senator Ben Gilmore, a Republican of Crossett, and Jim Bell, owner of the little Rock Reentry Facility Hidden Ranch.

Thank you both for coming in.

Thanks for having us, Michael.

Senator Gilmore, we'll start with you.

You've been involved in key legislation related to criminal justice over the last two years.

Two years ago, you sponsored the, sweeping Protect Arkansas Act, which, among other things, implemented truth and sentencing changes, overhauling the parole system, increasing time served for violent offenses.

It also established a task force for recidivism.

Two years since that became law.

What do you think?

Well, I think to understand the need for the protect Arkansas lock, I think we have to understand what was happening in Arkansas.

And we had a we had a crime problem.

We had a violent crime problem in particular.

And with that, we have one of the highest recidivism rates in the country, which tells us we have a repeat violent crime problem.

And so there was two things that we really needed to focus on.

One was making sure that we had truth in sentencing, meaning that those who were, sentenced or doing, you know, very terrible, heinous crimes didn't just find themselves in a revolving door back out in a matter of, in some cases, a few months or few years.

Because what we what we understand is when someone gets incarcerated, at some point, they're getting back out.

They're going to be paroled or they're going to serve their sentence.

Either way, most of the time they're coming back out into our communities.

And so what we need to understand is, and to borrow a phrase from Joe Furey, the former corrections secretary, fired by the Board of Corrections.

He had a great saying that I love, and he was trying to implement a lot of the policies that are in the Protect act and a few of the other bills, but his phrase was the opportunity of incarceration.

So the way the laws work, you are convicted, you're adjudicated, you're sentenced.

And so if you're going to be sentenced, we need to be maximizing every opportunity we have with those who are incarcerated, meaning we need to make sure they're getting the programing, meaning we need to make sure that they're getting the education that they need.

There's a direct correlation between those who are illiterate and educated that find themselves in a lifestyle of crime.

And so how do we how do we end that cycle?

And so a lot of the bills that we have, we have passed are focused on doing just that.

And that was you mentioned the recidivism task force that was part of the Protect act to study ways to end that cycle.

And so there's a lot of work that needs to be done.

There's a lot of things that we need to do.

And but most, most of what we need to do, we need to just implement a lot of the laws that we passed.

And we need to make sure that we have evidence based programing in our correction facilities.

So there's a lot of things that, that we're trying to do and a lot of things that are still yet to be done.

Yeah.

And do you follow up on that?

This year, sponsoring legislation, with bipartisan support.

And you mentioned opportunities that, create opportunities for inmates, nearing the end of their sentences.

Explain what, that bill does.

Yeah.

And to go back to the protect, it created a system where you you have to work and earn your way, to to freedom.

Right?

You don't just get a guaranteed parole date, so you have to work and earn that.

So if you're sentenced to, an 85% crime, you're, you're, basically understanding you're going to serve 100% unless you do the things that are required to shave off 15%.

And so with that, though, we needed to create more opportunities, which so fast forward to this past session.

We passed several great recidivism bills.

One bill in particular was one that set up a framework, for, for, what we need to be doing and providing these services and this program, these opportunities, to to those that are incarcerated.

And unfortunately, a lot of that's not even been implemented yet.

And so, you know, your viewers may understand that there's litigation ongoing between, you know, the governor and the Board of Corrections and this dispute over who's in control.

Well, the Board of Corrections is in control right now.

And so there's just a lot of things there that we need to try to change and implement.

You know, one of the bills that we passed was a way for those who were on supervision, to, to lessen their supervision time.

We have thousands and thousands of people that once they get out of prison, they go on to supervision.

And so that means that they have to report into a parole officer, or they have to check all these different boxes to make sure that they are complying with their supervision requirements.

But at the end of the day, that's not what we want either, right?

We want them to be productive citizens.

We want them.

We want to incentivize them, to to to get their life back on, a path that makes them productive, citizens in our communities.

And so with that, there was a bill that encouraged work.

And if they were engaged in work and keeping a job that they could shave off literal days and years off of their recidivism or off of their, supervision, rather, or Jim, you work with, many of these inmates who are coming out of prison.

Talk about the challenges that they face.

Well, first of all, our facility is a prison.

It's called a reentry prison.

And it's for inmates that are going to get out within the next 18 months.

We know they're leaving.

So the corrections system sends to us inmates, and we housed them in our facility for six months.

If they do everything they're told to do, they then get out early.

Now the way that works is they have to have a job and we get them a job.

We take them to work.

We bring them home from work.

They can't have a cell phone.

They can't smoke.

They can't drive.

And the drug tested twice a week.

Now they're living a normal life from the standpoint they go to work every day.

We have AA meetings.

We had 3 or 4 churches that take them either to church or come into the facility.

We actually have some substance abuse and mental health treatment in this facility.

I think we're probably the only reentry facility that does that, but I don't know that answer.

So in theory, the problem is getting them ready for society and then making sure they have a chance to succeed.

The regular prison system doesn't have the ability to do the things I'm getting ready to describe.

Every inmate that leaves our facility, gets an Arkansas I.D., gets a driver's license, gets insurance, social Security card, and a birth certificate.

And if they don't have an automobile, we help them purchase one.

And the the way we do that is remember, all these people go to work.

We hold their paychecks until they get out.

Other than them paying $500 a month rent.

So each inmate has between 6 and $10,000 when he leaves the facility.

Now think of that from a state level.

If you could do that statewide, the prison system would be solved.

It'd be over.

Yeah.

Because the biggest problem with an inmate, typically what happens, the parole system sends them out to live with their mother in some small town.

Doesn't work.

Sends them to live by themselves.

Doesn't work.

What we try to do is make it possible for them with the money.

They have to do things a little differently.

And if they use the money properly, which we've tried to train them to do for six months, they have the ability not to go back to prison.

Yeah.

The biggest problem in the prison system is drugs are everywhere.

They're not in our facility.

So our our reentry facility has no drugs.

Yeah.

Compared to the, the average, what kind of success rate are you seeing for those coming out of here?

Well, three years ago, when we ran the recidivism rate, we were at 23%.

I have not seen any figure since then.

That's roughly half of what the recidivism rate is for the standard system.

But as I've described, we have so many more things to offer the inmate.

It should be lower.

And if that could be expanded, there's only six of these facilities in the state.

That ought to be 20.

Every town that needs employees can have one of these facilities.

Because the facilities are owned by individuals, they aren't owned by the state.

So it doesn't cost state money to have one of these facilities.

The corrections system pays us $800 a month, compared to the 2100 that it cost to keep somebody in Cummins.

Yeah.

So it costs less money.

And then the inmate pays rent, right.

Senator Gilmore, do you see this as, model for, absolutely.

The success that the folks like Jim and in particular, I've toured his facility.

His work is impressive.

And, this is what we're trying to accomplish.

It's proven difficult.

We need people to work with us.

We need the department and the Board of Corrections to to see this and emphasize this as a priority.

But, you know, a figure that I've seen and I, you know, I haven't done a deep dive into it, but a figure that I've seen is over $140 million that we could save annually if we just fixed our recidivism problem.

That's a lot of money.

And I know taxpayers that watch the show are thinking, hey, that's that's my money, right?

And so that's where you solve that problem.

You help address, you know, funding shortages for so many other things in the state budget.

If you just solve this problem and a way to do that is utilizing, you know, a program and a facility like what Jim has to offer.

Okay, Senator, only a couple of minutes left here.

We can't talk about criminal justice without talking about the proposed prison.

In Franklin County.

What's the status of that?

Well, I think the status of that right now is it's on hold.

There's nothing happening at this point.

There's been a lot of debate as to whether that's the location or as to, you know, whether, you know, there needs to be a look at another location.

And I think, I think what's very important to highlight, regardless of where you put this facility, there's going to be people who don't want a prison in their backyard.

I recognize that.

I'm sympathetic to that.

And so the reality is, though, we have to have a facility, we have to have a prison.

We have land purchase there now.

There's been a lot of debate on whether there's water there.

We have officials and state government who are very, very much, focused on trying to address all of these different things.

And they speak to the fact that there is water available.

There's been engineering studies done.

I know that there has been a 900 page document that was there was given to legislators on all the engineering that's been done there.

So there's been a lot of information given.

I think that at the end of the day, the reality comes down to we need to build a prison.

There's no question in that.

I think there's no.

And there's no argument that anyone can make.

Even the folks who are in Franklin County who understand.

Billy, I get it.

They they don't want a prison there.

They even say that we need a prison because the reality is, what's the cost to society if we don't build a prison?

Because unfortunately, we have people, we have violent offenders.

We have, repeat, violent offenders.

You can talk to almost every sheriff in the state who will tell you, unfortunately, they're catching the same person over and over and over again.

And a lot of that's due to capacity.

We fix some of that with protect act and addressing that revolving door and fixing that loophole of people who are just going in and coming right back out.

But with that, we have to have the capacity and 3000 beds.

Basically gets us to the, the, the, you know, high water mark in the sense of we've got 21, 2200 people backed up in county jails.

I think why it's important to talk about that is if they're backed up in a county jail, they're not getting the programing, they're not getting the substance abuse treatment, they're not getting the anger management programing, they're not getting any of the things that going back to what I initially talked about when we started was the opportunity of incarceration.

Unfortunately, they're going to be incarcerated.

Let's give them every opportunity we can.

One final quick question here.

And we're almost out of time.

Obviously, the legislature, will take up funding during the fiscal session next year.

Any price cost estimate.

Do you foresee this, going up?

What had been, rejected?

Well, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The longer this is delayed, the more it's going to cost.

And so I think those that have held out, and didn't want to support the prison and didn't want to vote for this and said it was going to cost $1 billion, I think they're going to ensure that it will cost $1 billion because, no question.

The cost of goods and building materials goes up every, every day that we delay.

And so the the initial estimate that we had in the session was, around 825 million.

I think that's a real figure.

I think that, you know, you can look at the documentation that was provided and say that was a real figure.

Again, others have thrown out dollar amounts in into the billions and over a billion.

And so I think getting back to what's real and that that dollar amount that was thrown out initially of, of 825, this is like in session, the number I'm talking about, there's been a lot of numbers thrown out.

Sure.

But in in session the, the number that was sort of arrived at was about 825.

But again, I go back to every delay, every single day that we're not we haven't started construction.

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So if you want a prison to cost $1 billion or more, then stall it.

And that's what we've seen.

Senator Ben Gilmore and Jim Bell, thank you both for coming in.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you.

And we'll be right back.

And welcome back.

Addiction transcends demographics like age, race and socio economic factors.

Well, there are risk factors that can make someone more susceptible.

Anyone from any background can easily become addicted.

In recent years, opioids are prescribed for legitimate purposes and sometimes been the gateway.

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin has been speaking at college campuses around the state.

Sharing the story of your brother.

First, thank you for joining us.

Your brother Daniel had, back surgery.

Tell me what happened.

Yeah.

So he was active.

Hunter, loved to fish outdoors all the time.

And, had back pain.

It was something he could live with, generally, but, made the decision to get back surgery.

The back surgery went terribly wrong, and, he was.

This was probably 15 years ago or so.

And he was immediately prescribed a number of a very strong opioids and quickly became dependent upon them because the pain was so great.

And so I got him to a pain, managed doctor who certainly was going to use opioids and did use opioids, prescribed opioids to my brother for the most extreme pain.

But he wanted to be he wanted to provide other non-opioid pain, prescriptions and so that the opioids were safe for just the most, painful for the most extreme.

And over time, the pain was so great that my brother took a lot of opioids and lived with opioids as, his medicine of choice to get through the day.

And eventually he, you know, along with that comes a became a secondary sedentary, their lifestyle.

And he degraded physically.

And he passed last March, but that is a good example of the problem that we are starting.

We have started as a country over the last decade or so to get our arms around, which is the prescription drug opioid problem.

Now, in some cases, it starts relatively, normal innocently with people taking them for a medical problem.

In other cases, prescription drugs or taken from someone else.

But the prescription drug problem is what the the settlements with the drug companies.

It's what a lot of, the books that have been written, even J.D.

Vance, the vice president, a lot of his book was about this is opioid addiction in rural communities.

This is the problem that we've sought to get our arms around with better training, better practices for health care professionals, etc., so that people understand the, the damage, that oxycodone, for example, can do.

Now we've got an even more serious problem as we've gotten our arms around the prescription drug problem.

Now we have illicit opioids with prescription drugs.

At least you know what you're taking.

You can take one prescription drug.

And the risk there is not immediate death is potentially addiction down the road.

But with the illicit you don't know what you're holding.

Right.

So if I hold an oxycodone, I know it's an hour to go.

No, that's not the case with the illicit drugs.

Yeah, and this led to this initiative.

One pill can kill.

One pill can kill.

Why?

One pill can kill?

Because literally, with the illicit drugs.

Because you don't know what's in it.

One pill can kill.

And what it what is happening is something very similar to what we saw with methamphetamines.

When we started to deal with the drugs that were being sold over the counter, that were being used to produce meth domestically, we put those behind the counter where people couldn't get it as easily routine cold medicines, right?

So we started to choke the supply of homegrown meth.

So the Mexican meth labs sprung up to fill the void.

That's what's happening here.

So we got our arms around, are starting to continuing to get our arms around the prescription drug opioid problem.

So the demand still their supply goes down.

So the Chinese and the Mexicans in particular are the ones stepping in to fill that void.

So most most of the opioids on the street that are illicit, not made in a pharmaceutical grade lab, right?

Not prescription grade.

These are on the street illicit.

Most of these are being produced, manufactured south of the border in Mexico with ingredients shipped from China.

Yeah.

And and they are deadly in a way that the prescription drugs aren't because you have no idea what's in it.

And the people that make these illicit drugs, these illicit opioids, they don't care if you die, all they want is you to be addicted as quickly as possible so that you buy more.

Yeah.

Why are you bringing this message to college campuses?

Well, first of all, we have a lot of settlement funds, and it is my responsibility with those funds to use the opioid settlement funds for opioid abatement only.

Okay.

So there's a big appendix to the settlement agreement with some of these drug manufacturers, pharmacies, etc.. And it basically says my office can only spend the money on opioid abatement.

We want to help solve the problem.

There's three parts to this solution.

There's a raising awareness so people never take them.

There's treatment for people who made the mistake and took them.

But we've got to help them recover.

And then there's the law enforcement component, right.

Stopping the shipment of these.

And so one pill can kill focuses on one and two.

And most of the people that are getting hooked are in the 18 to 40 category age wise.

And so you want to get these young people who are often out at parties drinking alcohol, and maybe their their guard is down, and they may be offered something.

We want to make sure that they know that if you take that thing you're offered, that may have been through 20, 30 other hands before it got to you.

Who knows?

You could die instantly because this fentanyl is so deadly.

It is.

They are including it in these these drugs, these pills.

They're also putting it in cocaine.

They're putting it in marijuana.

They're mixing it in with all sorts of other drugs.

And so they do that because it increases the addictive quality.

Yeah.

And it's very cheap for them to manufacture.

I want to tell you this, I haven't said this, I don't think on in public but but this is out there now and this is striking a select committee that looked at this found and Congress found that the Chinese government has been giving tax credits to companies who will ship illicit fentanyl ingredients to the United States.

Now, why would they do that?

Because it's in the interest of the Chinese government to kill Americans, and they can do it without firing a shot, without spending money.

In fact, they're making money.

This is well documented.

This is stuff that can't be sold in China.

They're giving tax credits if these companies will ship it to the United States.

And that's coming from a Stanford based expert, extremely credible that I've been working with.

And, we'll be talking more about that.

But this is focus on college campuses to raise awareness so people never try this stuff, and then also to teach people how to use Narcan.

So if someone does try it and has an overdose, there are a numerous people on campus who know what to do right?

Yeah.

Maybe a minute left here.

You've been speaking at about a half dozen colleges so far.

You'll be speaking at Arkansas State, November 10th.

Arkansas Tech on November 17th.

I guess a final thought.

Tell me about Narcan and and just making that available.

Yeah.

So let me tell you what we're doing at these campuses.

So what we're doing is giving out these prevention kits.

One pill can kill harm prevention kits and now have Narcan in it.

And it tells you it shows you some what some of the drugs might look like that are illicit.

Some examples.

And it tells you what to do.

If if you find someone, that is has had an overdose.

But we're also training these students.

So what we generally do we do a press conference, we announce it.

Getting this message out is hugely important.

But then we take student leaders and we teach them what they can do, what they need to know, so that they can spread it as sort of evangelicals on this issue.

All right.

Attorney General Tim Griffin, we'll have to wrap it up there.

Thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you.

And thank you for watching.

We'll see you next time.