Debate continues over a proposed prison in western Arkansas. State lawmakers heard nearly four hours of testimony yesterday about a controversial plan for the new prison.
The proposed 3,000-bed prison in the west Arkansas city of Charleston has drawn widespread criticism from residents, lawmakers and others.
In a legislative committee meeting yesterday, Charleston resident Adam Watson cited the legislature's repeated votes to block funding for the project.
"The state finds itself here today five failed votes short of funding and all but begging for a design contract that has already slashed criteria to cut unnecessarily bloated costs, rather than a design based on the state's needs and at serious odds with the very community in which it will desperately need to patrol these cells."
Watson says the site lacks proper resources, workforce, and connections to utilities and transportation infrastructure that would be necessary to support a prison.
Republican state Sen. Jimmy Hickey says a new prison is needed, but that it's clear the state's preferred location is the wrong move.
"I'm trying to figure out a way to vote for the appropriation, and all I do is get further and further and further away. And it's not that I want to be hard. I don't think that, unlike a lot of people right now, that we've made a boondoggle. I don't think that it is a train wreck. I think that we've merely made a misstep, and somebody needs to say we've made a misstep."
The state has already spent $3 million to secure the parcel of land in Franklin County.
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