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Advocates urge task force to pair enforcement with restorative options; social-worker pilot and JAG funding raised
Summary
Public commenters at the Oct. 22 task-force meeting urged restorative justice and better access to addiction and mental-health services for people in pretrial status, requested a licensed social-worker pilot and asked whether JAG funds could support it.
Public advocates used the task-force meeting on Oct. 22 to press for greater emphasis on treatment and restorative options alongside enforcement, and to ask whether grant funding could be redirected to support social-work services.
Sarah Warren, campus director of the Arkansas Justice Reform Coalition, told the task force that many people arrested for drug-related offenses need addiction recovery and mental-health services rather than prolonged pretrial detention. “People who are actually connected to resources and services and ... get healing and restoration, that creates moral being in public safety in our communities,” she said, urging the task force and prosecutors to coordinate referrals and restorative pathways for people in pretrial status.
Another speaker raised the earlier proposal for a licensed social-worker pilot. The commenter cited the Fayetteville Police Department’s crisis-intervention response team — which uses two licensed social workers — as a model and asked that funds from the COPS grant be used to allocate social-work advocates to the drug task force for two to three days per week, or to fund a full-time social-worker advocate.
Micah Sullivan, a pretrial release advocate with Arkansas Justice Reform’s Hummingbird Project, described firsthand concerns about task-force practices and the use of informants. “I think ... the way you obtain the information is you're having people commit the crimes that you are also arresting the people for,” Sullivan said, arguing that enforcement practices can perpetuate criminalization and that social services should be part of the response.
A questioner asked whether JAG (Justice Assistance Grant) funds could be used; the transcript records a Fayetteville City JAG allocation of $35,215. Respondents cautioned that JAG and other funds have restrictions and that city allocations cannot simply be intermixed with task-force funds without observing those rules.
The chair acknowledged the comments and said he would make Chief Reynolds aware of the requests; no formal policy or funding reallocation was approved at the meeting. The task force set a next meeting date and adjourned.
