Mansa Musa:  Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa.

When we think about prisons and we think about prisons in rural America, the first thing most people think is that the rural community wants the prison, it’s the number one source of the economy, [from] the prison. I even had this thought all the time, I even repeated that, that yeah, in rural America, prison’s number one industry — And in most cases, it is. But I also thought that the people in these communities wanted these prisons, that they were like, yeah, we want this, this is recession proof. As long as we got people locked up, we got jobs.

But this is not the case.

Today we’re talking about a new proposed megaprison in Arkansas, a project that has drawn widespread local opposition, even in one of the state’s most conservative areas. Reporter Lauren Gill writes about it in her recent Bolts magazine article, “The Prison Next Door.” She details how the plan for a massive new correctional facility has shaken the small rural community of Franklin County.

To give you a sense of the scale, Franklin County has about 2,600 residents; The proposed prison would house 3,000 people. That’s more prisoners than locals.

Joining me today are Lauren Gill, who wrote the article, and Natalie Cadena, the executive director of Gravel and Grit, a local organization leading the fight to stop this project.

Lauren and Natalie, welcome to Rattling the Bars.

Natalie Cadena:  Thank you for having me.

Lauren Gill:  Thanks so much.

Mansa Musa:  Alright, so let’s start with why the opposition, OK? Give our audience a sense of why the residents in Franklin County is in opposition to this.

Lauren Gill:  I think this is a story about so many different things. So, first of all, you have the state of Arkansas, that went to great lengths to hide this prison project that they wanted to bring to Franklin County. And this went on for years, where they were searching secretly for land in the northwestern part of the state. And then finally, in July of 2024, they find this land in Franklin County. And state staff are sending emails about it. Some people are saying, oh, this isn’t land that will be viable because it’s so hard to access. And you have state staff who are sending emails like, oh, should we come up with a code name for the project? So, that really gives an indication of the lengths that they were going through to keep this hidden from the people of Franklin County until it was finally announced on Halloween in 2024.

So, it’s a story about how people are worried about their resources, they’re worried about their way of life, but they’re also worried about how the state is spending taxpayer money, and what they say is very irresponsibly, because when the project was first announced, everybody knew that Sarah Huckabee Sanders wanted to build a new prison because that was something, tough on crime, was something that she really campaigned for during her election campaign.

And she, shortly after [getting] to office, she passes this act called the Protect Arkansas Act, which virtually ensures that there’s going to be more need for a prison, another prison, by limiting parole and making sure people are behind bars for longer.

So yeah, she was going to build this prison, and it was supposed to be $470 million at the outset, and I think the number is changing as the state is struggling to find basic resources like water to supply the site. And right now, I think they’re talking at over $1 billion. So it’s just really ballooned.

And I think there are just so many different reasons that have emerged throughout this whole entire process that people in Franklin County are noticing and they’re thinking about more. And one of them as well is what I was really struck by when I was down there, is I’m talking to people, and 75% of the county had voted for Sarah Huckabee Sanders. And I have people who are telling me, I never really thought about incarceration before. I never thought about prisons. And they said, well, once this prison was being brought to our community, I did some research, and I’m finding out more about how incarceration works in Arkansas, but I’m really starting to question the way that the state locks so many people up.

Mansa Musa:  I was reading the article, and it talked about the abolition of parole, and it talked about some of the crimes that would deny you parole. And some of the crimes is like, don’t even merit not giving people parole. But like you say, to your point, they need the body, so you change the laws and ensure that you’re going to have the body.

Natalie, tell us about your organization, Gravel and Grit, and how it formed, and what are some of the organizing efforts you all have been leading to stop this particular megaprison from being built?

Natalie Cadena:  Well, thank you again for having me on. 

So, Gravel and Grit officially formed in February of 2025, but the members of the group have been involved since day one. The announcement was made on Halloween, and on Nov. 7, the local community in Charleston had called a town hall, and they were just demanding answers from the governor. It was announced on local radio out of the blue, like, here, we’re doing you a favor, here’s a megaprison, and you’re gonna like it.

So, immediately there was a response, and there was a group of people that formed an official board called the Franklin County and River Valley [Coalition], and they are still active in this process. But as we went on throughout learning about how to address this issue in a way that’s going to get attention and really stand out because it’s hard to get attention of your legislature if you’re not loud.

So, they had a legal angle they wanted to pursue. In that part of it, we felt like fundraising was probably going to be something we would need to do. So we established a nonprofit. And Gravel and Grit itself is intended to be an advocate for rural communities going forward, not just with prisons, but there are other communities in Arkansas, especially in the Delta region, but there are other communities in Arkansas that need a voice, and they’re not being heard by their government either, and they have a lot of different issues affecting them. So we want to carry this on to that eventually.

But for the time being, we’re singularly focused. We are a nonpartisan group because, as Lauren pointed out, Franklin County is 75% Republican, and they all voted for Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Our group has established and agreed that we all have different beliefs on incarceration and how to address public safety in general, so that’s not what we’re going to argue about. We’re going to argue right now, we’re going to focus on the practicality of this location, the complete disregard for local input. Even our legislators, they didn’t know. Our conservative legislators had no idea. Our county judges, our JPs, nobody was told.

So we want to focus on that transparency piece and giving us a voice in what’s happening in our own community, as well as the taxpayer impact. Because we project that once this is all said and done, given the infrastructure needs and all of the extra requirements, that this will be upwards of $1.5 billion. So, that’s not good for any Arkansas taxpayer. And just imagine how much you could do for recidivism with that amount of money, addressing pretrial services or drug treatment and reentry programs and that sort of thing.

So, that’s where we are right now. We work through the legislature mostly. We work with our senators and representatives in educating them just to say, hey, this is how much it’s going to cost taxpayers. It doesn’t have to be this way. There are other solutions, there are other locations that are way more practical.

And then, most recently, you bring in the federal argument because now it’s being considered as an ICE detention facility. That’s a whole ‘nother level of argument that we have to address.

So, we just got together and decided, hey, these are the steps we need to take. We had great advice from some other grassroots organizations that help people organize in Arkansas, and then we have some really, really good support from our legislators that are working with us, the ones that are supportive of us.

Mansa Musa:  Unpack this for me, because y’all built this coalition that y’all have got is a coalition of, under any other given circumstance, ya’ll wouldn’t have had nothing to do with each other. You got the sheriff, you got the farmers, you got the churches, you got people that have a diverse way of thinking when it comes to social issues. What is it about this particular issue that y’all are able to get this coalition, and how are y’all able to maintain the coalition? It is, in fact, the coalition that’s generating the opposition to the building of this megaprison.

Natalie Cadena:  Well, I think we knew from the very beginning that this wasn’t political, and it doesn’t need to be political. So we need to establish right away that we’re going to take help from anybody that’s going to give us help in getting our voice out there. And of course, one of the first people to step up was Dr. Chris Jones. And he had run for governor of Arkansas against Sarah Huckabee and lost, and now he’s running for senator against [French Hill]. He was considered, I think, in the running for the Democratic Party chair of the national delegation.

So, he’s an incredible man. He stepped up and said, hey, what can I do? Nothing he could do really other than just help us get our message out. But he came in and spoke to us along with our conservative legislators, which was, I think, what the community needed to see. They needed to see Democrat Chris Jones standing next to Republican Gary Stubblefield to know that, hey, this is not an issue that needs to divide us. We’ve got a lot more in common — And I think we’re finding out this is true on a lot of issues. But people had just checked out of politics, or they had just checked out of government. They just think it runs itself. They vote once every four years and they’re done.

So I think for us, it was just establishing that this is not going to be political, it’s not going to be Republican or Democrat. It’s not going to be about any of that. This is about what’s right for local communities in rural Arkansas. And so we just stay with that message, and it brings people together no matter where they’re from.

Mansa Musa:  And Lauren, talk about how the land was purchased, and was [there] any transparency associated with it? And if [there] wasn’t no transparency associated with it, how did your investigation unpack that?

Lauren Gill:  So, this story was honestly a reporter’s dream because the coalition had gone ahead and asked for public records, hundreds of pages of public records, tracing how the state went about buying the land for the prison, and then any conversations afterwards, and as they continued to procure various contracts and things related to the prison site. So I was given hundreds of pages of emails showing how the state had 25,000 sites that met the criteria for what they were looking for, which was like 60 miles away from other ADOC [Arkansas Department of Corrections] prisons, had flat land, and some available infrastructure, as well as access to workforce.

So obviously those are all very vague things that they were looking for, but eventually the state narrows it to 6,000. They visit 14, and then they find Franklin County through, it was listed on a rural land website in July, 2024, and an intern finds it, sends it to the person who is supposed to be in charge of finding the land, and then they go from there.

By the end of the month, they’re in contract for the land but don’t announce it, obviously, until Halloween, and then would later say at the town hall meeting that, well, we didn’t want to announce it because we were afraid that there would be a bidding war for it, which raises a lot of questions since they’re already in contract for it. But yeah, that’s how they went about getting the land, which is on 815 acres.

When I was down there, I just kept hearing from people. They didn’t understand how there was going to be a 3,000-bed prison built there, because people would try to build fence posts or put in basic infrastructure and it would take them forever to just nail through the sandstone that was all over Mill Creek Mountain, which is the area that the prison’s being built, in the surrounding area.

So yeah, there’s a power line that runs through the property, but other than that, it’s extremely rural. You get to it by a very narrow two-lane road. And yeah, it’s just super rural. So it was definitely raising a lot of questions for me about how they plan to support not only the prisoners and staff, but family who are visiting, other people who would be needed to support this prison in Franklin County.

Mansa Musa:  And Natalie, what’s the status of it now? What’s the current status of the prison plan, and who’s still really pushing for it, or is everybody opposed to it, and where it’s standing right now, as far as the prison plan?

Natalie Cadena:  Well, if anybody’s for the prison, they have not spoken up to us. I mean, they may call their legislator and say, hey, I want it, but they’re awfully quiet if they do. And just knowing the town and the way that information travels and that sort of thing, there is even from our sheriff and our judge and all of the county officials, a resounding opposition. So, I don’t necessarily think there are a lot of supporters in the communities. I’m sure they exist, but I don’t think that they are the majority by any means.

So, the current status is that it’s in limbo. It does not have funding because we were able to convince the legislators during the last general session that they needed to do a bit more homework on the cost of this prison and the site feasibility and all of the things that we were seeing as dangerous to taxpayers for sure. So, they voted against it. It was a three-fourths majority vote, at 75% is what they had to reach in order to pass appropriations, and they could not. And they voted on it five times in session, and it failed five times.

So, that halted the full-blown charging ahead piece of it, but there were still $75 million that had previously been appropriated by Gov. Hutchison — Before Sarah Sanders was elected — For the expansion of the existing Calico Rock detention facility, which is one of the only facilities in the state that maintains full staffing.

It is truly a community, like you spoke about in the beginning, that embraces that, because that’s their only job. The school district and the prison are the only sources of income, and so, that’s the community they’ve become. And they were asking for more beds.

So they took that money, and then have spent at least $2 or $3 million already on just not even, I mean, really nothing, paperwork. I mean, really. They drilled wells, which they didn’t find water when they drilled the wells. So, the only other things that we are seeing come across on there as far as what we’re paying for is Vanir, the company that they hired to be the owner’s representative. We’re paying for paperwork and administration fees, and that’s all that we paid for so far.

As far as who is for it and who’s pushing for it, Gov. Sanders made this part of her platform when she was running for governor. She has a handful of legislators who are very loyal to her. Bart Hester and Ben Gilmore actually helped author the Protect Act, and some of them were conservative. The speaker of the house is Brian Evans. There’s a group of them that are very loyal to the governor, and they are all on board with her. So that’s where the push comes from.

But if you look into the whole story, our Board of Corrections does not speak to the Department of Corrections or the governor’s office in a constructive manner. They have a lawsuit, the Board of Corrections is suing the governor. They fired her chosen Board of Corrections secretary that she brought in from Arizona. So there’s a lot of contention just going around the issue anyway, which kind of helps our case because we can maintain contact with the Board of Corrections about the reality of the facts, and it helps us develop a relationship with them.

Mansa Musa:  Let me ask you this, Natalie, what about — And both of y’all can weigh in on this if y’all want to — You spoke about the prospect that it might become an ICE detention center. With that comes money. Do y’all sense the legislation and the governor looking in that direction?

Natalie Cadena:  Well, I’ll go first, because I’m sure Lauren is way up to date, but this was just a very, very recent development. It just happened a couple of weeks ago that they announced that ICE — Well, we actually just stumbled upon it. One of our sheriffs was patrolling the area and noticed an out-of-state plate right there at the prison site, pulled over to talk to ’em, and they said, well, hey, we’re ICE agents from Louisiana looking to make this a potential detention facility. So again, no communication amongst our legislators, just completely blindsiding the local community.

But going back to the very beginning of this story, there’s been a few of the Board of Corrections members who have repeatedly said, oh, well, there’s going to be federal money involved. Oh, we’re going to get federal money. So there seemed to be this rumor, at least among them, that they knew somewhere federal money might come into play. We did think of ICE, and we thought also of some of the infrastructure money that the grants that can be applied for. But as soon as this was announced, we were like, ah, there’s the federal money.

The thing about federal money is that with it come more stringent requirements, I guess. So for example, Alligator Alcatraz was initially stopped by the Seminole Tribe, and then the EPA came in and said, well, you didn’t do any of your preliminary work, so we can’t support you being open down there.

And so, this is the same situation. There’s a very delicate water table up there. Water doesn’t exist in the area. I think anybody would realize that it’s not a practical or suitable site, that did the little bit of homework that we’ve done. But sometimes with federal money, they just don’t care. They’re just going to go ahead and do it anyway.

We’re trying to prevent that from happening. We have contacted our federal delegation of senators and representatives, hopefully that they will weigh in, because until now, we really hadn’t needed to involve them. But we are trying to educate them as quickly as we can and get them to come in and support us on this.

Mansa Musa:  Lauren, talk about the economic impact, if you can, or how they pushing it. ‘Cause that’s what the governor say, the governor say — And this is the playbook that all of them say — This is going to be, money’s going to be, more money, and money’s going to be used. And then they label a host of social programs or social things that communities need where the money will ultimately go. But it has been my experience the money don’t never go there.

Lauren Gill:  So, when the prison was announced on the radio, Sarah Sanders said, this is going to be the single largest investment in Franklin County. So, after having visited there, I was really interested in what rural prison building looks like.

So I went back and I talked to a lot of experts, read a lot of papers about rural prison building, which has been very, very closely studied over the years, and the phenomenon really started in the 1980s as a response to various tough-on-crime laws. The prisons were filling up, they needed a place to put them. People in wealthy urban communities were not going to want these prisons. They were protesting against them. So, the government officials, they say, oh, well, rural land, that’s easy to get because we can sell it to people as an economic investment, and also it’s cheaper and we can get more land.

And so this boom just kicks off where all of these prisons are built in rural communities. And at the time, these communities are actually in some places asking for these prisons because they’re suffering the effects of deindustrialization, and they’re looking for ways to keep people in their towns with various jobs. And they think, oh, well, a prison, that has a ton of jobs, please bring this to our community.

And so what we’ve seen is that when prisons are brought to those communities, yes, the jobs are there, but it also intensely changes the fabric of the community where they completely depend on this prison for jobs and for their livelihoods. Everyone works in the prison or knows somebody who works in the prison.

And as part of this story, I went up to this town called Malone in upstate New York where three prisons were built there in the 1980s. It’s just like a complete prison town. People would say, well, I don’t know what would happen if these prisons closed. Good thing I have somebody who works as a teacher in my family because we can depend on them if the prisons ever closed, because everyone else in my family works in these prisons.

But the interesting thing is when you talk to scholars and experts about what happens in these communities is that the economic investment and prosperity very rarely comes through.

So, I was given an example of Kentucky. Three prisons were built there. The community was thrilled about it. They’re very excited. They’re making investments like applying for federal grants and changing their school curriculum to be centered around how to work in a prison. So, those prisons are built. The economic prosperity never materialized, and the prisons are now still in one of the poorest congressional districts in the country.

So, I think that’s something that government officials have depended on, is this rhetoric of, well, oh, we’re going to bring investment to the community. But over time, people have seen that that’s not really happened, and they’re changing the community to just be dependent on incarceration. And we’re really seeing more communities speak up about that.

And that’s what really struck me about what’s going on in Franklin County, is that Sarah Sanders tried to sell it to them as an economic investment, and they’re saying, we don’t want this type of investment. And it really raises the question of what type of investments the government is willing to make in communities, and why can’t there be other types of investments in Franklin County, maybe to farming or schools, that aren’t tied to incarceration?

Mansa Musa:  To your point, you get the community to be dependent on the prison, now you have to create laws to ensure that people are locked up. But when Natalie, talk about, if you can panoramic out for us, zoom out a little bit, talk about what the implication this going to have on other states that’s going to be confronted with the same situation, relying on prisons as the number one source of the economy for them. If you can, can you talk about that? The national implication.

Natalie Cadena:  Well, one of the things that we’ve uncovered in our investigation into this was that our governor has a very, very close relationship with the CEO of CoreCivic, which is the largest private prison company in the United States. So early on, we began thinking, well, they may be trying to privatize this. This is something like he’s the biggest donor to her PAC, that type of involvement. So we really have kept an eye on that.

And we’ve studied the recent prison builds in Utah and Alabama and South Dakota and some in Kentucky, and it’s a 50-50 split. Alabama is full speed ahead, even though they’re almost triple their original budget. And then Utah, theirs is built and stands fancy and tall right outside of Salt Lake City, but they can’t staff it.

So I think what a lot of voters should actually ask their legislators is, do we need megaprisons in any form or fashion, first of all? And two, how practical of a model is that to move forward with?

One of the things that we want voters to look at in Arkansas, and we want people to realize when they talk to their legislators and have these conversations about public safety, I think, is that this isn’t going to fix the problem of crime. This is going to create more beds, which you just fill it with more people. There’s nothing on there to stop it.

But nationally, what we hope happens, number one is to get the story out as far and wide as we can, but two is that they’ll take a really close look at the options in lieu of megaprisons, [like] community policing.

For example, in Franklin County, the residents there passed a jail tax. They knew their jail needed an upgrade. It was an old building, it needed a lot of things. So they passed a tax and they did that, and now they’re able to take care of their inmates, they can give ’em the services that they need to give ’em. They’re not overcrowded. They can still hold some state inmates in transports and that sort of thing. So, it’s a working facility for exactly the size that we need it to be in Franklin County, and we did that as taxpayers.

So, community policing and community facilities and regional facilities make more sense in my mind — And this is me speaking personally, not necessarily on behalf of Gravel and Grit — But that is what the data says. The data says that there are other ways to solve these issues and to take care of the incarcerated that don’t involve billions of wasted tax dollars on something that’s surely to fail.

Mansa Musa:  Right. And Lauren, as we close out, you’ve done historical studies on prisons in Franklin County and New York, as well as other places. What do you think that, at the end of the day, what do you think is going to be the outcome of this situation as far as build, don’t build, find a backer, don’t find a backer?

Lauren Gill:  I honestly don’t know. And that’s one of the more interesting things about this story, is that everything has been so surprising along the way. I started reporting it in November, 2024, and it came out last month. So, obviously, that was a lot of time, and so much happened in that time, including the rise in opposition. And then you have the legislature voting against funding, and now you have even more opposition coming from the legislature as more details of the project leak out.

But again, the government is at play here, and the government is a powerful force. So yeah, I think it’ll be really interesting and important to see what ends up happening, especially knowing that so many people in Arkansas don’t want this prison.

Natalie Cadena:  So, the senator who represented this district from the very beginning, Sen. Gary Stubblefield, he grew up and still farmed about five miles away from where the prison is proposed to be built. He passed away in September, and so his senate seat is vacant. The governor announced that she wanted to have a special election to refill it in November of 2026, which would’ve left Franklin County without representation for 400 days, or more than.

So then she heard people screaming about that, so she said, OK, well, we’ll shorten it and we’ll make it in June of 2026, but that is still several weeks after the fiscal session. So that leaves the people of Franklin County, who probably have the most stake in anything going on in the state right now, without representation to vote.

So, that’s another piece to this puzzle. That’s another part of it that we’re having to fight. In fact, there’s a lawsuit that was just filed today. So, we will see what happens with those things, but that’s just the latest update and all of the things that’s going on there.

Mansa Musa:  Thank you, Lauren Gill and Natalie Cadena for rattling the bars today. How can our audience stay in touch with you?

Lauren Gill:  I’m on Bluesky.

Natalie Cadena:  So, we are all over social media, just about any platform that we can get our message out on, we exist. But our URL to visit our website is www.gravelandgrit.org.

Mansa Musa:  I really want to thank y’all for coming in and talking about this. We ask our audience to stay on top of this and look at this. This is going to be a lesson in two things: civic opposition to unpopular legislation and/or how the government continues to not represent the people that they was elected to represent and get this particular megaprison built. We want you to look at these stories and really evaluate ’em and weigh in on them. We ask that you continue to support The Real News and Rattling the Bars, because guess what? We actually are the real news.