KUAR | By Josie Lenora
Most people in the Franklin County city of Charleston learned a prison was coming to town the same way: they heard it on the radio.
In an interview with KDYN radio host Marc Dietz, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she's fed up with the current state of prisons. There are too many inmates, and not enough space to hold them. Arkansas needs a new prison, and to hear the governor tell it, the land in Charleston is the best the state could ask for.
“So instead of letting people free, we can put them in this facility and make sure our state and our communities are infinitely safer,” she said.
This prison will have 3,000 beds in a town with less than 3,000 people.
Josie Lenora/Little Rock Public Radio
A gate sits at the entrance to the 815-acre site in Charleston where Arkansas officials are planning to build a new, 3,000-bed prison.