Addressing Arkansas’ homeless population and tackling elements of criminal justice are two social issues expected to remain at center stage in the new year. New resources are slated to come online to help the chronically unhoused, while the Arkansas attorney general has beefed up resources to address some of the state’s most serious criminal issues.
Arguably the state’s most important social issue, the FBI’s annual list of statistics ranked the Natural State first among all 50 states and the District of Columbia in violent crime last summer. Arkansas registered 709 violent crimes per 100,000 residents in 2022 and also placed fifth in property crimes at 2,700 crimes per 100,000 residents in 2022.
It is not the first time Arkansas has been near the top of the heap of states when it comes to violent crime. In 2021, the state ranked fourth, and in 2022, the state ranked third in the country.
Nationally, violent and property crime rates have plummeted since 1980, but on two key measurements, the Natural State continues to flounder. The state’s murder rate increased 39 percent between 2012 and 2022, USA Facts states, which might explain why the state is one of 10 that saw the violent crime rate increase between 1991 and 2022. Arkansas’ violent crime rate increased about 9 percent during that time.
The state saw its property crime rate drop between 1991 and 2022 but at the seventh-lowest rate of reduction among the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin put his department into overdrive to set the tone going forward, championing several initiatives meant to bolster local law enforcement departments. Among those initiatives is an emphasis on solving cold cases.
Tim Griffin
“I consistently hear from constituents about cold cases involving friends or loved ones,” he said. “We have many top-notch law enforcement agencies throughout the state, but the reality is there is more need in the area of cold cases than there are resources to meet those needs, so last year, I created a cold case unit within my special investigations division to be a force multiplier throughout the state. My cold case unit is working with other law enforcement agencies to add expertise and resources to cut into the state’s overall cold case backlog.”
The Murder Accountability Project reported that between 1965 and 2022, Arkansas posted a 76 percent clearance rate in murder cases, 12th among the 50 states and nearly 10 percentage points higher than the national average. That still leaves more than 2,500 homicides unsolved, some stretching back decades.
There is no uniform measurement for when an open investigation is considered a cold case, although a common definition forwarded by the National Institute of Justice is “any case whose probative investigative leads have been exhausted.” Beyond that, standards vary widely by department
In some, time is a part of the criteria: Arkansas State Police specifies a “homicide or long-term missing person case that remains unsolved for two years or more after being reported to law enforcement and has no viable and unexplored investigatory leads” earns the “cold” tag. The ASP website currently lists almost 90 pending cold cases.
For other departments, the criteria is more hazy. The Little Rock Police Department defines cold cases, predominantly homicide or missing persons cases, as “those that generally cannot be linked to a suspect, has no remaining investigative leads, no additional physical evidence to collect and/or process, and, at the present time, does not yield forensic identification of a suspect.”
Departments also vary in terms of the personnel and resources allotted specifically to cold case investigations. Little Rock is fairly unique in the state for having a specific cold case unit, which was only established in 2017.
The attorney general’s new unit will assist departments statewide within its current budget, offering additional resources to help close pending cases, Griffin said.
“No one agency can do it all, and bringing the expertise and resources of my office to this effort is a good and right step to take,” he said. “Whether it is offering fresh perspectives on a case, providing access to new ways of examining evidence or making connections between law enforcement agencies that might not otherwise see an opportunity for collaboration, I am confident that my cold case unit’s work will lead to more justice being served and more peace of mind and healing for victims.”
Griffin’s other priority has been in combating organized criminal efforts.
“We work closely with law enforcement agencies at the local, state and federal levels to share intel about all types of criminal activity, particularly human trafficking and organized retail crime,” he said. “In 2023, I hosted a human trafficking summit that was attended by 1,500 people, including law enforcement officers, private industry representatives and victim advocates.
“They all left the summit with a better understanding of how to recognize the signs of human trafficking and what steps to take if they should see such signs. I have also provided other training opportunities for law enforcement on human trafficking.”
Nationally, Arkansas ranks middle of the pack among states when it comes to per capita cases of human trafficking. According to World Population Review, Arkansas had 74 cases reported in 2021 or 2.5 cases per 100,000 residents.
However, the state’s proximity to trafficking hotspots makes Arkansas a key transportation channel for traffickers, being situated between Mississippi (which has the highest per capita trafficking rate in the country at almost 8 cases per 100,000 individuals) and some of the cities with the highest incidence of trafficking in the United States. Of Money Inc.’s 20 worst cities for trafficking activity, five were within a seven-hour drive of Little Rock.
“Arkansas’s unique geographic placement at the intersection of several major interstates means that we have criminal activity happening on our roads every single day,” Griffin said. “I am committed to bringing these criminals to justice and making Arkansas roads a safer place to travel.”
Hand in hand with human trafficking is organized retail crime, a problem that does not always make the headlines but is a growing trend in the Natural State, Griffin said.
“Organized retail crime is a very real problem in our state,” he said. “Organized retail crime is most often carried out by criminal organizations targeting retail establishments to steal goods that can easily be resold. The revenue from these operations typically funds other types of criminal activity, such as drug trafficking, human trafficking and even murder.
“I am leading Arkansas’s efforts to address organized retail crime, and we have already seen a number of arrests as a result of our efforts.”
Another milestone to happen in the new year, Griffin said, is implementation of the Protect Arkansas Act, which puts teeth in sentencing.
“In 2023, I was a strong advocate for the Protect Act, which is already helping to ensure that violent criminals serve most, if not all, of their sentences, thereby making our communities safer,” he said. “In 2025, the Protect Act’s new sentencing rubric will be fully implemented, and we will finally put an end to a revolving-door policy for violent offenders.”
The state’s homeless issue, just as in many other places, continues to challenge elected officials. In December, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development reported 771,480 people experiencing homelessness in the U.S., up 18 percent from 2023, the highest ever on record. Arkansas was reported to have 2,800 homeless people at any given time, up by nearly 500 over 2020’s report but well below a peak of 4,214 individuals in 2012.
Little Rock has traditionally borne the brunt of the state’s homeless, at times with double the number of homeless individuals compared to other communities. That has prompted public projects such as Little Rock’s Micro Home Village and private-nonprofit efforts to innovate and step into the breach to provide shelter and services to this vulnerable population.
Providence Park in Little Rock is one eagerly awaited development and the first of its kind in Arkansas. As reported by Arkansas Money & Politics in September, the development will ultimately offer 400 tiny homes, as well as an on-site medical clinic, a community center with a convenience store, and a fabrication lab to help residents formulate ideas and create sustainable businesses.
“This year, we will see our master plan that we’ve been working on now for a few years come to fruition in the sense of vertical buildings being built in 2025,” said Errin Stanger, founder and CEO. “We will be prayerfully moving neighbors in and really begin lifting our chronically homeless off of the streets into their own homes in the fall of 2025. I’m really excited just to kind of get a chance to really implement all that we’ve been planning.”
Errin Stanger
Stanger has overcome a great many challenges to bring the project this far, including winning over public officials, securing land and, above all, raising money. She also continues to crack the code on introducing the concept to the people Providence Park is being built to serve. She said her marketing efforts have ranged from the decidedly analog — posting information at the city’s homeless shelters — to multimedia efforts.
“Jericho Way and the United Methodist Church and Canvas Community downtown, what the homeless lovingly call the Holy Highway, are places where we have gone in and just put things on a bulletin board,” Stanger said. “I’ve heard from people conducting street ministries who have sat with people and showed them the video we shot for Providence Park, and that showed them what they could be stepping into. We’ve tried to communicate in many different ways about what this will be, including face to face so that people who are in this environment will know that we care about helping them.”
As one of the newer players in a long line of providers, Stanger continues to learn how to fit into the continuum of services as her project finally starts to take physical shape.
“Looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, I am super excited about this focus,” she said. “This is an important issue, and we want to figure out a way that we can start to look at it a little differently. We represent, maybe, some new voices or some new minds at the table, and it’s amazing to bring Providence Park to that table alongside those who have been in it for so long and can lend us some wisdom that they have.”
One of those longtimers, The Van, is undergoing its own long-awaited next step. The longtime homeless advocacy nonprofit recently raised $125,000 to purchase a property that would be used as a permanent inclement weather shelter and thrift shop.
The project has been a long time in the making and looked to be coming to fruition when founder Aaron Reddin revealed on Jan. 3 a deal to buy a structure on Arch Street fell through just ahead of a blast of winter weather moving in. The city of Little Rock moved swiftly to partner with the organization, announcing Dunbar Community Center would become a temporary shelter to help people elude the frigid weather.
Aaron Reddin
While disappointed with the turn of events, Reddin’s focus on opening the permanent space at some point is unwavering. The issues to getting it open, however, highlights the challenges for such a project that goes beyond mere funding.
“We had a successful campaign through December where we raised over a quarter million dollars toward that effort, and right now, we’re bogged down in commercial real estate,” he said. “We’ve just got to have space for people to go. Our shelter system as a whole is not adequate for the need, and it’s by and large not even attainable for many people. We want to make sure that when this thing happens, that people have the opportunity to get in with zero barriers.”
Reddin said when most people think of serving the homeless, they automatically think of putting a roof over their heads, but the challenges are often far more nuanced. He said something as seemingly routine as getting a Social Security number or other form of identification often stops a person seeking services in their tracks.
“If you spend very much time on the streets, your odds of hanging on to those critical documents just becomes harder and harder,” he said. “Someone snags your backpack, you’re toast. Your stuff gets wet, you’re done. You leave your camp for a little bit and you didn’t have every single thing that you need on you at all times, you know, there’s no doors to lock things up behind.
“There are great services out there, but they’re not attainable if you don’t have the proper documentation. I have a 97-year-old woman on the streets right now who no one can identify. Getting her a proper state-issued ID is impossible. I’ve been trying to figure out how to ID this woman for 15 years, and I can’t do it, and that ID is needed for her to obtain services, housing, medical care — you know, all these things.”
Reddin said other things people do not realize are that shelters are not set up to take all comers. Having violent convictions on a criminal record, being a convicted sex offender or even something like using a wheelchair can seriously hamper people’s ability to gain access to a local shelter.
“If there’s a shelter in Arkansas that takes someone in a wheelchair, I’m unaware of it,” he said. “There’s also not a shelter in the state of Arkansas that I’m aware of that’ll take a sex offender. We have sex offenders who are absconded, they’re roaming the streets, when we’d much rather have them housed at an address where we knew where they were, yet we keep feeding the system that pushes people to the streets.
“I mean, my outlook overall is one of optimism. Providence Park is going to be a huge game changer for the people who find it attainable, but I also know that it’s not going to be attainable for everyone. That means we are going to still have work to do in our streets.”
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