Lawrence County’s jail is to be shut down next month. The Sun newspaper reports members of the Arkansas Jail Standards Committee went to the jail yesterday and was about to order the immediate shut down of the facility. After meeting with those officials, Lawrence County Judge Dale Freeman stated the county was given until September 17th to work on some of the many issues the jail has. Freeman says the jail is expected to close soon because it has failed inspections over the last ten years. Some of the many violations include small cell space, consistent overcrowding, and a lack of firefighting equipment. Freeman says the county will have to build a new jail or deliver their prisoners to other counties. A special Quorum Court meeting on the issue has been called for September 4th.
Johnathan Reaves is the News Director for KASU Public Radio. As part of an Air Force Family, he moved to Arkansas from Minot, North Dakota in 1986. He was first bitten by the radio bug after he graduated from Gosnell High School in 1992. While working on his undergraduate degree, he worked at KOSE, a small 1,000 watt AM commercial station in Osceola, Arkansas. Upon graduation from Arkansas State University in 1996 with a degree in Radio-Television Broadcast News, he decided that he wanted to stay in radio news. He moved to Stuttgart, Arkansas and worked for East Arkansas Broadcasters as news director and was there for 16 years.