ArkansasPerspective

LITTLE ROCK Apologizing to lawmakers in 1995 for being slow to explain allegations of corruption, contraband and bribery, Correction Director Larry Norris said "a penitentiary system is a problem business."

By that standard, business is booming for Arkansas' prisons.

An inmate nearly died after being left covered in his own excrement for a weekend. Two convicted murderers escape a state prison by wearing guard uniforms made at the same site. Officers at another unit fatally shoot a man who officials say fled from a contraband checkpoint. Guards apparently receive lap dances from a prison nurse while on the job.

Following a recent spate of problems that have cropped up under his watch as prisons chief, Norris heads before a legislative panel in the coming week to offer an explanation to lawmakers.

Instead of facing heat as he's going in, he's getting validation.

The governor says he has full faith in Norris and isn't calling for his firing. Members of a legislative oversight panel are praising the veteran prison chief's leadership of the correction system.

"Ultimately, the boss is Larry Norris, but still, he can't be at all the prisons," Gov. Mike Beebe said last week.

The seven-member board that oversee prisons handles the hiring and firing of the prison director, but so far there hasn't been any effort by them to push Norris out over the recent scandals.

Judging from the comments from the Legislative Council's prisons subcommittee, Norris won't face much heat from them when he appears on Tuesday.

Lawmakers sitting on the panel say they want answers about the spate of problems, which began last month when convicted murderers Calvin Adams and Jeffrey Grinder escaped from the Cummins Unit wearing uniforms made at the prison. The two killers were caught in New York, and the department has since fired six employees in connection with the escape.

"Any one incident is always a cause for concern," said Sen. Jim Luker, D-Wynne, the subcommittee's vice chairman. "I don't know that you can extrapolate that into some overriding problem with the administration of the system."

Part of what is keeping heat off Norris is his history with the prison system. Norris became director under then-Gov. Jim Guy Tucker in 1993. He's kept that post under Republican and Democratic administrations, overseeing the agency's more than 3,700 employees and roughly 20 facilities.

Sen. Percy Malone, who sits on the panel, says he thinks Norris' background gives lawmakers some comfort when they see problems occurring with the prison system.

"I think he does come to the group with some credibility. He has that going for him when he walks into a room," said Malone, D-Arkadelphia. "I don't think he gets a free pass, though."

Smelling a potential vulnerability in Beebe's loyalty to Norris' leadership, Republicans are seizing on the recent scandals as a potential issue ahead of next year's campaign. Former congressman Asa Hutchinson, who lost to Beebe in the 2006 gubernatorial election, has said he thinks an outside investigation should be conducted of the prison system's problems. Beebe backs an internal probe.

"There's a reason you have change in government from time to time," Hutchinson said.

It's unclear whether the push for an outside look at the prison system will gain much traction. Lawmakers, too, say they're comfortable with internal investigations being conducted by state police and the Correction Department.

Beebe doesn't seem ready to show Norris the door anytime soon, but that could change if more problems arise among the state's prison system.

For his part, Norris may be preparing to offer lawmakers a reprise of the apology he offered in 1995, when he appeared before them to discuss a breach in the prison security system. Even though he apologized, Norris told lawmakers there's little he can do to stop all problems in the state's prison system.

"I don't care who's running it, you're going to have troubles," Norris said then. "We're going to fix them when we find out about them."

DeMillo covers Arkansas government and politics for The Associated Press.