Editor’s note: This article was part of our annual April Fools’ Day satirical news. It is not factual, and was written in good fun. If you can appreciate a joke, proceed with that in mind; if not, we invite you to read any and all of the thousands of factual articles that have been published to this website since 2021.
By EILEEN DOVER | Clark County Constitutional
ARKADELPHIA, Arkansas — More than 900 acres overlooking the Ouachita River could eventually become the site of a 5,000-bed state prison, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced at an unscheduled press conference Tuesday, April 1, 2025.
The announcement comes on the heels of highly publicized backlash surrounding state agencies’ secret plans to buy some 900 acres of Franklin County land to erect a 3,000-bed prison in the small Arkansas River Valley town of Charleston.
Making the announcement from the bed of a beat-down pickup truck, Sanders spoke through a bullhorn outside the fenced-in Tiger Statue on the campus of her alma mater, Ouachita Baptist University.
The governor said the state will be buying a large swath of river land between OBU’s campus and Caddo Valley. The new $4 billion prison, she added, will guarantee jobs for Clark County’s dwindling labor force and put Arkadelphia “back on the map.”
“This prison will ensure jobs for each of the 350-plus unemployed Clark Countians,” Sanders said, wearing her signature hot-pink dress and surrounded by an estimated three dozen state troopers, some of whom were called mid-conference to initiate a pit maneuver on a fleeing motorist who was circling the campus at a blistering 20 mph.
In a parallel move, the governor announced that OBU is in the beginning phases of creating a School of Prison Guards that would ensure a continuous flow of skilled and highly educated workforce to feed the prison’s staffing needs.
“We put a whole bunch of thought into this one,” Sanders said, winking at DOC Director Dexter Payne.
Payne then took the bullhorn to add he was fully aware that Arkadelphia was well within the 60-mile radius of the Ouachita River Correctional Facility in Malvern.
“Building two prisons within a short distance of one another may seem like a bad idea, but it’s really not,” Payne said. “There’s a McDonald’s and a Subway in both cities, and those establishments do just fine — who’s to say prisons shouldn’t be more competitive? There should be at least one state prison in every Arkansas community.”
As the press conference drew to a close and the governor took questions from the media, reporters from The Arkansas Times and South Arkansas Reckoning began clamoring over who would take credit for breaking the story first.
Discover more from
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
