CRAIGHEAD COUNTY, AR — (BrooklandNews.com) — Jul. 8, 2026 — A dispute between the Craighead County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office and District Judge Tommy Fowler over who has authority to change a defendant’s bond traces back to a jail overcrowding problem voters had a chance to fix two years ago and did not.

NEA Report first reported in late June that deputy prosecutors in the Second Judicial District had been emailing jail staff directly to lower bonds without a judge’s signature, a violation of the Arkansas Rules of Criminal Procedure. The outlet’s reporting centered on defendant Robert Sanders, whose $250,000 bond was cut to $150,000 by a deputy prosecutor after Fowler had already set the amount in court. Records obtained through a public records request showed the practice was not isolated, with the same prosecutor modifying bonds for numerous defendants throughout June, including one request covering 31 people at once.

Prosecuting Attorney Sonia Hagood confirmed the practice to NEA Report, saying it had likely gone on for a decade or more under training passed down from previous administrations. She said the practice stopped once Fowler raised it in open court and that future bond changes will require a judge’s signature. Hagood defended the reasoning behind it, telling the outlet, “that jail tax didn’t pass, so we’re not getting more jail beds,” and that the bond arrangement was the tradeoff the county has had to make. Deputy prosecutors have since stopped attending Fowler’s bond hearings.

Sheriff Marty Boyd told Jonesboro Right Now this week that the arrangement grew out of necessity rather than misconduct. His office has long flagged non-violent, pretrial detainees to judges and prosecutors as candidates for reduced bonds, an alternative, he said, to releasing people on their own recognizance with no financial incentive to return to court. “We can’t allow it to be a revolving door,” Boyd said. He added that his office will not be investigating past bond practices and is instead working with Hagood on a new process requiring a signed judicial order before any bond change or release.

The overcrowding at the center of the dispute is not new. Boyd appeared before the Brookland City Council in August 2024 to make the case for a half-cent, eight-year sunset sales tax that would have funded a new Craighead County detention center. At the time, he told the council the current jail was built 35 years ago for 160 inmates, while the county was booking closer to 450 on an average day. That overcrowding had already pushed the jail to felony-only status, meaning misdemeanor offenders, even those a judge ordered held, often had nowhere to go.

“I think 100% this is a public safety issue,” Boyd told the council, estimating the tax would cost the average Craighead County household about $10 a month. He said a new facility built for roughly 750 beds would run cheaper long-term than renovating and expanding the existing building, which would still require new infrastructure and a significant staffing increase.

Voters rejected the measure that November. The county’s inmate population has continued climbing since, and the sheriff’s office has had to send inmates to other counties’ jails during repairs for lack of space to hold them.

Neither Boyd nor Hagood has said whether another jail funding measure will go before voters again.