Signs of opposition to the Franklin County prison decorated the fence directly across the street from the prison site’s entrance on Arkansas Highway 215 on Nov. 13, 2025. (Photo by Ainsley Platt/Arkansas Advocate)
If Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders needed a sign that Franklin County doesn’t want a 3,000-bed prison, it wouldn’t be hard to find.
Signs declaring opposition to the prison’s construction line fences and mailboxes along Arkansas 215 as the two-lane road cuts a sloping path through the rugged terrain of the Ouachita Mountains, just south of the Arkansas River.
But Sanders and prison supporters say the state desperately needs more prison beds. Almost all of the state’s facilities are at or above 100% capacity, according to the latest Department of Corrections population report. Some of the state’s highest-capacity units are more than 100 years old, while many others were built in the 1980s and ’90s…