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48-462: The Cummins Unit (formerly known as Cummins State Farm ) is an Arkansas Department of Corrections prison in unincorporated Lincoln County, Arkansas , United States, in the Arkansas Delta region. It is located along U.S. Route 65 , near Grady , Gould , and Varner , 28 miles (45 km) south of Pine Bluff , and 60 miles (97 km) southeast of Little Rock . This prison farm

96-580: A cemetery for the poor. However, as Time noted in February 1968, the cemetery in question was over a mile away from where Murton found the bodies, at least one of which was positively identified as prisoner Joe Jackson, buried by Reuben Johnson on Christmas Eve, 1946. The skeletons were turned over to another arm of state government, the University of Arkansas Medical Center . At the time, Governor Rockefeller stated his intention to withhold details of

144-538: A correctional administrator was over. In 1969 he founded the Murton Foundation for Criminal Justice, incorporated in Alaska in 1969. He served as its president from 1969 to at least 1985. In 1982, Murton shared with students in a criminal justice graduate seminar course at the University of Central Oklahoma that he was "blackballed" by the "correctional community". To make a living, he started and maintained

192-469: A duck farm north of Oklahoma City, where he lived until his death. Dr. William Parker, then department chair over the criminal justice program and subsequently the assistant dean, invited Murton to teach at the University of Central Oklahoma in the mid-1980s. He returned to academia for the next several years, including a short stint teaching criminology and corrections at Oklahoma State University in

240-622: A healthy prisoner was permitted to sell his blood once weekly. Trustees were allowed to leave and re-enter the prison without undergoing searches, so trustees smuggled in alcohol, illegal drugs, and weapons; they then sold those items within the prison. Trustees usually bought these items from one another, since they had large amounts of money. Non-trustees, including "do-pops" and "rankers", had to pay trustees in order to get food, medicine, access to medical staff, access to outsiders, and protection from arbitrary prison punishments. Therefore non-trustees did not have large reserves of money. Education in

288-452: A housing unit for prisoners. The building had eight units. In the past, one was reserved for white trustees, one for black trustees, and others for other prisoners. The housing units were racially segregated . There was a separate unit for female prisoners. The prison includes the "Free Line", the prison residences for free world employees, including the warden, several prison officials, and their families; prisoners work as house servants in

336-460: A penologist, Murton attained a bachelor's degree in animal husbandry from Oklahoma State University in 1950. He earned a degree in mathematics at Fairbanks, Alaska between 1957 and 1958 with benefits under the GI bill. He enrolled in the University of California, Berkeley in 1964 and completed a Master of Arts Degree in criminology and satisfied residency requirements for a doctorate in 1966. After he

384-540: A song which described the incident, on his album Bobby Darin Born Walden Robert Cassotto . Some of its lyrics were: "There's a farm in Arkansas, got some secrets in its floor, in decay, in decay. You can tell where they're at, nothing grows, the ground is flat, where they lay, where they lay." It also includes the line "This kind of thing can't happen here, especially not in election year." Darin

432-477: A wooden structure behind a chicken wire fence, which had barbed wire on top. A trusty shooter manned the main entrance. In past eras, the prison housed a commissary and did not house educational facilities, prison factories, or medical and dental clinics. The Cummins Unit has an electric fence . The Cummins/Varner Volunteer Fire Department provides fire services to the Cummins Unit property. The station

480-549: Is a 16,500-acre (6,700 ha) correctional facility. The prison first opened in 1902 and has a capacity of 1,725 inmates. Cummins housed Arkansas's male death row until 1986, when it was transferred first to the Tucker Maximum Security Unit . The State of Arkansas execution chamber is located in the Cummins Unit, adjacent to the location of the male death row, the Varner Unit . The female death row

528-653: Is a promising and helpful program at Tucker , it is still minimal. It is located partially in Auburn Township, and partially in Choctaw Township. Cummins has about 16,500 acres (6,700 ha) of land. Prisoners working the fields are part of the Hoe Squad, and prisoners who refuse work are taken to solitary confinement . A white building is and has been referred to the past as the prison's "barracks". The " telephone-pole " style structure serves as

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576-563: Is inside the Cummins Unit property, along Arkansas Highway 388 . In fiscal year 2010 the Arkansas Department of Correction spent $ 81,691 on the fire station. As of 2006, the Cummins Unit has the largest farming operation in the Arkansas Department of Correction system. At Cummins, over 16,000 acres (6,500 ha) of land is devoted to production of crops and farm goods, including cash crops , hay, livestock, and vegetables. As of 2001 prisoners harvested corn, cotton, and rice from

624-554: Is located at the McPherson Unit . Cummins is one of the State of Arkansas's "parent units" for male prisoners; it serves as one of several units of initial assignment for processed male prisoners. In 1902 the State of Arkansas purchased about 10,000 acres (4,000 ha) of land for $ 140,000 ($ 4,930,000 when adjusted for inflation) to build the Cummins Unit. The prison was established during that year, and prisoners began occupying

672-592: The Tucker State Prison Farm and Cummins State Prison Farm . The farms used over a thousand inmates as forced labor to produce profits which annually "averaged about $ 1,400,000 over the years...". In 1967, Arkansas inaugurated a new governor to follow Orval Faubus , who had held that office for twelve years (six terms). State Governor Winthrop Rockefeller released a report on the state prison system which had been ordered and then suppressed by Faubus. The 67-page report detailed horrific conditions at

720-523: The University of Minnesota . In 1980, he left full-time teaching and returned to farming, raising wheat and ducks on his mother's farm in Deer Creek, Oklahoma . He occasionally taught courses in Corrections in the early to mid-1980s as an adjunct professor at San Jose State University and Chaminade University of Honolulu , which were affiliated at the time in their Criminal Justice programs. He

768-608: The 1960s. He was teaching at Southern Illinois University when he was hired to reform the Arkansas prison system in 1968. He wrote about his experiences there (with co-author Joe Hyams ) in Accomplices to the Crime: The Arkansas Prison Scandal, published in 1969 by Grove Press . He was unable to find work in the correctional industry after that, and believed he had been blackballed for his work in Arkansas. From 1971 to 1979, he taught at

816-539: The Arkansas State Farm for Women to Cummins. On September 5, 1966, riots occurred at Cummins and 144 prisoners attempted a strike. Arkansas State Police ended the strike with tear gas . In 1970 some prisoners asking for segregated housing started a riot, leading to an intervention by state police. In 1969 Johnny Cash performed at a concert in Cummins Unit. He donated his own money so a chapel could be built there. In 1972 Arkansas's first prison rodeo

864-669: The Cummins Unit began in 1968, when the Gould School District started a night program. In the 1960s, ethnographer Bruce Jackson began taking photographs of prisoners in Texas for his research on African-American work songs in prison. Jackson had become friends with the assistant warden of Ramsey prison farm at the time, T. Don Hutto. When Hutto became Arkansas commissioner of corrections in 1971, their friendship provided Jackson with access to prisoners resulting in numerous publications. In 2010, Jackson's photo collection from

912-540: The Cummins Unit to the Varner Unit . In 2000 Arkansas's first lethal electrified fence , built with inmate labor, opened at the Cummins Unit. A tornado affected the Cummins Unit facility in May 2011. It damaged the dairy facility, the chicken and swine houses, and the employee housing in the Free Line area. The tornado destroyed the prison's three green houses. It also turned over a center pivot irrigation system. In 2020

960-555: The Cummins Unit under conditions rising to the level of unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment , in cases tried by the US District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, among others. Certain characteristics of the Arkansas prison system serve to distinguish it from most other penal institutions in this country. First, it has very few paid employees; armed trusties ["trusted" inmates, according to

1008-870: The Cummins Unit was exhibited at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York and at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Arkansas Department of Corrections Too Many Requests If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.236 via cp1112 cp1112, Varnish XID 972348985 Upstream caches: cp1112 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Thu, 28 Nov 2024 10:58:34 GMT Tom Murton Tom Murton

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1056-533: The Free Line. Children (dependents of correctional staff) living on the prison property are zoned to the Dumas School District . The prison property was formerly within the Gould School District . On July 1, 2004, the Gould School District was merged into the Dumas district. In the past the main entrance to the prison was at the terminus of a road off of the main highway. The main gate consisted of

1104-415: The bodies were exhumed, he was told he had twenty-four hours to get out of the state, or be arrested for grave-robbing—a charge with a sentence of twenty-one years, under Arkansas law at that time. He left. Murton was dismissed in early spring 1968, less than a year after his 1967 hire. Governor Rockefeller claimed that Murton's excavations had become a "sideshow". The governor halted the excavations after

1152-414: The death penalty, he dismantled the electric chair at Cummins. He also opposed life sentences. "When you sentence a man to life in prison, with no chance of getting out, he's going to die one day at a time because he knows he's doomed to walk the halls of purgatory for as long as he's alive," he once told an interviewer. Murton had helped establish the correctional system of the new state of Alaska during

1200-401: The farm were the remains of inmates who had been subjected to torture, prompting a publicized investigation which found "a prison hospital served as torture chamber and a doctor as chief tormentor." The revelations included allegations of electrical devices connected to the genitalia of inmates. The Arkansas State Penitentiary System at that time had already been found to have held inmates at

1248-543: The fields and were supervised by prison guards mounted on horses. Cummins previously housed the Special Management Barracks, a unit for prisoners with counseling and mental health requirements. In 2008 it moved to the Randall L. Williams Correctional Facility . Prisoners at Cummins attend the correctional school system. In the past, each prisoner worked for 10 hours per day, six days per week in

1296-433: The fields. Prisoners were only excused if the outside temperature was below freezing. Some prisoners who were sent to the fields lacked shoes. Prisoners did not have fixed quotas. Instead they were told to do as much work as possible. Prisoners deemed to be not doing enough work were beaten. Trustee prisoners had authority over other prisoners. At night, all except for two of the free world prison guards left, so trustees kept

1344-496: The first professional penologist the state of Arkansas had ever hired as a warden. In early February 1968, Murton ordered excavations on the grounds of the Cummins prison farm. Three bodies were uncovered before the excavation was halted, although 15 to 25 depressions were clearly visible. Murton's inmate informant told him that as many as 200 bodies had been buried there; also, the number of prisoners listed as "escapees" since 1915

1392-581: The first three bodies were found. The official report by the Rockefeller administration, written by the Arkansas state police, took the position that the bodies must have been from the paupers' cemetery —although the cemetery was a mile away from where the bodies were located. Murton's book about the scandalous conditions was released the next year, 1969, and the Redford movie was released eleven years later, in 1980 (see Brubaker ). Murton's career as

1440-414: The investigation from the public until the Arkansas state police issued a report of their findings, incorporating the university's results. Rockefeller was quoted nationwide when he said that there could be no point in "washing dirty linen for weeks on end as each body is dug up". Murton's agitation eventually disrupted the Rockefeller administration to the extent that not only was he fired two months after

1488-574: The last word in torture devices: the " Tucker telephone ," an instrument used to send an electric current through genitals. In 1967, along with releasing the Faubus report, Rockefeller sought to reform the system by bringing in Murton, who had made his reputation by helping establish the Alaskan correctional system after that territory achieved statehood in 1959. Murton, then 39 years old, was chosen to be

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1536-401: The mid-1980s. Murton continued to maintain his duck farm until his death in late 1990. The book written by Murton and Hyams was published in 1969. In 1980, a fictionalized film treatment starring Robert Redford as "Warden Henry Brubaker" was released to wide acclaim, earning an Oscar nomination. Although the dramatic opening of the film, in which Brubaker impersonates an inmate in order to see

1584-426: The order at night. Some inmates, referred to as "crawlers" and "creepers", stabbed sleeping prisoners. Male on male rape frequently occurred in the housing units. The prison did not ask trustees to intervene in case of rape, and guards rarely intervened. Prisoners did not receive payment for working in the fields. In order to buy items from the commissary, some prisoners worked there. Other prisoners sold their blood;

1632-433: The order during the night. Prisoners who were not trustees were sub-ranked as "do-pops" and "rankers". In past eras, trustee prisoners were responsible for the prison's perimeter security. During the day, the prison barracks were empty since most prisoners worked on the fields. At night, the two free world employees patrolled the central corridor but did not venture into the barrack units. The trustees, armed with knives, kept

1680-484: The prison was affected in the COVID-19 pandemic in Arkansas . According to correctional staff, the administration initially did not wish for correctional staff to wear masks to avoid frightening prisoners. As of April 25, 2020, 33 correctional employees and 800 prisoners had COVID-19. As of 15 June 2020 11 Cummins prisoners had died from COVID-19. In 1968, Tom Murton alleged that three human skeletons found on

1728-536: The site in December. The prison occupied the former Cummins and Maple Grove plantations. Both had been used for growing cotton . Then- Governor of Arkansas Jeff Davis wanted the state to buy a farm in Jefferson County owned by Louis Altheimer, a Republican Party leader who was Davis's friend. When the legislature instead purchased the land for Cummins, Davis put up political opposition, trying to force

1776-466: The source] guard rank and file inmates and trusties perform other tasks usually and more properly performed by civilian or "free world" personnel. Second, convicts not in isolation are confined when not working, and are required to sleep at night in open dormitory type barracks in which rows of beds are arranged side by side; there are large numbers of men in each barracks. Third, there is no meaningful program of rehabilitation whatever at Cummins; while there

1824-675: The state to cancel the purchase. In 1933 Governor Junius Marion Futrell closed the Arkansas State Penitentiary ("The Walls"), and some prisoners moved to Cummins from the former penitentiary. Since the establishment of the prison, it had housed African-American men and women. Beginning in 1936, white male prisoners with disciplinary problems were housed at Cummins. As of 1958, most prisoners worked in farming, producing cotton, livestock, and vegetables. The prison, during that year, housed clothing and lumber manufacturing facilities. In 1951 white female prisoners were moved from

1872-449: The system literally "from inside" before taking up the warden's post, was a fabrication, much of the movie's drama was taken directly from the book. The fabricated prisoner-impersonation device may have been inspired by Thomas Mott Osborne , a former warden at Sing Sing , who had had himself committed to Auburn Penitentiary in 1913 under an assumed name. In 1968, the popular singer Bobby Darin wrote and recorded " Long Line Rider ",

1920-414: The two state penal farms, including endemic sexual assault, electrical torture, flogging, beatings with blackjacks and hoses, extortion of money from other inmates by the armed prisoners who were working as " trusty " guards (due to the absence of a salaried guard force), open marketing of illegal drugs and alcohol, and a host of other malicious and criminal practices. Particularly ironic, as well as harsh,

1968-401: Was backed up by at least one other inmate, James Wilson. Wilson also asserted that returning escapees were routinely murdered. The Rockefeller administration, though not directly implicated in crimes which took place before 1967, was deeply embarrassed by the national attention drawn to the brutality Murton revealed. Claims were made that the bodies must have been from a nearby potters field ,

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2016-484: Was born in 1928. His parents were E.T. Murton and Bessie Glass Stevens. He was married to Margaret E. Conway and had four children, Marquita (Marquita Schendel), Teresa (Teresa Kress), Melanie (Melanie Sandstrom) and Mark Murton. Murton died of cancer at the age of 62 on October 10, 1990, at a Veterans Affairs Hospital in Oklahoma City. Both of his parents and the four children survived him. Before his career as

2064-491: Was dismissed from the Arkansas correctional system in 1968, he completed a doctoral degree in criminology at the University of California, Berkeley. According to his obituary in The New York Times , Mr. Murton's ideas on prison reform included treating prisoners with respect, abolishing corporal punishment, providing better food and rooting out extortion and other rackets among the inmates. Vehemently opposed to

2112-406: Was due to perform the song on The Jackie Gleason Show , but when they ordered him to cut that particular line, rather than censor himself, he walked off the set. "Prisons, mental hospitals, and other institutions are a thermometer that measures the sickness of the larger society. The treatment society affords its outcasts reveals the way in which its members view one another—and themselves."—From

2160-689: Was held at the Cummins Unit. In 1974 death row inmates, previously at the Tucker Unit , were moved to the Cummins Unit. In 1976 female inmates were moved from the Cummins Unit to the Pine Bluff Unit . In 1978 a new execution chamber opened at Cummins Unit. In 1983 the Cummins Modular Unit opened. In 1986 death row inmates were moved to the Maximum Security Unit . In 1991 the vocational technology program moved from

2208-544: Was professor of sociology, Oklahoma State University, in 1985. He died in Deer Creek in 1990. In 1976, he wrote his second book on penal reform, The Dilemma of Prison Reform, published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston . He self-published a third book, Crime and Punishment in Arkansas – Adventures in Wonderland in 1985, published in Stillwater, Oklahoma. In the 1960s, Arkansas maintained two large prison farms :

2256-464: Was reported as "more than 200". According to the informant, Reuben Johnson, most of the men had been killed after refusing extortion demands from the "trusty" guards. Their deaths were either falsely recorded as successful escapes, or recorded as deaths, but under false pretenses. Johnson, a lifer, gave details of murders and burials on the prison grounds dating back for decades, including a mass murder of about 20 inmates around Labor Day of 1940. Johnson

2304-477: Was the poor quality and quantity of food given to the prisoners—on a farm which marketed enough produce and dairy products to produce profits that were averaging $ 1.4 million (US) in 1960s dollars (more than $ 12,790,000 in current dollars). In his own later writings about Tucker, Murton noted the cruelty of the "trustees": Discipline was routinely enforced by flogging, beating with clubs, inserting of needles under fingernails, crushing of testicles with pliers, and

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