Inmates selected to participate in a Netflix series filmed in the Pulaski County jail received doubled visitation time and payments to their commissary accounts totaling $75, with the money coming from the production company, correspondence released by the sheriff's office Thursday indicates.
The perks detailed in the records, released in response to a request by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette under the state Freedom of Information Act, differ from what sheriff's office spokeswoman Kristin Knox described in a statement last month in response to questions from the newspaper.
In the March 19 statement, Knox said inmates who participated in the show were not compensated monetarily but were given free phone time and items from the jail's commissary, including headphones, footwear and pillows.
The statement did not mention the increased visitation time or $75 in payments to inmates' commissary accounts.
Knox on Thursday night said she wasn't sure of the reason for the discrepancy.
Inmates selected to participate in the program, which was filmed between Feb. 18 and April 10, 2023, received benefits that the producers for Lucky 8 TV Inc., wanted to give the inmates after the experiment showed promise in its latter weeks, Knox said Thursday.
The producers approached Pulaski County Sheriff Eric Higgins and Chief Deputy Charles Hendricks about the perks, and they agreed, Knox said.
Starting on March 14, 2023, the inmates in the cell block were able to receive phone calls for free until the end of the filming, according to a March 10 email from Hendricks to an employee of Correct Solutions Group, a company that handles telecommunications for detention facilities.
Lucky 8 would cover the costs of the calls at the end of the production, Hendricks told the employee in the email.
On March 20, participating inmates began receiving weekly payments of $25 to their commissary account for three weeks, totalling $75, a memo from a sheriff's office lieutenant showed. On March 27, inmates were eligible for two visits from loved ones per week instead of the usual one.
"Please use this increased time to reconnect with your loved ones on the outside," the memo states. "You can use your free phone time to plan these upcoming visits."
Additionally, the inmates were allowed to purchase certain items usually only available to Tier 1 inmates, the classification used for the best-behaved inmates in the jail, Knox said. Especially well-behaved inmates could also receive free commissary items on top of the payments, she said.
None of the participating inmates were in Tier 1 at the start of filming, Knox said previously.
Also Thursday, Higgins submitted a report and related documents in response to an inquiry by the Quorum Court last week into the filming, although authorities declined to release the documents Thursday evening.
Higgins provided answers to 40 questions, along with some documents related to the answers, on Thursday afternoon, county spokeswoman LaTresha Woodruff said around 5 p.m. Thursday.
County staff would need to review, copy and possibly redact portions of Higgins's response before it could be released to media, she said, which would take until sometime Friday.
Higgins was responding to a requirement outlined in an emergency ordinance passed by the Pulaski County Quorum Court on March 26 and signed by County Judge Barry Hyde.
The ordinance gave Higgins five business days to provide further information about a show filmed in the county jail for Netflix in 2023.
A courier delivered a box of documents to the county officials around 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Knox said. She wasn't able to provide Higgins's answers or the documents Thursday because she never had access to them, she said.
Higgins sent his response by courier because that's how Hyde delivered the signed copy of the ordinance requesting the report last week, Knox said.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette filed requests under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act for the report and related documents with both the county and the sheriff's office around 5:30 p.m. Thursday after it became clear that neither entity would provide the report Thursday evening.
Hyde has maintained that Higgins exceeded his authority as sheriff when he signed an agreement with Lucky 8 TV, which produced the show, without approval from Hyde, making the contract illegal.
Higgins has said he didn't consider the filming agreement to be a contract, a position Hyde has dismissed as absurd.
The show, which is set to premiere on Netflix on Wednesday under the title "Unlocked: A Jail Experiment," purports to show the results of a six-week experiment in one cellblock that the trailer said featured "no locks and no officers."
The emails and memos released Thursday by the sheriff's office revealed a few more details on the production and the work that came after filming officially wrapped on April 10, 2023.
A receipt included with the released documents indicated that Lucky 8 paid the sheriff's office $60,000 by check on March 27, and that the check was sent on to the county comptroller the next day.
Higgins said previously that the only compensation paid to his office for the show was a payment of $1,000 per day of filming to offset the costs of the show, and that the money from Lucky 8 would be turned over to the county's general fund.
The filming of the show ran from Feb. 18 to April 10, 2023, Knox has said previously, a period of 52 days. The emails released Thursday indicated that the film crew returned to the jail at least five more days that year -- Aug. 29-31, Oct. 20 and Dec. 13 -- to shoot further footage.
It wasn't clear from the emails or the receipt how the $60,000 amount was arrived at.
On those five dates, the film crew shot further interviews with Higgins and wanted to shoot more footage in the cellblock where the show took place, get footage of an empty solitary confinement cell, film in the cellblock used for the jail's work-release program and film an interview with one inmate from the show who was still being held in the jail, the emails indicate.
The footage of the solitary cell was for use in a segment in which an inmate is punished by being placed in solitary, the showrunners state in the emails.
Additionally, they wanted to shoot a segment depicting Higgins going into another cellblock "as if he is going to also roll the program out there," Jeanne Begley with Lucky 8 wrote in one email.
Higgins in a March interview with the Democrat-Gazette said he planned to continue the methods featured in the show, which involve moving the deputy posted in the cellblock to an outside room where the cellblock can be monitored and unlocking the cell doors to allow inmates more freedom during the day, to other cellblocks, although not all of them.
In fact, he said, even before the cellblock featured in the show was converted to run this way, there were at least two cellblocks run in this manner, older blocks that do not have cell doors and are intended for well-behaving inmates.
Last month, Knox confirmed that the producers paid a pair of deputies $40 an hour to provide "additional security" while the show was being filmed.
The deputies performed the work off-duty were paid by Lucky 8 before the $60,000 check came in, Knox said previously.
Emails from Lucky 8 scheduling the additional filming dates make reference to security details, but it wasn't clear if this involved more off-duty work.
The released emails do not include any of the original attachments, and it also wasn't clear from the emails when Lucky 8 first reached out to Higgins to pitch the concept of the show, as he said previously that they did.
The earliest email provided is dated Dec. 22, 2021, and is from Greg Henry, a co-president at Lucky 8, who was sending Higgins a draft version of the filming agreement, which Higgins forwarded to County Attorney Adam Fogleman six days later.
Fogleman has said that after Higgins presented the idea for the show to the county in 2021, the county provided revised contract terms which Lucky 8 never responded to.
Hyde and Fogleman assumed the matter was over, they said, and were not aware that Higgins signed an agreement with Lucky 8 on Aug. 15, 2022, until the trailer for the show was released last month.