Tucker State Farm

The Tucker Farm Unit of the Arkansas State Penitentiary, originally known as Tucker State Farm, is infamous in corrections history for its long-term pattern of prisoner abuse. Land for the farm was purchased by the state in 1916, although it was not until 1933 that the entire Arkansas penal system moved to the farm. Tucker covered some 4,500 acres, with about 3,000 acres devoted to farming. In addition to row crops and produce, inmates tended dairy and beef cows, which were used to feed the prison populations. About 275 men were held there. Like the rest of Southern society at the time, the farm was racially segregated. Tucker served as the facility for white convicts, while African Americans and “hardened” white convicts were held at Cummins Prison Farm. Segregation of inmates continued in the state into the early 1970s. Tucker also housed Death Row and the state's electric chair.

Tucker is known for its central role in Arkansas penal reform. The reform was mandated after a lengthy series of lawsuits and appeals during which prisoners graphically described the tortures they were subjected to at the hands of corrections officers. Perhaps the most infamous reports involved the “Tucker Telephone,” an antiquated hand-crank telephone from which wires were strung. Corrections officers would place the wires on a prisoner's body, including his genitalia. When the hand crank was activated, an electrical charge would shock the prisoner. Shocks were often administered until the victim was on the verge of passing out from the pain. This practice of torture continued through the 1960s. Prison physicians and state officials typically looked the other way or even concealed beating deaths by reporting false causes of death such as “malaria” or “unknown.” Worse yet, it was a Tucker State Farm physician who created the Tucker Telephone.

In 1965, Tucker State Farm officials were restricted from using corporal punishment by the decision in Talley v. Stephens, in which federal judge J. Smith Henley required that adequate safeguards be established for the convicts. The ruling prohibited prison officials from interfering with inmate access to the courts and also required that medical services for inmates be improved. In 1966, Governor Orval Faubus ordered an investigation into allegations of extortion, misuse of state property, and inmate drunkenness. Federal officials also joined in the investigations, which drew national attention.

Thomas Murton, superintendent of Tucker Farm, gave highly publicized tours of the facility to raise concern over abuses of prisoners. Murton led a crusade, campaigning for increased funding to counteract what he called “barbaric conditions” at the institution (Murton 1976). In the years that followed, the federal courts in Arkansas ruled three times that specific practices at the prison could be classified as “cruel and unusual punishment.” Ultimately, the entire Arkansas penal system was deemed unconstitutional, although that decision was reversed, after thirteen years of court battles, in 1982.

Although the farm is no longer in operation, the corrections facility still exists under the name “Tucker Unit.” As of 2000, the facility housed more than 750 inmates whose work included farming, building mattresses, and repairing and refurbishing buses, school furniture, and trucks.

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