Skeptical Arkansas lawmakers seemed unwilling to accept Thursday that the escape of a convicted murderer and rapist was the fault of only two prison employees.
Members of the Charitable, Penal, and Correctional Institutions subcommittee grilled corrections officials and Arkansas State Police leaders for more than three hours about the May 25 escape of Grant Hardin, who was serving nearly 80 years at the North Central Unit at Calico Rock.
Hardin, 56, had no disciplinary record and was working in the prison kitchen at the time of his escape on a Sunday during inmate visitation hours. The kitchen employee responsible for supervising prisoners allowed Hardin to go onto the facility’s rear loading dock unsupervised, in violation of prison policy, Board of Corrections Chairman Benny Magness told the panel.
Grant Hardin (Arkansas Department of Corrections photo)
Calico Rock Warden Thomas Hurst told legislators that Hardin, disguised in a makeshift guard uniform, was on the dock for more than an hour before the inmate walked to the prison’s sally port, where a guard in a tower let him through without verifying his identity or challenging him — also a policy violation. A sally port is a secure entry-exit with two gates that are not supposed to open at the same time.
“If any one of them had said ‘no,’ Mr. Hardin wouldn’t have got out,” Magness told the Arkansas Legislative Council subcommittee.
Prison employees had recently been updated on those policies and specifically told not to let inmates onto the loading dock without supervision. The kitchen supervisor was busy at the time, but should have called his supervisor and asked to have someone sent to watch over Hardin, Hurst and Magness said.
Both employees have been dismissed, but had not been interviewed beyond being asked how they let Hardin escape, Hurst said.
Rep. Ryan Rose, R-Van Buren, found it incredulous that no one has interviewed the two individuals or tried to determine whether other inmates had been allowed to remain unsupervised on the dock or others allowed to go through the gate without being challenged.
Other lawmakers questioned Magness, Hurst and Division of Correction Director Dexter Payne about whether the policy violations were endemic.
Hurst replied that the employees simply became complacent and that prison officials are working on keeping staff vigilant. He also said prison policy has changed to ensure no inmates are allowed onto the loading dock.
Arkansas Board of Corrections Chairman Benny Magness discusses the escape of an inmate during a legislative meeting on July 10, 2025. (Antoinette Grajeda/Arkansas Advocate)
Magness said prison officials are also looking at installing some sort of electronic system that would alert a higher ranking officer whenever the gates are opened.
Subcommittee chairman Sen. Matt Mckee, R-Pearcy, said the problems go beyond complacency and likely extend to how the Corrections Department classifies prisoners for placement.
McKee and other lawmakers focused on whether Hardin should have been serving his sentence in a more secure prison. Calico Rock is a medium-security prison but does house some more serious felons.
“You misclassified him on the murder, and his reclassification after the rape wasn’t communicated to the prison. He shouldn’t have been in that facility. I think we’ve got major issues I think need to be dealt with,” McKee told Magness.
Before his 2017 murder conviction, Hardin had been a police officer in the 1990s, an elected constable in Benton County and police chief of Gateway, a small town on the Missouri stateline, in 2016. He was working as a guard in a women’s prison in Northwest Arkansas in 2017 when he was arrested for shooting and killing a man in Gateway. He was sentenced to 30 years for the killing.
After he pleaded guilty to that murder, Hardin’s DNA was linked to a 20-year-old cold case from Benton County: the rape of a teacher at a Rogers elementary school in November 1997. Hardin pleaded guilty to two counts of rape in 2019,
the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported at the time
, and was sentenced to another 50 years in prison.
Hardin’s escape drew national attention, partly because he was the subject of a television documentary,
“Devil in the Ozarks.”
Law enforcement officers captured Hardin on June 6 in a forested area less than two miles from the prison. He is now being held in the Varner Supermax Unit near Gould.
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