Showing posts with label prison. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prison. Show all posts
Arkansas Department of Correction Collection Podcast
6/29/2010 | 9:22 AM | Posted by
Josh Jenkins
This episode of the Old State House Museum Collections Podcast covers the history of the prison system in Arkansas and the collection of objects acquired in 2008 from the Arkansas Department of Correction. The collection consists of 236 objects ranging from the only two electric chairs used to carry out executions in the state of Arkansas, to inmate-made prison weapons, to the infamous Tucker Telephone. As we have done in previous installments, we conducted an interview with an expert in the field, Dina Tyler, Public Relations Director for the Arkansas Department of Correction. The podcast is embedded below as a YouTube video in two parts. If you would like to subscribe to our podcast via iTunes, click here. (You must have iTunes installed on your machine.) If you would like to download a slightly smaller version of this episode directly to your hard drive, click here.Part One
Part Two
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Old Sparky: Dina Tyler on Arkansas's Electric Chairs
As a sneak peak into our upcoming podcast on the Department of Correction Collection, here is a short clip from our interview with Dina Tyler, spokeswoman for the DOC. The topic of the clip is the death penalty in Arkansas, specifically the state's electric chairs - Old Sparky I and II. Just click the red play button below.
The chairs and many other objects in the Department of Correction Collection are currently on exhibit at the Old State House in an exhibit called "Badges, Bandits, and Bars: Arkansas Law and Justice."
Construction of the Arkansas Capitol Building
While working on our upcoming podcast concerning the Department of Corrections historical collection housed at the Old State House Museum, I encountered a series of spectacular photographs of the construction of the state's current capitol building.The Old State House served as Arkansas's original capitol building, housing the Governor's Office, House and Senate Chambers and other government offices into the 20th century. Beginning in the 1890s, some elected officials began to call for the construction of a new capitol. In 1899, Governor Daniel Webster Jones suggested the site where the Arkansas State Penitentiary was located saying that land was "too valuable" for a prison. Work began shortly thereafter, with prisoners constituting the majority of the labor. The Old State House Museum has the collections of the Department of Corrections, including photographs of the construction. The photographs were taken in 1910, depicting the nearly finished capitol building.
Click the thumbnails below to see full-sized images.
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