Griffin: ‘This is a monumental victory for public safety and quality of life’

LITTLE ROCK – Following the passage today of Senate Bill 495, the Protect Arkansas Act, Attorney General Tim Griffin issued the following statement:

“This is a monumental victory for public safety and quality of life. We are making it crystal clear to Arkansans who live with the burden of crime that we stand for the safety of their families and neighborhoods. Violent criminals are now on notice: Arkansas will no longer tolerate a catch-and-release criminal justice system that compromises the safety of our citizens. Once enacted, the Protect Arkansas Act will ensure that our state’s most violent offenders serve 85 to 100 percent of their sentences.

“In order to make Arkansas a safer place to live, work and play, we must address numerous failings in our current criminal justice system. In addition to incapacitating those who have proven to be threats to our families and communities, we must also rehabilitate those who have shown an interest in turning their lives around. The Protect Arkansas Act marks a clear shift in our approach to rehabilitation by reducing a prisoner’s sentence based on meeting certain educational and training goals. In turn, effective rehabilitation decreases recidivism rates.

“I am proud to have worked with Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Sen. Ben Gilmore and Rep. Jimmy Gazaway on this bill, and I applaud its passage by the Arkansas General Assembly.”

About Attorney General Tim Griffin

Tim Griffin was elected attorney general of Arkansas on November 8, 2022. He was elected lieutenant governor of Arkansas on November 4, 2014, and was re-elected for his second four-year term on November 6, 2018. From 2011-2015, Griffin served as the 24th representative of Arkansas’s Second Congressional District. For the 113th Congress, he was a member of the House Committee on Ways and Means while also serving as a Deputy Whip for the Majority. In the 112th Congress, he served as a member of the House Armed Services Committee, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the House Committee on the Judiciary.

Griffin is a graduate of Magnolia High School, Hendrix College in Conway, and Tulane Law School in New Orleans. He attended graduate school at Oxford University. Griffin has served as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve’s Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps for over 25 years and currently holds the rank of colonel. In 2005, Griffin was mobilized to active duty as an Army prosecutor at Fort Campbell, Kentucky and served with the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault in Mosul, Iraq). He is currently serving as the Staff Judge Advocate (SJA) for the 81st Readiness Division at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Prior to his current post, Griffin served as the Commander of the 134th Legal Operations Detachment (LOD) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina and a senior legislative advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness at the Pentagon. Griffin holds a master’s degree in strategic studies from the U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. He also served as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas and Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of Political Affairs for President George W. Bush. Griffin lives in Little Rock with his wife, Elizabeth, a Camden native, and their three children.

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