The Birmingham News
Carla Crowder
January 25, 2006


Ladies first, it seems. Even in the prison system.

When the Alabama Department of Corrections decided to put prisoners in a private out-of-state prison, women went first. The state opened a transition center for people on parole, and it was for women.

A close look at these experiments, however, shows that, for the overall prison population to drop by much, the state may need to turn to alternatives such as expanded drug courts and community-based treatment and sentencing reform. A bill endorsed by Gov. Bob Riley takes a step in that direction by stressing changes in Alabama's sentencing structure.

In reaction to a federal court settlement that forced the state to cut the population at Tutwiler Prison for Women to 950, the state Parole Board released several hundred low-level offenders and the state began housing pockets of women in other facilities - the Louisiana private prison, the LifeTech parole transition center and county jails.

But Alabama now incarcerates 1,920 women, only a 4 percent drop in three years. And instead of steering female drug offenders into community programs - as numerous government task forces have recommended - the state is locking up more women for drug crimes than ever before.

Up to 570 in 2004:

In 2000, about 355 women were in Alabama prisons for drugs. That had risen to 570 by 2004, the most recent year demographic statistics are available.

"The path that Alabama has taken over the last four years of renting more bed space for women has proven to be the wrong path," said Lisa Kung, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, a nonprofit law firm that has won settlements over conditions at prisons.

In Birmingham, only 40 of 100 spaces are filled in "Second Chance" a federally funded program that allows newly released women to live in apartments and work regular jobs while receiving drug treatment, medical and mental health services. Not enough women are being paroled to fill the slots.

Meanwhile, Alabama counties are asking for Prison Commissioner Donal Campbell to be held in contempt of court because 700 state prisoners, 300 of them women, are backlogged in county jails.

LifeTech, touted as a big step toward creating space in Tutwiler, increasingly is used for women who've never been in prison. While 437 women have left Tutwiler for LifeTech, most have graduated and gone home. To fill up the facility, judges have ordered 257 women into LifeTech as part of probation, instead of leaving them in community rehab.

Six months:

Women spend six months at LifeTech, a former mental health complex in Wetumpka. Extensive educational and vocational classes are available, as well as drug and mental health treatment.

Earlier this month, Riley and parole officials announced a similar center for men would open this spring in Thomasville, at a cost of $5.7 million for purchase, startup and a year of operation. Centers like these have forced the state to add nearly $10 million to the parole board's budget since 2004.

Parole officials say it's worth it. Just 3.9 percent of women who graduate from LifeTech have wound up back in prison, compared to 22 percent for other parolees and 37 percent for prisoners who are released at the end of their sentences with no supervision, said Cynthia Dillard, assistant executive director of the Alabama Board of Pardons and Parole.

"Everyone in the field realizes that having supervision when released allows the person to be free longer. Because they're under supervision, they have some restrictions on their activities and their whereabouts," Dillard said.

Kung agreed that LifeTech is a better option than prison. But she wants the state to use the center for incarcerated women, not probationers.

Nearly 40 percent of the women at the private prison in Louisiana will be eligible for parole over the next three years, according to DOC records. Many have served terms of 15 years or more for crimes Kung said often involved abusive partners.

She's hoping parole officials will consider letting some of these women into LifeTech, and she has been working with lawmakers on gender-specific parole guidelines that might help cut the numbers of low-risk women locked in private prisons.

LCS Corrections houses 320 Alabama women at its Louisiana prison, with a price tag climbing toward $10 million since the contract began in 2003. A prison run by the same company is set to open in Perry County and may end up housing Alabama men.

Kung's problem with shipping so many women to Louisiana is that they are housed 900 miles from their children and families and have no opportunities to take the classes that the parole board looks to as signs prisoners are trying to improve themselves.

"The inmates housed here have too much idle time on their hands and that defeats the purpose of rehabilitation," inmate Sharron Kay Jones, 47, serving 15 years for solicitation to commit murder, wrote in a letter from Louisiana "There is no rehabilitation here at all."

Inmate Paula Settle, 34, of Tuscaloosa, serving 15 years for drug trafficking, signed up for anger management, substance abuse, parenting and trade school classes at Tutwiler. But she was immediately transferred to Louisiana. "There are no classes, programs, meetings, jobs or counselors here. No trades, no furthering education, no chaplain or religious assemblies or functions," she said.

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