February 4, 2004

Last week's Alabama Supreme Court ruling that the state prison commissioner can't be fined for refusing to pick up state inmates from county jails in a timely manner is a victory for the state. But it's not necessarily one for state taxpayers.

While the ruling removes the possibility of the state paying hefty fines due to prison overcrowding, it also removes a powerful incentive for the state to take needed, corrective measures to relieve dangerously crowded conditions in prisons. Without the threat of monetary court sanctions, state prison officials and lawmakers could decide that doing nothing is a real option. That could prove much costlier in the long run if conditions worsen and require more expensive measures to fix them.

Last week's ruling involved former prison Commissioner Mike Haley. In a lawsuit brought against the prison system by the counties, Montgomery County Circuit Judge William Shashy ordered Haley to pay fines of $26 a day for each state inmate in a county jail more than 30 days after sentencing.

At the time, more than 900 prisoners were backlogged in jails beyond that period.

The judge also assessed $2.16 million in "coercive monetary sanctions" against the state to try to force it to act on the overcrowding. The Supreme Court ruling tossed out all the fines.

The high court said the state constitution forbids the use of fines to punish state officials in their official duties, because the money would come from the state treasury rather than the officials personally. The justices did say the counties can deliver as many as 100 state inmates a week statewide to the prison system if the state didn't pick them up.

Fortunately for the state, the backlog of state inmates in county jails has been mostly eliminated, thanks mainly to the state sending about 1,700 inmates to out-of-state private prisons and to speedy paroles under Gov. Bob Riley.

The Supreme Court's rejection of the fines means the state can use the millions of dollars it would have paid in fines to help remedy the prison system's many problems. But the downside is that the heat from at least one source, the courts, on the state to do right with its prisons has been cooled.

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