The director of the parole board said many more nonviolent offenders could be released in response to Alabama's budget crisis if they can be properly supervised -- and that would mean hiring more than 100 officers.

Bill Segrest, executive director of the state Board of Pardons and Paroles, told the Sentencing Commission on Friday that his agency cannot solve the prison system's crowding problems.

But he said the board is willing to parole many more nonviolent inmates if they can be properly supervised.

The board has paroled 361 women and 951 men since Gov. Bob Riley made $1 million available in February to hire more parole officers.

More than 100 additional parole officers would have to be hired before the board could safely parole the 5,000 to 6,000 inmates that Riley has mentioned releasing, Segrest said.

Riley has recommended a prison budget for next year of $250 million, which Corrections Commissioner Donal Campbell said is about $16 million more than this year.

About $10 million of the increase will cover higher prison medical costs, $3 million will cover the costs of a settlement in a federal court suit on behalf of mentally ill inmates, and the other $3 million will pay for housing inmates, primarily men, out of state.

"We're on the verge of breaking down. It's broken," Campbell told the Sentencing Commission. The prison system has 28,142 inmates in lockups designed for half that many.

There are so few officers on duty in Alabama prisons that "when inmates decide to come out of there" there will be no way to stop them, Campbell said.

One prison with nearly 2,000 inmates has only 22 officers on duty between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. and only one officer on duty in a gymnasium with 250 inmates, Campbell said.

"We're doing a lot of things right, but we're doing it without an adequate number of staff ... at great risk to our employees, and at a great threat to the public," Campbell said.

Only two of the prison system's more than a dozen major prisons can be locked down securely in case of a major riot or outbreak, Campbell said.

"The Department of Corrections picture is ugly," he said.

The American Correctional Association figures for 2002 show that Alabama prisons have 10.5 inmates per officer, compared with 7.9 in Mississippi, 6.0 in South Carolina, 5.5 in Georgia and 5.0 in Florida. Campbell said the inmate-to-officer ratio now is almost 12 to 1.

He has sent 1,423 male inmates to Mississippi at a cost of $27.50 a day and 310 female inmates to Louisiana at a cost of $24 a day because there is no room left in the prisons, Campbell said.

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