When it comes to running the state's prisons, Alabama's state elected officials are taking advantage of local officials and local taxpayers by forcing counties to keep state prisoners for much too long and paying only a tiny portion of the actual cost of their jail time.

Let's play a little math game to get a feel for what this means to Alabama's counties and local taxpayers. Keep in mind that the following numbers may be based on some pretty off-the cuff estimates in some cases, but at least they should give readers a sense of how the state is taking advantage of the counties.

On a recent day in Alabama, 647 of the 1,148 state inmates scattered throughout Alabama's county jails had been there for longer than the 30-day limit that the state Department of Corrections has to take custody of them after their convictions.

The state pays the counties a measly $1.75 per day to feed these prisoners, but it costs much more than that for the counties to maintain them. In the tricounty area, the cost ranges from an estimated $17.60 per day in Elmore County to about $42.25 per day in Montgomery County. That includes paying for jail staff, utilities, food, health care, etc.

Assume for the sake of argument that the average total cost of maintaining state prisoners in county jails is about $25 per day, or $23.25 per day more than the state pays the counties. That means those 1,148 state prisoners are costing county taxpayers more than $26,000 per day, which would pay the salary of a beginning schoolteacher for a year.

That $26,000 per day works out to about $9.5 million a year. And remember, more than half those prisoners are in the jails longer than the maximum time the courts have said that the state must assume responsibility for them.

In Elmore County, the sheriff estimates that at about 15 to 20 percent of his total jail population of about 240 are state inmates. The difference between the county's estimated cost of $17.60 per day to maintain an inmate and the state's $1.75 per day reimbursement is $15.85. That works out to a loss to the county of about $570 per day, or $200,000 per year.

The sheriff could put another half-dozen deputies on patrol in rural Elmore County if the county's full costs for housing state inmates were covered.

In Autauga County, the sheriff estimates he has about 25 state inmates and that it costs about $30 per day to house them. Subtract the $1.75 per day reimbursement, and that works out to a loss to the county of about $700 per day, or more than $250,000 per year.

The county could hire seven or eight reading coaches to put into its public schools for that amount of money.

Montgomery County's sheriff says he has less of a problem than many sheriffs with overcrowding caused by state prisoners, but the cost differential exists in Montgomery County, too. Montgomery estimates it has about 70 state inmates and that it costs about $42.25 per day to maintain them. Minus the state reimbursement, that works out to about $2,800 per day for state inmates, or about $1 million per year.

That would go a long way toward putting math specialists in every Montgomery County public school, something the county desperately needs to do.

Again, this math game is based on estimate on top of estimate, so the actual annual numbers may be off by quite a bit. But it does show that the state is transferring a huge portion of the cost of the state prison system to the shoulders of the counties, both by having an unrealistically low reimbursment rate and by leaving many state prisoners in county jails far longer than they should be left.

Notice that we did not blame the Alabama Department of Corrections for this problem. DOC officials are, for the most part, doing the best they can with the resources they are given.

The responsibility rests with the state's elect officials, and especially its legislators. Legislators want to look tough on crime by passing tough criminal laws, but they don't want to pass the taxes to pay for housing all those prisoners. The result is an underfunded prison system with overcrowded prisons and far too few corrections officers, a potentially deadly combination that poses a threat to inmates, corrections officers and even the public.

It is only a matter of time until the state's corrections system implodes.

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