The Associated Press
By Desiree Hunter
September 25, 2007 

Alabama inmate Jacklin Mitchell went to help unpack a delivery truck last week at the Louisiana facility where she's been since June and saw packages of travel-friendly bottled water and dozens of loaves of bread mixed in with the usual rations.

That's when Mitchell knew she and the 327 other Alabama women at J.B. Evans Correctional Facility in Newellton, La., were coming home.

"I had been praying and trusting God for them to come before the deadline," Mitchell said Thursday from the newly created Montgomery Women's Facility in Mount Meigs outside Montgomery. "They couldn't have come at a better time."

The Alabama Department of Corrections had planned to bring the women back by Nov. 30, but they were transferred this week because renovations at their new quarters were finished early, corrections spokesman Brian Corbett said.

The department spent about $55,000 installing additional showers and toilets and making renovations for medical and mental health services, at what was formerly the Montgomery Pre-Release Center for men, on the grounds of Kilby Correctional Facility.

"The fact that we have to use private and out-of-state bed space has always been considered temporary based on conditions," he said. "They're happy about (coming home) and we're happy about it and we're happy to be able to do it. The real added value of it is that this will save millions of dollars."

There are 141 male inmates at J.B. Evans and 136 male inmates at the Perry County Detention Center in Uniontown, which are both owned and operated by LCS Corrections Services.

All male inmates are expected to be moved from the private prisons by March 2008. That's later than originally planned because the opening of a new Therapeutic Education Center in Columbiana that eventually will house up to 450 inmates will not be complete until then, Corbett said.

The department began contracting with private prisons in April 2003 after a federal judge ruled the state's only prison for women, Julia Tutwiler Prison in Wetumpka, was dangerously overcrowded. Alabama is under court order to house no more than 700 inmates at Tutwiler.

Doing away with private contracts is expected to save the department $10 million annually to help manage a $30 million shortfall in what prison officials said they needed for the current fiscal year.

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