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| State lawmakers need to address prison problems | |||||||||||
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Tuscaloosa News January 17, 2007 A responsible Legislature would have addressed Alabama’s prison crisis years ago, primarily through alternative sentencing and a new revenue stream to finance renovation and expansion. However, correcting corrections doesn’t translate into votes. So the many problems facing state prisons have been put on hold and allowed to fester. Now those problems are fast spinning out of control. In the past few days, two major trouble spots have come to light. One involves the 65-year-old Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka. It has become so decrepit and non-functional that an Atlanta-based firm that has sought for years to improve conditions there now is shifting its focus to shutting it down. The Southern Center for Human Rights says it’s seeking someone to lead a campaign “to close the brutal Tutwiler Prison and transform Alabama’s women’s criminal justice system into one that is small, family-oriented, community-based and rehabilitative." Anyone tempted to write off that proposal as a radical concept should consider the fact that Alabama Corrections Commissioner Richard Allen doesn’t entirely disagree with it. He called last month for replacing Tutwiler by 2008. The prison, the state’s only facility for female inmates, has a capacity of 702. But lately it has been stuffed with more than 980 prisoners. Unable to cram any more into Tutwiler, the state has been forced to ship nearly 400 women to private prisons in Louisiana. Allen has commissioned a study on how to proceed. A new women’s prison is one of the options. Gordo in Pickens County is one of four sites under consideration. But building a women’s prison large enough to accommodate present and future needs is an expensive proposition, particularly for the chronically under funded Department of Corrections. The Southern Center for Human Rights’ proposal to build smaller, community-based rehabilitative centers makes more sense. Meanwhile, the state prison system is struggling to handle an explosion of elderly inmates, whose census has nearly tripled over the past decade, according to a new report. By contrast, the total inmate population increased 23 percent over the same period. The Southern Legislative Conference blames the problem on Alabama’s sentencing laws that keep inmates in prison longer than other states. Its study says prisoners ages 50 and over pose heightened health concerns and costs. But Alabama’s only prison for ill and aging inmates, in Hamilton, has just 300 beds and can accommodate only a fraction of the state’s needs. Gov. Bob Riley has made prisons a priority over the next four years. In Allen, he has an innovative and dynamic prison commissioner. But unless lawmakers respond quickly, it may well be the judiciary, rather than the legislative or executive branches of government, that initiates the corrections reforms the state has needed for so long. |
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