Pubdate: Wed, 09 May 2001
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2001 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: The Associated Press

MASS MOVE ADDS INMATES TO ALABAMA'S CROWDED STATE PRISONS

MONTGOMERY, Ala., Alabama's troubled corrections system was
thrown into crisis today when two sheriffs sent more than 200 inmates
from their overcrowded jails to state prisons where cellblocks were
already packed.

Armed with a court ruling, sheriffs in Jefferson and Houston counties
delivered inmates who were supposed to be in state lockups, not in
crowded county jails where prisoners have little choice but to sleep
on floors and tables.

The transfer is the latest wave in Alabama's decades-old struggle with
too many inmates in often squalid jails and prisons. The state has one
of the nation's highest rates of incarceration but no plans to build
more prisons.

More than 26,000 people are incarcerated in Alabama, or 571 per
100,000 residents. Only four states and the District of Columbia have
higher rates.

"State prisons are full, county jails are full and the probation
officers are loaded up with cases," said Allen Tapley, executive
director of the Sentencing Institute, a private research group.

Gov. Donald Siegelman, a Democrat, said state prisons would absorb the
transferred inmates. But with little extra bed space, Mr. Siegelman
said state lawyers had asked a judge to halt the influx.

"This is not a situation where counties, quite frankly, should be
doing what they're doing today," Mr. Siegelman said, adding that they
should look for alternatives and not "simply wash their hands of the
situation."

Three years ago, the state agreed to accept inmates who had been in
county jails more than 30 days after being sentenced to a state prison
term.

But backlogs have built up. In Jefferson County, a jail built for 620
inmates holds about 1,000. In Houston County, a 200-bed jail has 300
prisoners.

A federal judge, U. W. Clemon, last month described jail conditions in
Morgan County as "medieval," with inmates squeezed into quarters so
cramped they resembled a "slave ship." Judge Clemon ordered 104
inmates moved to state prisons, a job completed on Monday.

Alabama, while more inclined than other states to lock up offenders,
has been slow to build prisons to hold them. A prison system
spokesman, John Hamm, said an old canning plant at a prison in Elmore
County was being turned into a dormitory with 300 beds. But after it
opens this month, no other building is planned.

Corrections officials have also told legislators of a critical
shortage of guards. Six inmates, including three murderers, escaped
from a prison in January, partly because no one was watching a large
section of the fence.

Even as the situation worsens, the biggest corrections issue in the
Legislature is the governor's push to make violent criminals serve 85
percent of their sentences.

Corrections experts and prison officials say the solution includes
more community corrections programs, drug courts and parole for
inmates with convictions for nonviolent offenses. But those
alternatives are a tough sell in a political environment that favors
jail time for even nonviolent crimes.

The crisis is reminiscent of problems in the early 1980's, when a
federal judge - with the approval of the governor, Fob James Jr. -
ordered the mass release of nonviolent offenders because of prison
overcrowding. A decade earlier, a judge had described Alabama's prison
system as "barbaric," ruling that state inmates had a constitutional
right to adequate living conditions.
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