John Hamm, the commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections, speaks during a budget hearing at the Alabama Statehouse on Jan. 29, 2026 at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Alabama. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector)
Legislators largely seemed receptive to a budget request from the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) during hearings on Thursday.
The Governor’s Office recommended that ADOC receive about $868 million, according to a General Fund budget spreadsheet from the Legislative Services Agency.
ADOC Commissioner John Hamm did not state publicly the increase that he requested from the General Fund budget for next year, but Rep. Mack Butler, R-Rainbow City prompted him for a number.
“We are level-funded except for the $40 million that you all have conditionally appropriated for security staff,” Hamm said to Butler.
Senate General Fund Finance and Taxation Committee Chair Greg Albritton, R-Atmore, said that funding was made conditional in previous budgets.
“That is money to cover additional staffing that is required as conditioned upon meeting particular goals,” Albritton told the committee. “That is in the budgets that we have already.”
Funding for ADOC has increased by millions of dollars in the past few years. It totaled about $550 million in 2021 but then increased to almost $800 million by 2025, according to a graph presented during the budget hearing. Corrections and the Alabama Medicaid Agency receive most of the money from the General Fund budget. In the beginning of the millennium, the two comprised about a third of the budget, but by 2024 it ballooned to roughly half.
However, despite the exchange that happened because of Butler’s question, much of Hamm’s testimony before the committee focused on different aspects of the operations of ADOC, in particular staffing. According to Hamm, 473 correctional officers graduated in 2025 and have gone on to work in the agency. That remains at least 1,000 correctional officers less than what is required, however.
“Bragg’s lawsuit has ordered us to hire roughly 2,500 corrections officers above where our staff was when that order came out,” Hamm said. “So, we probably still have about 1,800 more to go.”
Currently, Hamm said there are roughly 2,300 corrections officers on staff.
The Braggs lawsuit was filed in 2014 by individuals incarcerated within Alabama’s prisons who alleged that they were not receiving adequate mental health and medical care because of a shortage of corrections officers taking them to appointments and supervising their treatment programs.
“We set a record in 2025,” Hamm said near the beginning of his testimony. “We have graduated more correctional officers from the corrections academy than any time in history.”
U.S. District Court Judge Myron Thompson in 2017 ordered the agency to increase staffing to help address the problem.
The population within Alabama’s prisons was about 21,500 at the time of the order.According to numbers Hamm provided at the meeting, about 21,700 people are currently incarcerated within Alabama’s prisons.
Legislators also asked about violence in the state’s prison system.
“Everybody here is getting so many emails from families of inmates who are making every allegation about treatment of their family members,” said Sen. Merika Coleman, D-Pleasant Grove. ”
Hamm then referred to services that ADOC established in response to legislation enacted by the Legislature, giving families and friends an avenue to present problems and issues to the department regarding their loved ones in prison.
The commissioner said many of the emails that he, as well as legislators, received that detailed complaints have been false.
“We can’t deal with somebody in California that is cutting and pasting (emails) talking about a man-sized hole at Bibb Correctional Facility in Dorm A,” Hamm said. “That is just blatantly false, but they just continue to inundate you all with emails, my emails, and what, 200 other people.”
Hamm did not provide any other information to the committee about specific emails.
From Alabama Reflector Post Url: Visit
Author: Ralph Chapoco