A guard tower at Holman Correctional Facility in 2019. Alabama lawmakers are not yet ready to commit to closing older prisons, a key selling point for the $1.3 billion prison construction bill approved in 2021. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector)
When the Alabama Legislature approved the construction of two new men’s prisons in 2021, it also committed to shuttering existing ones.
HB 4, sponsored by Rep. Steve Clouse, R-Ozark, outlined financing for the prisons and a process for closing facilities — a key selling point for the project. Supporters argued that money saved from closing the prisons would help pay for the new ones, referred to as “the specialized men’s prison facility” in Elmore and the “Escambia men’s prison facility.”
“In many facilities, renovation would be uneconomical or cost-prohibitive,” the bill states. “It is the intent of this act to implement a plan to replace existing prison facility capacity with new or renovated capacity in the prison facilities using a phased approach.”
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
The 34-page legislation also stated that “Within one year from the completion of the specialized men’s prison facility and the Escambia men’s prison facility, the Staton, Elmore, and Kilby facilities shall all be closed.”
Lawmakers always recognized that closing prisons could be politically problematic. But as the costs of a new men’s prison in Elmore County have soared and absorbed almost all of the $1.3 billion originally allocated to the project, the possibility of prison closures — and savings — seems distant.
Four years after authorization, work has not started on the Escambia prison. Staton, Elmore and Kilby all remain open. And lawmakers are not prepared to commit to closings.
“There are two or three issues out there; which ones do we close, and what do we do with the women’s prison?” said Sen. Greg Albritton, R-Atmore, chair of the Senate Finance and Taxation General Fund Committee, one of the legislators who oversees the finances and plans for the new prison construction. “We don’t have answers to that. We are not prepared to answer those at this point because we are still not even halfway done to (full) construction.”
Closing of older prisons was key in in the years of debate over new prison construction, with DOC officials saying the cost savings from shutting old and expensive prisons would help pay for the new ones. Gov. Kay Ivey formed a commission in 2020 to recommend closures. Some prisons have been closed in whole or in part, like Draper Correctional Facility in Elmore County or Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.
The Governor’s Office referred questions regarding the facilities to ADOC. ADOC said in a statement that it could not accommodate an interview to answer the questions sent by the Alabama Reflector last week and instead provided an update on the construction timeline.
“The Governor Kay Ivey Correctional Complex is approximately 80% complete,” the spokesperson said in the statement. “The contractual final completion date for construction is October 15, 2026. Complex transition and activation for opening will begin after that.”
The spokesperson also said that the prison planned for Escambia County is in the design phase and sent a link to the original legislation that was passed that authorized the construction.
Specialized prison
The 2021 legislation that authorized the construction of a “specialized men’s prison” – the one currently under construction in Elmore County –- to include mental health educational accommodations and a 4,000 bed men’s facility in Escambia.
The legislative act also authorized the state to improve and renovate some of the existing facilities, as well as authorize Alabama to borrow funds by issuing $785 million in bonds.
It also stated that the St. Clair Correctional Facility would be eventually closed and expressed an intent to replace the now-83-year-old Julia Tutweiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, though it provided no dedicated funding for a new facility.
The legislation also authorized improvements and renovations to prisons based in Jefferson and Limestone counties. Other facilities, such as those in Barbour or Bullock, would either be renovated or demolished.
Nearly every lawmaker interviewed agreed that the older facilities are getting cost-prohibitive.
“Anything that is as old as our current prisons, they just deteriorate over time,” said Sen. Clyde Chambliss, R-Prattville, the chair of the Joint Legislative Prison Oversight Committee. “That is a normal, natural thing.”
Rep. Allen Treadaway, R-Morris, chair of the House Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee, said tours of the existing prisons convinced him they were unsafe.
“They were very old, dilapidated, pipes running everywhere, there had been leaks,” he said. “You just had to tour one of them to know that it is not worth putting tax dollars into these.”
DOC also argued that the older designs of the prisons made them unsafe and required more staffing. New prisons, it was argued, would have improved sightlines and technology and require less personnel.
“The new prisons, and the way they are planned to be designed, in a pod system, would allow us to maximize the employees currently,” said Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, a longtime critic of Corrections operations. “Meaning it would take less employees to sure areas, and we can more efficiently use the resources we have because of how the system itself is planned out.”
But England also said that there are not enough staff currently to fully implement that plan.
“I don’t think there are enough technological advances to overcome how much we don’t have,” England said. “We are still a long way away from any point where we can say we are making significant progress.”
Mounting pessimism
Lawmakers are increasingly pessimistic about the possibility of closures. Sentencing reforms in 2015 led to a decline in the prison population, and DOC’s refusal to accept new inmates during the COVID epidemic also cut the population.
But since the project was approved in 2021, the number of people in ADOC custody has increased, in part due to new punitive laws passed by the Legislature. The Alabama prison population increased from just under 18,000 in November 2021 to more than 21,700 in December, according to a January budget presentation by Hamm. The Alabama Sentencing Commission said last year the population could go as high as 28,000 by 2030.
England and Rep. Jim Hill, R-Odenville, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, have questioned whether it is now even possible to close facilities in light of the increase.
“We got 21,000 people in prison,” Hill said during a Joint Prison Oversight Committee meeting in April 2024. “I guess what I am struggling with is how we are going to close 5,000 people when we have 20,000 or more in prison.”
ADOC Commissioner John Hamm told Hill that the new prisons will not add capacity.
“If we got more people in today than the capacity that we are designed to have, then how do we close facilities that hold 5,000 or 6,000 people?” Hill said during the committee meeting.
No one had a follow up answer at the meeting.
Meanwhile, the costs of the Elmore County prison have soared, absorbing almost all of the $1.3 billion initially allocated for the project. Lawmakers last year authorized the additional borrowing of $500 million to pay for the Escambia prison.
Keeping existing prisons open could strain the state’s General Fund budget. ADOC is seeking close to $868 million from the $3.7 billion budget, and Corrections spending has absorbed an ever-larger portion of the budget over the lasgt 25 years. ADOC and Medicaid combined consuming about half of the budget in 2024.
But it could also be politically difficult for some lawmakers to agree to close facilities. Sen. Billy Beasley, D-Clayton, whose district includes a prison, saidit could have an economic impact.
“If we can get the governor to support bringing a prison in Clayton, in Barbour County, then it will provide jobs,” he said about the time when the state was considering constructing a prison in his district. The state eventually did. “It is about jobs. It is all about jobs.”
“In addition to that, the town of Clayton invested in the water treatment facility,” Beasley said. “Who is the number one customer? The correctional facility. If the correctional facility was not there, it would go bankrupt.”
Beasley said he does not take a position on which prisons to close, or if any prisons should even close.
Controlling costs
Absent closing the prisons, Alabama may need to continue allocating dollars to the facilities, which could increase the operational costs even more.
Several lawmakers said there are options for controlling expenses.
“For instance, with the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles, we have purchased the Perry County facility, and it is still very under-utilized, we can use that in prison systems right now, there is not a real need for that yet,” Albritton said. “But when we start changing prisons out and such, that is going to give us an overflow if we need it. That is going to give us a buffer if we need it.”
Albritton also spoke of a facility in Thomasville that is also used by the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles that is another possibility.
“That also has flexibility for current facilities on taking on a buffer in that,” he said. “Those buffers that we have existing, not to mention the older (prisons) that may have some temporary work on them so that they are safe, and we can use those as buffers, until we figure out what is the need.”
Albritton said that some prison facilities will need to eventually be closed but could not say which of those facilities because that has yet to be studied by the committee.
“There is a plan to close some, whether it is the entire prison or parts of the prison, there is a plan for that for those that are no longer serving a purpose,” Treadaway said of ADOC’s plan.
For Treadaway, ADOC plans not to commit to closing entire facilities but instead shut down areas of existing facilities that “leaves room for growth” of the prison population.
Based on his conversations with Corrections, the new facilities will also force the department to close some areas and repair them so that they can continue to be used.
“We go into a prison system that really needs maintenance and fixing, we could relieve them using that,” Treadway said. “If more inmates are coming into the system, then those facilities could be maintained and fixed if the need arises.”
From Alabama Reflector Post Url: Visit
Author: Ralph Chapoco