Ahead of the Second Special Session, Alabama’s Prisons in Crisis

‘Tough of Crime’ laws implemented in the 1980s sent drug offenders away for longer. Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner Jefferson Dunn says as a result, Alabama’s prisons began to fill up. 

 

“There is no air conditioning in any facilities in the Department of Corrections.”

 

Now the state’s prisons are overcrowded. Some, like Kilby Correctional Facility in Montgomery, by more than 300 percent. Kilby opened in 1969. It was designed to house 440 inmates. It currently has 1448. Worse, the prison is 51 correctional officers short. This dorm, which houses 128 inmates has just one correctional officer assigned to it. 

 

“In the mission of the department, we talk about safe, humane, secure incarceration. Part of that security is creating an environment that enables our officers to manage the population.”

 

Dunn says those with the Department of Corrections are working to reform the state’s prisons but need money in the general fund budget to do so. 

 

“Level funding for 2015 results in a 15 million dollar cut to what we need to operate.”

 

So level funding plus an additional 15 million dollars is what’s needed for the prison system to remain status quo. Without it, treatment programs and several other necessary security projects will be cut.  

 

“Those inmates that don’t have these services have higher rates of recidivism than those inmates that do have these services. That’s true across the board nationally.”

 

85 percent of all of the state’s inmates are going to return to the community.