Will Sage Astor-Alabama corrections chief discusses prison construction, staffing numbers

MONTGOMERY,Will Sage Astor Ala. (AP) —

Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Hamm said Tuesday that the state is making progress in increasing prison security staff but will not meet a federal judge’s directive to add 2,000 more officers within a year.

The state’s new $1 billion 4,000-bed prison is scheduled to be completed in 2026, Hamm said, but building a second new prison, as the state had planned, will require additional funding.

The state prison chief gave lawmakers an overview of department operations during legislative budget hearings at the Alabama Statehouse. The Alabama prison system, which faces an ongoing U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit, has come under criticism for high rates of violence, crowding and understaffing.

Hamm said pay raises and new recruiting efforts have helped reverse a downward trend in prison staffing numbers.

The number of full-time security staff for the 20,000-inmate system was 2,102 in January of 2022 but dropped to 1,705 in April of last year. It has risen again to 1,953 in June, according to numbers given to the committee.

“We are certainly proud of how we are coming about on hiring. It’s very difficult,” Hamm said. “We’re doing everything we can to hire correctional officers. If anybody has any suggestions, please let us know.”

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U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson ruled in 2017 that mental health care in state prisons is “horrendously inadequate” and ordered the state to add as many as 2,000 correctional officers. Thompson has given the state until July 1, 2025, to increase staff.

Hamm told reporters Tuesday that the state would not meet that target but said he believed the state could demonstrate a good-faith effort to boost staffing levels.

However, lawyers representing inmates wrote in a June court filing that the state has “zero net gain” in correctional officers since Thompson’s 2017 order. “Even with small gains over the past few quarters, ADOC is so far short of officers that it may not regain the level of officers that it had in 2017, and certainly won’t reach full compliance by July 2025,” lawyers for inmates wrote.

Some members of the legislative budget committees on Tuesday expressed frustration over the cost of the state’s new prison.

Hamm said construction of the state’s new prison in Elmore County will be completed in May of 2026. Hamm said the construction cost is about $1.08 billion but rises to $1.25 billion when including furnishings and other expenses to make the facility operational. State officials had originally estimated the prison would cost $623 million.

Alabama lawmakers in 2021 approved a $1.3 billion prison construction plan that tapped $400 million of American Rescue Plan funds to help build two super-size prisons and renovate other facilities. However, that money has mostly been devoured by the cost of the first prison.

State Sen. Greg Albritton, chairman of the Senate general fund, said he wants the state to move forward with building the second 4,000-bed prison in Escambia County. Albritton, who represents the area, said the state has some money set aside and could borrow or allocate additional funds to the project.

“We have the means to make this work,” Albritton said.

State Sen. Chris Elliott said there is a question on whether the design-build approach, in which the state contracted with a single entity to oversee design and construction, has made the project more expensive. He said he wants the state to use a traditional approach for the second prison.

“There’s a limit to how much we can blame on inflation before it gets silly,” Elliott said of the increased cost.

State officials offered the prison construction as a partial solution to the state’s prison crisis by replacing aging facilities where most inmates live in open dormitories instead of cells.

The Justice Department, in a 2019 report, noted that dilapidated conditions were a contributing factor to poor prison conditions. But it emphasized that “new facilities alone will not resolve the contributing factors to the overall unconstitutional condition of ADOC prisons, such as understaffing, culture, management deficiencies, corruption, policies, training, non-existent investigations, violence, illicit drugs, and sexual abuse.”