Senate OKs plan to add 2,000 beds to Alabama prisons

New units won’t have large dorms, which have been scenes of violence

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama would build new prisons in an effort to relieve crowding and violence in the state’s correctional facilities, under a plan approved Thursday by the state Senate.

Senators voted 23-11 for the bill after nearly three hours of debate. It now heads to the House of Representatives.

The plan would add about 2,000 beds to the state prison system. Sen. Cam Ward, the bill’s sponsor, said the new prisons would be better designed than the state’s current prisons, which feature large dormitories.

“You have facilities now that are not going to meet constitutional muster . ... You can’t have several hundred dangerous inmates in one place because the officers are just unable to monitor. That’s one reason you have the stabbings and the violence,” Ward said.

The plan banks on interest from local communities in having the prisons and the jobs that will come with them. The bill authorizes the state to lease up to three prisons built by local communities. The bill would also authorize a $350 million state bond issue to build one new prison and renovate others, but the state must have two lease agreements in place before borrowing money. Most existing prisons would close, under the proposal.

Alabama prisons house 23,074 inmates in facilities built for 13,318, which puts the department at 173 percent capacity. Overcrowding and staffing shortages have contributed to outbreaks of violence. A corrections officer was fatally stabbed by an inmate last year, and three inmates have been killed this year in violence between prisoners.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which is representing inmates in a class-action lawsuit over mental health care, said the plan is costly and doesn’t address the system’s other problems such as staff shortages.

“The new prison building bill that passed the Senate today is extremely problematic and too expensive. Building these mega-prisons will not solve the serious problems facing the prison system: the violence, the chronic understaffing, and the lack of adequate health care,” Ebony Howard, the group’ associate legal director, said in a statement.