Pubdate: Tue, 03 Dec 2002
Source: Montgomery Advertiser (AL)
Copyright: 2002sThe Advertiser Co.
Contact:  http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1088

'TIME BOMB' MUST BE DEFUSED

Add another line to the long list of pressing problems that will greet Bob 
Riley when he takes office as governor next month. A federal court has 
ruled -- not surprisingly -- that conditions at Julia Tutwiler Prison for 
Women in Wetumpka are unconstitutional.

While U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson has ordered state officials to 
present a relief plan by Dec. 30, three weeks before Gov. Don Siegelman 
leaves office, realistically the longer-term addressing of the Tutwiler 
problems will fall to Riley's administration.

The problems are severe and are much like those found in the state's male 
prisons. The system has too many inmates for the facilities it has to house 
them, too few corrections officers to properly supervise the inmates and 
too little money to do anything about it.

Tutwiler serves to highlight the problems. It opened 60 years ago with a 
capacity of 342 inmates, and has been expanded to handle 417. Earlier this 
week it had more than 1,000, nearly 2½ times its design capacity. Those 
numbers are troubling enough, but there are even more disturbing ones. 
There are 92 corrections officers at Tutwiler. In 1979, there were 87 -- 
but the prison at one point that year had just 169 inmates. So with all of 
five more corrections officers, the prison administration has to try to 
supervise six times as many inmates.

That's a recipe for trouble. In Thompson's order, he noted that the entire 
facility has at times been supervised -- which hardly seems the word -- by 
as few as nine corrections officers.

The dormitories are so crowded that the corrections officers on duty don't 
have a full view of the areas. That creates huge opportunities for violence 
and other misconduct.

Thompson pointedly called the situation "essentially a time bomb ready to 
explode at any unexpected moment in the near future."

That is intolerable, on multiple grounds. There is, of course, the 
constitutional question Thompson was asked to address. But there is also a 
huge question of public safety, of just how well the citizenry is protected 
by a facility that is supposed to keep lawbreakers safely confined.

And what of the safety of the corrections officers, who are being asked to 
supervise unrealistically large numbers of inmates? The potential risk to 
these public employees is colossal.

Alabama has been in a genuine crisis in its prisons for years. The problems 
will soon land in Riley's lap -- and, once again, in the Legislature's lap 
as well. It is the responsibility of the executive branch to operate the 
prison system, but the Legislature is the venue for making the long-needed 
improvements in both funding and in the laws that unwisely send too many 
offenders to prison for too long a time.

Alabamians should hope that it will not take some tragedy, some horrific 
eruption of violence, to bring the long-needed actions to reality.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart