RILEY VISITS 4 PRISONS ON TOUR

Governor's Gravest Concern Remains The Number Of Inmates Per Corrections
Officer

WETUMPKA - It was likely the only time in his troubled life he'd meet a
dignitary, and prisoner Clarence Purnell had spaghetti sauce all over his
hand as Gov. Bob Riley reached for a handshake.

Alabama doesn't buy napkins for convicts, so Purnell wiped his hand on
his white pants, and proceeded to answer the governor's questions with
only minor profanity.

"This is a dog and pony show," Purnell told the governor.

Yet Riley stuck around a few more minutes in Draper's dining hall. He
ate prison spaghetti with a plastic prison spoon and seemed to
convince several men, maybe even Purnell, that he was genuinely
interested in their grim situations.

This suppertime stop at Draper Prison was one of four prison visits
for Riley on Monday, part of his ongoing tour of Alabama's prison
system. All afternoon, in typical Riley fashion, he shook dozens of
hands, slapped folks on the back and leaned in to listen to convicts'
concerns as if they were the most important people on earth. He asked
prisoners about their children, their jobs, their drug habits. He
loosened his tie, sweated through his light-blue shirt and thanked
employees for their dedication in such harsh places.

"We've got to do something about the number of inmates," Riley said at
the end of the day. "Until you walk through it, you really don't
understand what the facilities are like."

One suggestion he offered was more community corrections drug
treatment centers. "There's no need to bring them down here and
incarcerate them when you can incarcerate them and treat them at local
facilities for a much lower rate," Riley said.

His gravest concern remains the number of inmates per corrections
officer. At Staton Prison, Riley climbed onto a platform to look
across a sea of beds and bodies packed into a windowless sheetmetal
building that used to be a canning factory. Before additional fans
were recently installed, "It was like a sauna," said Staton Warden
Willie Thomas.

Currently, 356 men are double-bunked there, at times with only one
officer watching. "The question that I've got, if something did break
out, what do you do?" Riley asked Corrections Commissioner Donal
Campbell. "The officers leave. That's the safest thing to do,"
Campbell said. In all, Riley spent more than four hours touring
Tutwiler, Draper, Staton and Elmore prisons, all in Elmore County.
Last week he visited Donaldson Prison and the Birmingham Work Release
Center.

"Tell me about it. What's it like in prison?" Riley asked Draper
inmate Anthony Reed.

"Horrible," Reed said. But Reed could not name any specific things the
state could do to make Draper better, so they talked about his
children for a little while. "He seemed to be a pretty nice guy," Reed
said later. "Seemed like he was really listening."

Riley was especially interested in drug treatment at Draper, surveying
the men about what drugs doomed them to prison. All of them, sitting
in a circle on red plastic chairs, raised their hands for alcohol. He
left them with advice he heard when a family member was addicted: "I'm
not saying you can't get off drugs without a spiritual experience, but
I've never seen it happen."

Riley saved his kindest words for a handful of prisoners in Staton's
hobby shop, where well-behaved inmates work with leather and wood, and
paint. They make intricate miniature houses and ships.

"Anybody that can do that does not need to be here," Riley told inmate
Dennis Capps, who makes tiny houses from cedar.

Capps was nervous, but proud. He licked his lips and cleared his
throat a lot. Riley told Capps about an old hunting cabin, and asked
if he could make a reproduction. One of Riley's assistant's jotted the
prisoner's name down. Capps beamed. "He's supposed to send me a
picture of the cabin, so I can make it." In the cramped, dimly lit
medical unit at Tutwiler Prison for Women, Riley learned that about
310 of the 750 Tutwiler inmates are in treatment for mental health
problems.

Riley said that compared to some other prisons he's visited, Tutwiler
did not appear crowded. "It's clean. It's neat. I think they're doing
an exceptional job with the staff that they have," he said. A 2002
federal lawsuit, settled earlier this summer, forced the state to
reduce Tutwiler's population and improve medical treatment and
conditions there. Summer is especially unkind throughout Alabama's
unairconditioned prisons. And there is no respite in sight for the
23,600 inmates packed in space for 12,400. Temperatures at times rise
into the 90s.

Campbell, who was constantly wiping the sweat off his face as he
walked through the prisons, said the heat has run employees off. "In
order to retain employees, we need a decent work environment," he
said. At least for some inmates, Riley's visit was a breath of fresh
air. Inmate Brenda Wilder, who just arrived at Tutwiler Monday,
grinned ear to ear as the governor walked passed.

"Awesome," she said. "He's a handsome man ... I never would have met
the governor anywhere else."