SCARY NUMBERS

Underfunded Prisons Pose Threat To Public

There have been a lot of scary numbers thrown about concerning the state's
budget crisis. None scarier, however, than those for the state Department
of Corrections.

It was fitting that prison Commissioner Donal Campbell's testimony before
Gov. Bob Riley's Commission on Efficiency, Consolidation and Funding came
on Halloween, because Campbell painted a truly gruesome picture of prisons.

Thirty-one correctional officers had to watch over 2,130 inmates overnight
at Limestone prison near Huntsville, which was designed for 876 prisoners,
Campbell told commission members. Meanwhile, just 25 officers guarded 1,766
inmates at the Bibb County prison in Brent, built to hold 900.

Those spooky numbers are repeated statewide, symptoms of a prison system
dangerously understaffed, overcrowded and a real threat to public safety,
according to Campbell. It's the result of decades of chronically
shortchanging corrections in state budgets and foolish, get-tough-on-crime
laws that needlessly lock up thousands of nonviolent criminals.

Alabama, for example, spends $27.50 per day per inmate. That's only half
the national average. The state not only can't afford to spend much money
rehabilitating inmates, it can't afford even to guard them adequately.
Alabama's inmate-to-guard ratio of 10-to-1 is nearly twice the average of
its Southeastern neighbors.

To make matters worse, 90 percent of Alabama inmates are housed in large,
open dormitories - not prison cells. In the event of a large fight, riot or
prison break, the task of containing inmates and restoring order is doubly
difficult.

Alabama has been lucky not to have had a catastrophic uprising at one of
its prisons. But the state can't afford to keep depending on luck.

The Riley administration has taken some good steps to relieve prison
overcrowding. An expanded parole board is expected to parole an extra 5,000
inmates over the next year. The governor also wants to make better use of
community corrections, drug treatment programs, sentencing reform and other
alternatives to incarceration. But the effort to make prisons safer is
severely restrained by the state's budget crisis.

Riley's commission, which is looking for ways to cut costs, has a daunting
task. Cutting an already anemic prison budget isn't an option; being
smarter in how we punish criminals must be.