THIS NEW JAIL WARDEN KNOWS OVERCROWDING

In A Backhanded Way, Mike Haley Has Gotten His Wish.

"If I had to serve time in jail, Mobile County would be the place I'd want
to go," Mr. Haley told the Register in 1993. At the time, he was director
of jail services for the Alabama Sheriffs' Association, and he called the
Mobile jail, then a new facility, "one of the best in the country."

Mr. Haley went on to become corrections commissioner under former Gov. Don
Siegelman. Last week, he was named the Mobile jail's new warden. The
question is whether he'll be able to do any better with overcrowding and
other problems in the Metro Jail than he did with the state prisons.

During the time that Mr. Haley ran the state's prison system, from 1999 to
earlier this year, he was held in contempt of court for failing to remove
state inmates from county jails. Judges, inspectors and advocacy groups
criticized conditions in some Alabama prisons as volatile and bordering on
inhumane.

When Gov. Bob Riley took office, Mr. Haley was not retained even though he
publicly sought to hold onto his job.

Mr. Haley is one of the most important hires made by Sheriff Jack Tillman,
and his role will be pivotal in improving conditions at the Metro Jail. The
jail went without a warden for most of last year. The last one left after
only a week when the Register reported that parts of his resume didn't
check out.

Issues at the jail include the matters of the death of an inmate under
conditions a grand jury described as "systemic neglect," other grand jury
criticisms, and the district attorney's investigation into Sheriff
Tillman's handling of the jail food fund.

An outside consultant last year concluded that the jail is badly
overcrowded and understaffed, and that corrections officers are underpaid.
Although hiring more people and paying them better will obviously require
more money, the County Commission just cut its budget because of declining
revenues, and that will affect the Sheriff's Department.

But if anyone has experience with overcrowded jails, it's Mike Haley. Under
his direction, the state prison system repeatedly failed to permanently
clear out the backlog of state prisoners crowding county jails, because
there was no room in the state system.

Mr. Haley brings education and extensive experience to the job, and he's
gotten some good reviews, even from people at odds with the state prison
system and the Siegelman administration.

The biggest cause of the trouble with state prisons, as in all of state
government, is lack of adequate funding. That's not Mr. Haley's fault; and
during his tenure he repeatedly called for additional prisons to be built
and for up to a 70 percent increase in funding.

Still, there are elements of Mr. Haley's performance in the state job that
are disturbing.

He refused to release reports from an outside consultant reviewing prison
health care. Later, when the Riley administration made them public, they
revealed serious problems with the care given to inmates in some prisons.
He also worked to prevent news reporters from visiting and interviewing
state prisoners.

In 1999, Mr. Haley joined the Siegelman administration in advocating for
the return of "hitching posts" for recalcitrant inmates, saying, "We don't
mind being trend-setters. We don't mind being pioneers."

The U.S. Supreme Court last year blasted the practice of handcuffing
prisoners to hitching posts, ruling that the practice was unconstitutional.

Mr. Haley also cut funding for community-based corrections programs in 2001
even though the programs offered excellent alternatives to prison. (Gov.
Siegelman subsequently overruled the decision.)

As Mr. Haley begins "serving time" as warden of the Mobile County Metro
Jail, he has an opportunity, free of the constraints of the Siegelman
administration and its lawyers, to distinguish himself by resolving
long-festering problems. Let's hope he really can make the jail "one of the
best in the country."