CROWDED JAILS YIELD NEW FINES FOR STATE

MONTGOMERY A Montgomery judge imposed millions of dollars in new fines
against the state prison system Friday and said he will use the money to
find space for more than 1,600 state convicts backlogged in Alabama's
crowded county jails.

Montgomery County Circuit Judge William Shashy ordered the prison system to
pay $50 a day for each state convict left in county jails more than 30
days, starting Aug. 13.

He had warned the state in a June 14 order that he would raise contempt
fines to that amount if it did not clear its inmates out of the county
jails. Friday, he also ordered the state to immediately pay fines he
imposed in June, which have been accruing at a rate of $26 per day per
inmate. The state's total had hit $2.16 million as of mid-April.

"The defendants have not only failed to remove the state inmates from
county jails but have also failed to pay the counties as ordered," Shashy
wrote. "The state comptroller and defendants have neither followed nor
appealed this (June 14) order."

Shashy said he wants $26 of the new daily fines paid directly to Alabama
counties and the remaining $24 paid to the clerk of the Montgomery County
Circuit Court. The judge said he will use money paid to the court to carry
out steps Prison Commissioner Mike Haley and Gov. Don Siegelman promised to
take to eliminate jail crowding.

Haley and Siegelman "have failed to follow through on their promises,"
Shashy stated.

Friday's order does not say how much the state owes to date in the new $50
fines. But with 1,600 inmates backlogged in the jails, the new fines would
accumulate at a clip of $2.4 million a month.

Mike Kanarick, Siegelman's press secretary, said Haley hasn't been able to
carry out steps promised to ease crowding because the Legislature hasn't
appropriated money from a prison land sale in Atmore.

Sonny Brasfield, assistant executive director of the Association of County
Commissions of Alabama, said Siegelman and Henry Mabry, the state finance
director, could have applied the land sale money to the prison system's
conditional appropriations, which have had legislative approval.

The land sale money also could have been spent through a line in the prison
budget for miscellaneous expenditures at Haley's discretion, Brasfield said.

"We had hoped that one or the other of those two avenues would have been
used long before now," Brasfield said.

Shashy ordered Haley on Friday to report to him immediately on what
happened to the $2.4 million land sale money and where the proceeds from
the sale are being held.

Haley's plan called for $750,000 of the land sale money to be used to
resume a special Thursday docket at the state Board of Pardons and Paroles,
to consider paroles for non-violent inmates.

"We have not received any money," said Cynthia Dillard, assistant executive
director of the Parole Board.

The special Thursday dockets began last year but were discontinued when
Siegelman reneged on a promise of money to pay for extra parole officers to
supervise released convicts.

The Thursday hearings recently were resumed at 20 to 25 hearings a week, or
about half the regular docket load, Dillard said.

Shashy said the Thursday parole docket was Haley's "number one short-term
relief," but "has not been accomplished."

"This court is troubled by the lack of progress toward a meaningful
solution to the problem of the backlog of state inmates," Shashy wrote Friday.

Shashy said he also will use money from the new fines on other steps
mentioned in Haley's unfulfilled plan, such as providing counseling, drug
testing, job readiness training, help for addicted offenders to find jobs,
and drug treatment in regional facilities.

Shashy has not ruled on an emergency request Haley filed Tuesday seeking to
block sheriffs around the state from dumping backlogged inmates on the
prison system without approval by prison officials.

Etowah County officials took 71 inmates to Kilby Prison on Monday and
Tuesday. Calhoun County officials are seeking a court order allowing them
to take 85 inmates to Kilby, and Houston County officials said they will
take 58 inmates to the prison Tuesday.

Unless the counties are stopped from dumping inmates without prison system
approval, an emergency crisis would be created that "would cause a safety
hazard to the general public, the employees of the department and the
inmates," Haley said.