'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.