THE PRISON CRISIS

A Federal Judge Says Tutwiler's Inmates Live In Unacceptable Conditions,
And That Must Change

The hue and cry to get tough on crime was heeded by the politicians. The
public mandate to spend as little money as possible and to continue to
finance criminal justice agencies through an antiquated tax system also was
supported by elected leaders. And now the two antithetical issues must be
resolved.

The state has jammed 1,017 women into Tutwiler Women's Prison, which was
built in the 1940s to hold 346 inmates. U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson
says the overcrowding constitutes "unconstitutionally unsafe conditions."
He's given the state four weeks to come up with a plan to solve the problem.

But the situation at Tutwiler isn't an isolated incident. County jails
throughout Alabama are also overcrowded. A state judge says inmates must be
transferred to state facilities from county jails within 30 days of sentencing.

So all the state prisons are filling rapidly, some to overflowing, and
there's a shortage of trained guards to handle them. This is turning into a
very real mess that is going to be very expensive to fix.

It has reached such proportions for a number of reasons. Politicians, in
their zeal to take bites out of crime, have padded sentences and given
judges too little leeway in the sentences they can impose, particularly in
drug cases.

That led recently to a man here recently getting a life sentence for
receiving 3.5 pounds of marijuana through the mail. Meanwhile, violent
people convicted of violent crimes are put on parole to make room for more
nonviolent drug defendants.

State Attorney General Bill Pryor has said our sentencing laws don't work,
and he wants to change them. He favors drug courts and alternative
sentencing rather than stockpiling nonviolent people in prisons where
taxpayers must pay for their upkeep.

And Pryor, in earlier interviews, has pointed out that prisons "are not a
fun place to be." Tutwiler, by all accounts, is even worse than bad.
Hundreds of inmates are stuffed in the prison's nine dorms with only one
officer to watch over them, Thompson said. He agreed with the inmate who
called Dormitory No. 9 a "zoo."

Faced with an impossible situation and a short deadline, lame duck Gov. Don
Siegelman has promised to do something - but he hasn't said what. Of
course, Siegelman and the Legislature have had years to address the problem
but haven't done so. How he plans to solve it quickly and adequately is a
real puzzler.

But addressing the problem now, even at this late date, is something
Governor-elect Bob Riley's camp is, inexplicably, urging Siegelman not to
do. Riley's spokesmen worries about "locking" the forthcoming
administration into a plan that Riley will have to live with.

Judge Thompson has made it sufficiently clear that what he can't live with
is for more than a thousand women to be locked up in a facility designed
for a third that many. Riley's team would be better off vowing to work with
Siegelman's to try to resolve the issue rather than urging further delay.

Someone has to solve the problem, and soon. Otherwise, there's no telling
what the federal courts might do.