LONG AND SHORT OF IT

Prison Crisis Needs Quick Fix And Permanent Solution

So, the state will add 600 new prison beds to house convicts. Another 10 or
so parole officers will be hired, and community corrections programs will
be expanded.

And this is the plan to solve Alabama's prison crisis? It's not even a
decent Band-Aid.

Sure, the 600 prison beds are needed, as are expanded community corrections
programs to keep nonviolent offenders from taking up valuable prison space.
However, if this is the most innovative thinking to come from Gov. Don
Siegelman's administration, it's little wonder the prisons are in such a mess.

The new prison beds won't be ready for nine months or so, and it also takes
time to set up community corrections programs and to hire additional parole
officers.

Meanwhile, there are more than 1,300 state convicts in local jails awaiting
transfer to state prison. And at the current rate, with nearly 100
additional convicts added each month, there will be about 900 more state
prisoners waiting for the 600 new beds when they're ready for use.
Certainly, with the number of additional state prisoners being added each
year 1,000 or so there must be more prisons. But that's a long-term
solution. There also must be short-term answers to take the pressure off
county jails. They have their own overcrowding problems due, in part, to
the number of state prisoners they must hold because the state prison
system won't be responsible.

Montgomery County Circuit Judge William Shashy fined the state $2.16
million in June for failing to move the state convicts from county jails.
Here it is September, and the state is promising 600 beds in nine months.

Shashy must keep the pressure on until state officials understand that they
not only must do more in the long term to ease the prison crisis such as
adding prison beds, and many more than 600 but come up with strong,
short-term answers, too.