SPEAKING OUT FOR THOSE LOCKED AWAY

YONTGOMER- One by one they stepped to the microphone. There was an
urgency in their mission, an immediacy in their speech.

They had traveled from all corners of the state, from Decatur and Dothan,
from Mobile and Birmingham. Some had caught the "Dog" (a Greyhound bus).
Others traveled by car and van pools. One contingent from North Alabama
chartered a luxury 55-passenger bus with closed circuit TV monitors and
other amenities.

Some of them, even those carrying a load of excess personal poundage, had
wheezed up seven flights of stairs with one of the two elevators of the
downtown Ramada Inn out of service.

What could have summoned so many different kinds of people - old and young,
well-to-do and poor, urban, suburban and rural - to this one place?

They all came to criticize the Alabama corrections system, not to praise
it. To a person, they had friends or relatives locked away in the state's
overcrowded, underfunded prisons.

Roberta Franklin, a talk show host for Montgomery-area radio station
WAPZ-AM, organized the town hall-style meeting. This wasn't an effort of
lifetime civil rights activists or professional hustlers anxious to snag
some TV face time and newspaper headlines.

Franklin, who has a son in prison, expected her invitation to attract a few
hundred folks from the Montgomery area. Instead, she got 500 relatives of
inmates traveling from as far away as Florida. There were prison activists
from Atlanta and Washington.

And there were the politicians - as certain in any prison as cockroaches -
to offer their election-eve promises to get something done.

That's what the mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, grandparents and others
associates wanted to hear. They had hoped Gov. Don Siegelman would show.
Not a chance.

"But you can bet he will hear what you have to say here this evening,"
Franklin shouted into the microphone. "They all will know what you want."

There was no set agenda for the meeting. There was no clear game plan of
what to do next.

Many left the meeting promising to write legislators and other elected
officials. They all simply wanted better treatment for the state's 27,495
prisoners.

State Rep. Johnny Ford, D-Tuskegee, promised he would push for a special
investigation of the state corrections system. He also said he would press
Siegelman to call a special legislative session to explore solutions for
their many complaints.

Many of those complaints targeted the state's Habitual Offenders Act,
passed in 1978 as the state's version of the national "three strikes"
campaign to get tough on crime. More than one-third of the state's
prisoners (8,104) are sentenced under that law. Also, Alabama judges
routinely impose hefty sentences on first-time offenders, especially for
drug charges.

Another issue for the more than 500 people at the meeting was telephone
service. To call family or friends, inmates must call collect.

The company providing the service charges exorbitant fees, many complained.
Such calls cost $3 and more per minute - another financial burden for poor
families already coping with legal fees and expenses.

To challenge the system, those at the meeting called for a boycott of calls
in October. No one is to accept collect calls from inmates that month "to
get the attention of those robber barons," said one.

James Steele, a Huntsville lay minister and entrepreneur, expects the
meeting to start a tidal wave of protest against the prison system.

"This just has to lead to something," he said. "There are too many people
out there who are hurting. Surely they can't ignore us forever."