OMINOUS PROPHECY COMES TRUE

For months, Alabama sheriffs and county commissioners have warned that
riots would result this summer if crowded county jails did not get some
relief from housing state inmates.

On Tuesday, those warnings came true. Inmates rioted at the Talladega
County Jail, seizing a cellblock and injuring four guards before
authorities stormed the area and regained control.

The disturbance, which involved about 40 inmates, was preceded by a smaller
altercation. In the end, it took tear gas, flash-bang grenades and officers
firing blanks to restore order.

It could easily have developed into something worse. The Talladega County
Jail was built to house 125 inmates, but Tuesday's inmate population was
218. Sheriff Jerry Studdard said that severe crowding can present big
problems, particularly in the heat of summer. Fighting among the closely
quartered inmates may have triggered the riot, he said.

It is a dangerous situation but - unfortunately - not an uncommon one
across the state. An estimated 1,300 state inmates are packed into county
jails in defiance of a judge's order for them to be transferred to state
facilities within 30 days.

The transfers haven't happened because state corrections officials say
there is simply no place to house all those inmates. Montgomery County
Circuit Judge William Shashy has levied fines totaling $2.16 million and
has threatened to jail the state corrections commissioner if the state
remains in noncompliance. But state prison officials say an influx of that
many new inmates with inadequate guards and no provisions to house them is
a virtual guarantee for bigger riots than the one that occurred Tuesday in
Talladega County.

Inserted into the space between the rock and the hard place of this
conundrum is a bitter irony. On the same day the inmates rioted, Shashy was
forced to reschedule a summit meeting with state leaders to discuss prison
problems.

The reason? Several of the top officials informed Shashy they had made a
prior commitment to attend a meeting of the Business Council of Alabama
scheduled for the same date in Gulf Shores. BCA support is important to
some of them this election year. Talks about prison problems are not high
on their list of priorities.

Faced with no-shows of virtually all of the state's top political brass,
Shashy had no choice but to reschedule the talks. He has no power to
subpoena the officials to these discussions.

Some of those invited said the new date, Sept. 4, is more agreeable to
their schedules. They said they plan to talk about more money for
corrections, more space and alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent
convicts.

We hope Shashy expects more than that. It's the same kind of talk that has
floated around circles of state leadership for years, but nothing
substantial has come of it.

In fact, despite the warnings from prison officials, the Alabama
Legislature this year took an axe to the corrections budget. Gov. Don
Siegelman requested $207.2 million; the House cut it to $201.8 million; and
the Senate lopped another million out of that amount.

Yet Senate President Lowell Barron said Tuesday that "It's going to take
some more money" - and not "pretty words" - to resolve the state's prison
crisis.

He's absolutely right about that. Not only does the state lack the money to
operate an adequate corrections system; it doesn't even have enough money
to pay Shashy's fines.

If it did have $2.1 million, said Siegelman legal adviser Ted Hosp, the
state would use the money to hire more probation and parole officers and
fund additional substance abuse programs. "We'd be using it to fix the
problem," he said.

Attorney General Bill Pryor advocates action along those same lines.
Perhaps he will propose a way to pay for it. But a spokesman for Steve
Windom said the lieutenant governor will offer the same "solution" he has
proposed for months: set up some surplus military tents on state prison
grounds to house non-violent and low-risk inmates.

With all due respect, that's the approach that keeps Alabama in perpetual
turmoil in areas ranging from schools to prisons to welfare. We can't keep
erecting tents where we need brick and mortar; we can't keep using
Band-Aids to treat serious illnesses.