The Alabama Department of Corrections has jurisdiction over more than 32,000 individuals who have been convicted of a crime and are serving sentences in state prisons, work release centers and related programs. This is almost twice the number of inmates state prisons were designed to accommodate and the highest level of prison overcrowding in the United States.
Corrections officials estimate they’d need a minimum of $420 million to add 6,000 new prison beds and $92 million more annually to operate the added space.
Financing the current corrections budget requires $394 million, or 22 percent, of the state’s General Fund. State officials expect a shortfall of $200 million in this fund for 2016, yet cutting prison costs under existing circumstances seems unlikely. Only Louisiana and Mississippi spend less per prisoner than Alabama. Our prisons are staffed at 58 percent of authorized levels. A federal investigation of conditions at the women’s prison found that they violated the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
In part, Alabama’s prison overcrowding stems from a high incarceration rate, which ranks fourth among all states. Sentencing reforms have been underway, aimed at reserving prison space for violent criminals and providing effective community supervision for other offenders. The state’s probation and parole officers supervise more than 64,000 offenders but they carry an average caseload of 192.
The normal assumption is that money can be saved by reducing the prison population and then shifted to pay for improved practices in community supervision. This will be difficult in Alabama, considering the current level of overcrowding and understaffing in the prison system.
Nevertheless it is critical to invest in improvements to probation and parole supervision. In 2013, 40 percent of all admissions to prison-system custody had violated the terms of probation or parole.
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