'A De Facto Prison': A Look At Tuscaloosa Co. Jail Overcrowding As Prison Debate Begins

TUSCALOOSA, AL — Lawmakers are gathering under the Capitol Dome in Montgomery to suss out plans for prison reform that could see two new 4,000-bed correctional facilities built in Alabama to help alleviate the strain on its beleaguered corrections system.

The debate will also begin as the Tuscaloosa County Jail is plagued with capacity issues of its own, partly due to managing the overflow of state inmates from full prisons. The embattled Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) is also mired in controversy due to the conditions and lack of staffing at its prisons, as the problems boil over to the local level.

While prison overcrowding amid the threat of a federal takeover has been a consistent talking point as the state's prison population swelled to its present size, the rubber will now meet the road this week as public debate begins on how to best handle the situation at hand. And the debates will also include on-paper measures taking aim at reducing the overall prison population through specific reforms to alter sentences for low-level offenders who show good conduct.

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State Rep. Chris England, a Tuscaloosa Democrat and party chair, said the special session was set to begin 4 p.m. Monday with four bills to consider — House and Senate versions of bills relating to the construction of the prisons and another focused on criminal justice reform.

The bills will begin in the House of Representatives, with the construction bill for the prisons set to be heard by the House General Fund Committee on Tuesday, while the criminal justice reform bills will be put before the House Judiciary Committee.

Those meeting schedules and locations have yet to be announced.

Special Session Notes

• Alabama Political Reporter's Eddie Burkhalter writes that, if passed, the construction bill would see the state borrow $785 million through a bond issuance to build two new men’s prisons in Elmore and Escambia counties. Another $400 million will be allocated for the construction of the prisons through the state's portion of federal COVID-19 relief funds, in addition to up to $154 million from the state's General Fund. (More from APR)
• Burkhalter also reports that a proposed second phase of construction would see a new women’s prison built to replace the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women, in addition to renovations of prisons in Limestone and Jefferson counties, and improvements for one prison in either Barbour or Bullock counties.
• One of the two criminal justice reform measures included in the single bill would see sentences reevaluated for those convicted of a non-violent crime based on their conduct while incarcerated.
• The other criminal justice reform measure would increase the number of inmates to be released and placed on supervision ahead of their initial release day.
• England speculates that the full House chamber will not consider any bills until Wednesday, at the earliest, as they make their way through their respective committees.
• Click here to watch live video streams from the special session.

According to ADOC records, the current system is designed to support roughly 12,400 inmates, but is currently housing 24,640 as of Monday.

There's been extensive reporting on Alabama's prison system in the wake of a 2020 lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Justice, which argues that Alabama "fails to provide adequate protection from prisoner-on-prisoner violence and prisoner-on-prisoner sexual abuse, fails to provide safe and sanitary conditions, and subjects prisoners to excessive force at the hands of prison staff."

While the state has pushed back on issues of unsanitary conditions and lack of staffing, before demanding in vain that federal authorities drop part of the lawsuit, the problems have become more difficult to ignore ... even in the Tuscaloosa County Jail.

'A Delay Tactic'

As of Monday morning, the county jail confirmed to Patch that it was currently at 129% capacity, housing a total of 695 total inmates. This is well above the 540-inmate capacity reported for the facility. Of those inmates, 133 are being held in the county jail for ADOC, which is an issue that Sheriff Ron Abernathy has been outspoken about going back to a lawsuit filed last November by the Southern Poverty Law Center that, in-part, took aim at overcrowding in the jail.

When Patch reported on the voluntary dismissal of the lawsuit in February, the sheriff said the number of state inmates being housed at that time in the Tuscaloosa County Jail was 125.

Separately, 461 Tuscaloosa County Jail inmates have been vaccinated against the coronavirus, which provides a spot of optimism for officials faced with the competing crises of a global pandemic and the unprecedented overflow of state inmates from ADOC facilities into local jails.

When the overcrowding crisis first began to spiral, county officials confirmed that public health concerns regarding the COVID-19 pandemic factored in to the state's slow response in transferring its prisoners back from county jails. But with a high vaccination rate among its inmates, the state's current approach to building out its corrections system represents, as one official put it, "a delay tactic."

Abernathy told Patch on Monday that Tuscaloosa County has proven no exception to the heavy strain placed on resources not just locally, but across the state, due to overcrowding within the Alabama Department of Corrections. To the sheriff, and many others, this underscores a large-scale problem that must be addressed, regardless of it be through the construction of new prisons or sweeping reforms to reduce overcrowding.

"The state is slowly beginning to pick up inmates from our facility," the sheriff said. "Unfortunately, the citizens of Tuscaloosa have been double burdened by the expense."

'A De Facto Prison'

Tuscaloosa County Probate Judge Rob Robertson, who also chairs the County Commission tasked with setting the budget for the jail, explained in an interview with Patch that ADOC initially paid a per diem amount for its inmates being housed in Tuscaloosa, with past reporting showing that one inmate costs roughly $56 a day for housing, food and necessary medications.

That number comes out to a little more than $20,000 a year for a single inmate.

However, once supplemental aid money to ADOC from the federal CARES Act ran out, the per diem payments to county jails stopped. This leaves county taxpayers, in plain terms, to foot the bill for state inmates in a county-funded facility. The situation, though, is made even more frustrating for county officials when considering taxpayer dollars collected by the state are already the source of funding for Alabama's prisons.

For Tuscaloosa, Robertson claims county coffers are owed north of $1 million for the money it has spent to house state inmates after the per diem payments ceased.

"We’re in a lot of back and forth with the state," the probate judge said. "All counties are in this boat, but we are acting as a de facto prison."

County jails are typically used as temporary housing facilities for those awaiting trial, transfer to another facility or serving sentences usually shorter than a year. Robertson pointed out that prisons provide more space for those serving long sentences, including adequate recreation areas, job opportunities and other, for lack of a better term, activities.

While Robertson no doubt agreed with a pressing need for not just more housing, but better quality accommodations, he also stopped short of saying the set of reforms being discussed during the special session would be the panacea for the ills consuming the Alabama corrections system.

"I think it will help us effectively tread water," he said. "It's going to have some housing and better housing, I'm confident, that seems to be clear, but we’re still full on every mental health bed on the other side. So we still have a big gap, but I hope we can get more inpatient mental health treatment, which does have a correlation with the population in the county jail. Prisons are important, but we also need a serious look at expanding the capacity in mental health facilities."

Hope for progress, at least at the local level, is probably best manifested in the push by Tuscaloosa County officials to secure a new $6 million mental health crisis center. Patch also reported in February when Gov. Kay Ivey announced during her State of the State Address plans to invest $46 million at the state-run Taylor Hardin Secure Medical Facility in Tuscaloosa.

The proposed improvements would add 96 beds at the facility, but officials have pointed out that Tuscaloosa County being in the running to secure funding for its own mental health crisis center would prove to have a much more localized impact. The selection process for the crisis center funding, according to Robertson, is currently down to Tuscaloosa and Jefferson counties.

"To me, it's not even a comparison," he said. "We have all of these state hospitals and a lot of population that's in need, so that would give us a little bit of a go-between."

Be sure to follow us here throughout the week for more coverage from the special legislative session, as we will be in constant communication with the lawmakers, activists and journalists at the center of the debate.

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