Alabama Legislators Fail Corrections Again
The following editorial was published this weekend by the Montgomery Advertizer:
Gov. Bob Riley gave the Alabama Legislature a second chance to take the responsible course on funding Alabama’s prison system, but once again lawmakers put political expediency ahead of doing the right thing.
Riley sent the Legislature’s proposed state General Fund budget back to lawmakers Thursday with executive amendments that, among other things, reduced what legislators could spend on their pet pork-barrel projects and increased funding for the prison system.But the House and Senate both voted later that day to reject the governor’s executive amendments. So the $2.5 billion General Fund budget will go into effect in the new fiscal year starting Oct. 1 as originally passed by the Legislature.
That will leave the Department of Corrections with $366 million allocated for operations in the coming year, an increase of about $7 million over the current year but still about $6 million short of what the governor said the agency needed to operate. But legislators, who face re-election next year, made sure they put money aside for pet projects back in their home districts. So while prisons will be underfunded, lawmakers made sure they will have money they can designate for such things as UFO Days in Fyffe and the Ider Mule Day.
If this was the first time the Legislature had underfunded prisons, the Corrections Department probably could ride the year out. But this is a recurring problem, and the repeated tight budgets have taken their toll on the prison system. Alabama’s prisons house almost twice the number of inmates they were designed to hold. The ratio of corrections officers to inmates is far too low – so low, in fact, that some corrections officers have expressed concerns for their safety and the safety of the public. Prison officials have been forced to sell state lands in order to raise funds for badly needed deferred maintenance.
Against that backdrop, Riley’s office had warned that the Corrections Department might be forced by a federal judge to release prisoners early to alleviate overcrowding. If that happens, and if, heaven forbid, one of those prisoners released early harms someone, it will simply underscore the Legislature’s irresponsibility. But if it doesn’t happen, it won’t mean lawmakers were right; only that they were lucky.
Lawmakers love to look tough on crime by increasing the length of prison sentences. But part of being tough on crime also has to be finding the revenue to adequately fund police, courts and prisons. Doing one without doing the other is blatantly irresponsible.
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