Alabama To Remove Inmates From Private Prison
Strapped for money, Alabama will remove about 250 inmates from the privately run prison where two men recently escaped amid a string of security failures, state Prison Commissioner Richard Allen said Monday, reported the AP.
Strapped for money, Alabama will remove about 250 inmates from the privately run prison where two men recently escaped amid a string of security failures, state Prison Commissioner Richard Allen said Monday. Money was behind the decision by the Department of Corrections to give up a contract with LCS Corrections Services Inc. at the end of the current fiscal year, Allen said. In an interview with The Associated Press, Allen said his agency can’t afford to continue housing 250 inmates at the Perry County Detention Center … He said it would be difficult to find space for them in state lockups, “but we don’t have the money to continue keeping them over there” …
Allen said the department will both encourage parole officials to increase early releases to help make room for the prisoners and look for new spaces in which to house inmates coming back to state lockups from the private prison. Allen said all the inmates should be back in Alabama prisons by the end of September, the close of the fiscal year. “We’re real tight on space right now, and we’ll be working them in where they can,” said Allen …
Designed to hold 13,403 men and women, Alabama’s prisons were bulging with 24,781 inmates at the end of April, according to Department of Corrections reports. Overcrowding forced the state to put about 250 male inmates at the Perry County prison in March, Allen said. The state pays $32 daily to house an inmate at the private prison, which is considerably less than the average cost of $41.71 a day that it costs to keep someone in a state prison. But the state doesn’t have money budgeted for private prisons in the fiscal year starting Oct. 1, Allen said, so it must bring the inmates back and find ways to hold them in state facilities.
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