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| Alabama male prisoners to return from Mississippi |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 01/12/2004 |
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The 1,424 male Alabama inmates being housed in a private prison in Mississippi should be returned to Alabama within 90 days, state Corrections Commissioner Donal Campbell said last Tuesday. Alabama transferred the inmates last summer to a prison run by Corrections Corporation of America to ease the overcrowding in Alabama's prisons and county jails. Since then, some space has opened up in Alabama prisons, and Campbell told the Legislature's Joint Prison Committee that the inmates will be back in Alabama "within 60 to 90 days." He said he will lay out a detailed plan for their return in about a week from the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in Tutwiler, Miss. The inmates are costing Alabama $27.50 per day. Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett said Alabama won't save money by returning the inmates because it costs that much to maintain an inmate in an Alabama prison. Last year Alabama sent 274 female inmates to a private prison operated by LCS in Basile, La. Campbell said he can't make any predictions on when they might be home because Alabama's lone female prison, Tutwiler Prison in Wetumpka, is still filled to capacity. Alabama is paying $23.65 per day for each woman. Campbell told the committee that in his search for more prison space, he has toured mental health centers that the state recently closed in Thomasville and Wetumpka, but he lacks the money to operate them. Campbell has proposed that his General Fund appropriation be raised from $250 million this year to $344 million next year -- a $94 million increase that includes $1.5 million to start using the Wetumpka center. He did not propose any money for Thomasville. Campbell said Gov. Bob Riley has not yet told him what he will recommend the Legislature allocate to the prison system. Alabama moved inmates to Louisiana and Mississippi in response to lawsuits about overcrowded conditions. The prison system also faces a lawsuit over conditions in its unit for AIDS-infected inmates at Limestone Correctional Facility near Athens. Alabama is the only state that segregates its AIDS inmates into a separate unit, but state Health Officer Don Williamson told the committee that Alabama has never had a documented case of a prisoner giving the AIDS virus to another inmate through sexual contact. |
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