A new study finds that Alabama's cash-strapped, overcrowded prison system could save up to almost $400,000 per year if it quit separating inmates with HIV and AIDS from other prisoners.

If infected inmates had access to education and community-based work and restitution programs like other inmates, about 56 inmates more per year would become eligible for programs outside the prison, the study found.

That would ease overcrowding and save the state between $306,000 and $392,000 per year, said Rachel Maddow, an expert on prisons and AIDs who headed the study.

"It costs a lot less to have somebody in these community programs," she said Wednesday.

The study, "Excluding Alabama State Prisoners with HIV/AIDS from Community-Based Programs," was released last week by the Alabama Prison Project and the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project.

Prisons spokesman Brian Corbett said the study warrants review but it doesn't address the potential costs of diverting the inmates from prisons into various programs.

"It could be a case of where you save on one end and have to spend on the other," he said.

When Mississippi dropped its policy in 2001, Alabama was the only state left requiring segregation of HIV and AIDS prisoners from other inmates.

The study's release comes at a time when Alabama's new prisons commissioner, Donal Campbell has not yet decided whether to keep the policy. Campbell was appointed by Gov. Bob Riley.

Campbell was prisons commissioner in Tennessee, which has no such policy. The ACLU and Alabama Prison Project have asked for a meeting with Campbell, who has not agreed as yet.

"The time is right to explore more cost-saving measures and stop the needless segregation of HIV-positive prisoners," said Lucia Penland, director of the Alabama Prison Project.

But the main point of the policy - that segregating prisoners means those prisoners don't transmit the disease to other inmates - is still a compelling argument supporting the policy, Corbett said.

"A positive of the segregation is that we know of zero transmissions inside the prison," Corbett said.

Male inmates with HIV and AIDS are housed at Limestone Correctional Facility in what prison officials call The Special Unit. Females are at Tutwiler Prison for Women.

The inmates range from first-time, nonviolent offenders to convicted murderers. At Limestone, more than 200 prisoners inhabit long rows of bunk beds in the unit's main room, which is the length of a football field.

At both prisons, inmates are systematically segregated round-the-clock and excluded from programs offered to other inmates.

For years, Alabama's AIDS segregation policy was under legal attack by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups. But in 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal in which lawyers representing HIV-infected inmates accused the state of unconstitutional discrimination.

Still, Alabama has budget problems and the prisons are overcrowded, a situation leading to numerous lawsuits in recent years by prisoners and their advocates. It has also had a domino effect on local jails, which often hold prisoners convicted of state crimes beyond the legally mandated 30 days.

Maddow said allowing HIV and AIDS-positive inmates to participate in work-release, community work center and supervised restitution is an idea whose time has come.

Despite the state's policy, Maddow said AIDS and HIV can still be spread among prisoners in the general population who are infected but just didn't test positive when they entered the system.

"For all the emotional appeal of this idea that you can keep people protected, the prisons have never done any study that says Alabama's rate of transmission is any lower than any other state," she said.

Alabama Rep. Laura Hall, D-Huntsville, heads the state's Gov.'s HIV Commission for Children, Youth and Adults. Hall said she supports allowing infected prisoners access to the same programs as the general inmate population.

The policy "deprives HIV positive inmates of critical opportunities for rehabilitation afforded to the other inmates," she said in a statement.