State prison officials this week plan to begin bringing some of 300 women incarcerated out of state back to Alabama.
The first 30 female prisoners will return from Louisiana on Nov. 7, Alabama Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett said last Thursday.
The decision is a result of the population dipping at Tutwiler prison in Wetumpka, the state's only women's lockup. The headcount at Tutwiler averaged 940 in September, down from a high of 1,246 in February. Tutwiler remains over its capacity. It was built in 1942 to house 364, and was redesigned to hold 617.
Currently, there are 27,727 state prisoners, male and female, in Alabama. The number has been dropping steadily since May's high of 28,406, DOC records show. Numbers are down because the Alabama Department of Pardons and Paroles in April began speeding up paroles by hearing a special docket of non-violent offenders. New parole officers also were hired.
Since April 7, parole has been granted to 1,725 prisoners whose hearings have been handled on the special docket, said Cynthia Dillard, assistant director of the Board of Pardons and Paroles. Not all are women.
However, Corbett said the Department of Corrections has no plans yet to begin returning any of the 1,430 male prisoners housed at a private prison in Mississippi.
Also, the state has expanded Community Corrections programs to allow more people with drug offenses and non-violent felonies to get treatment and face penalties outside prison.
Last spring, the prison system began transferring inmates to private out-of-state prisons as a result of lawsuits against the state for the way prisoners were being housed.
U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson ruled Tutwiler unconstitutionally dangerous and overcrowded, calling the lockup a "ticking time bomb," after the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights sued the state over conditions there in 2002.
An ensuing agreement with the court forced the state to reduce the population of Tutwiler's main building to 750. An annex at the prison houses about another 200 prisoners.
With the main building population down to 704, Corbett said corrections officials opted to return some women from the Southeastern Louisiana Correctional Center, a private prison in Basile run by LCS Corrections Services. Alabama has moved 309 women to the for-profit prison.
Corbett said more women may be returned if more bed space opens up through increased paroles and releases.