When a hotel fills to capacity, it changes the sign out front to “No Vacancy.” Unfortunately, Alabama's prisons and jails don't have that option, so the legislature and court officials have to work to create more alternative sentencing options to cut into the massive overcrowding behind bars in this state.
As of March 2017, Alabama's prisons are 173 percent above capacity. The legislature is working to craft a plan not to alleviate overcrowding, but to cut it to the goal of being 137.5 percent above capacity. With overcrowding comes violence and dangerous working conditions for corrections officers.
For Franklin County Sheriff Shannon Oliver, the numbers in his jail look better, but still it remains a challenge to feed, clothe and provide medical treatment for the 115 inmates in the Franklin County Jail.
With a capacity of 220 inmates, the jail is at half capacity. 18 jail personnel are in charge of the inmate population. While the entire department has 52 employees, those include office personnel, deputies, dispatchers, etc., so only 18 actually work in the jail with inmates, Oliver said.
Alabama legislators have considered multiple options to alleviate prison overcrowding. Ideas have ranged from the construction of four super prisons to house all inmates to coming up with more alternative sentencing options like drug counseling and treatment and electronic monitoring.
Recent changes in Alabama's criminal laws have created low-grade Class D felonies that provide shorter jail sentences to be served in county jails rather than in prison. Some legislators have suggested that county jails serve as 'satellite' prisons and house state inmates within their capacity range. Oliver said he's fine with that as long as the state is willing to pay counties for that housing.
“Medical expenses are tremendous and that is something we'd look to the state to pay as well as housing costs for state inmates,” Oliver said. “I don't want to be keeping them for free. The jail has got to be paid for and we need some type of payment to help Franklin County taxpayers with those expenses.”
For many years, county jails were overcrowded with state inmates who had been sentenced by courts but just hadn't been picked up by Alabama Department of Corrections officials. Those inmates would often spent large parts of their prison sentences in county jails with no reimbursement offered to the housing county. That changed after a lawsuit was filed by the Alabama Association of County Commissioners and the Alabama Sheriff's Association to expedite that process because of the burden created on the counties in housing so many state inmates.
“The numbers have dropped drastically since then. Even in the last few years, the state has gotten better in picking up inmates in a timely fashion,” Oliver said.
The Franklin County Jail has six state inmates as of May 17, 2017. Most state inmates are now picked up by prison officials within 30 days of being sentenced.
Oliver believes one way to save the county money would be to release non-violent inmates with chronic medical conditions on electronic monitoring in order to save the county the costs of treating them and providing medication.
“It would be a huge relief to taxpayers to have them out on monitors. We have talked to officials in Lauderdale County who are considering that but right now we're waiting to see what's implemented and what we need to do,” Oliver said.
Alabama law requires county commissions to provide adequate medical care to all inmates in county jails.
Last year, the Alabama legislature changed the procedure for probation revocations, creating 'dips and dunks' rather than partial revocations and technical violations. A dip is when a probation officer places the probationer in jail for 2-3 days, but a dunk, which is imposed by a judge, can be up to 45 days. The county is reimbursed by the state for inmates held on probation violations, Oliver said.
Oliver said the county faces a huge cost when deputies have to pick up probation and/or parole violators and transport them to Montgomery, often seeing them released within days.
“It's a huge cost for the county for no longer than they stay. Three months ago, we had an inmate whose probation was violated. We took him down to Montgomery. He stayed two days and was released,” Oliver said. “That cost us a lot of money and manpower to take him down there and they turn around and release him. That's leaving the responsibility on us to have to haul them around.”
While the State of Alabama is short of work release inmates currently, Oliver said that very few county inmates participate in work release.
“I don't know why businesses use the state other than the fact they're there longer periods of time. We have very few working work release. Jobs have slacked off and most businesses like the poultry plant use state inmates to do labor because county jail inmates aren't there long and once they get them trained, they quit,” Oliver said.
