Alabama lawmakers seek more money for prison construction
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama lawmakers are seeking the ability to borrow an additional $500 million for prison construction after the price of the state’s new mega-prison rose to over $1 billion, complicating plans to build a second behemoth facility.
The Senate Finance and Taxation Committee-General Fund on Wednesday advanced legislation that would raise the maximum amount of bonds that may be issued by the Alabama Corrections Institution Finance Authority from $785 million to $1.285 billion. Republican Sen. Greg Albritton, the bill sponsor, said the ability to borrow the additional money will ensure the state can complete a second 4,000-bed prison in Escambia County in addition to one now under construction in Elmore County.
The bill now moves to the full Alabama Senate.
“With this flexibility, we will have enough to achieve what we set out to do: Build two prisons and have them operational,” Albritton said.
The Alabama Legislature in 2021 approved a $1.3 billion prison construction plan to build two supersized prisons and renovate others as a partial solution to the problems in its violent and overcrowded prison system. However, the cost of building one prison, and the medical and mental health facilities that accompany it, rose to more than $1 billion, jeopardizing plans to build the second facility. Albritton said the state has enough money to start but not finish the second facility.
Some committee members noted how the cost of the first prison spiraled beyond additional projections and questioned if the state had a good handle on the price of the second facility.
“My question is, are these the real numbers? Do we even know at this point?” Sen. Merika Coleman, a Democrat from Pleasant Grove, said. “You know we have a new administration. We have tariffs that are going to impact steel or the construction cost. We have workers that are fleeing.”
Critics of the 2021 construction plan have said the problems in the state prison system cannot be fixed with new buildings.
The Department of Justice in 2020 sued Alabama, saying the state prisons for men are “riddled with prisoner-on-prisoner and guard-on-prisoner violence.” The lawsuit is ongoing and is expected to go to trial in 2026.
The Justice Department noted in a 2019 report that dilapidated conditions were a contributing factor to what it called unconstitutional conditions but emphasized that, “new facilities alone will not resolve the contributing factors to the overall unconstitutional condition of ADOC prisons, such as understaffing, culture, management deficiencies, corruption, policies, training, non-existent investigations, violence, illicit drugs, and sexual abuse.”
Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Hamm has likened the new $1 billion facility to a small city because it has 54 buildings over 335 acres to house inmates and provide medical, mental health and substance abuse treatment. The Alabama Department of Corrections announced in November that the new facility would be named after Gov. Kay Ivey.