MONTGOMERY -- In an effort to ease overcrowded conditions and
comply with a federal court order, Alabama officials moved 70 inmates
from Wetumpka's Tutwiler Prison for Women to an unaccredited,
privately run facility in Louisiana, corrections Commissioner Donal
Campbell announced Monday.
The state will pay LCS Corrections Serv ices, a for-profit firm
that operates six prisons in Louisiana and Texas, $24 per day for each
prisoner -- $3 less than what the state spends -- to house the women
at the South Louisiana Corrections Center in Basile, near Lafayette.
Campbell said the move, made via an eight-hour bus ride Sunday
night and early Monday morning, was not announced ahead of time for
security reasons.
The transfer coincides with a new commitment from the state Board
of Pardons and Paroles to increase its docket to 60 cases per day,
according to Troy King, Gov. Bob Riley's legal adviser. That's up from
what King described as a historically irregular schedule.
Those efforts, which come amid a barrage of state and federal
lawsuits concerning conditions in Alabama prisons, should reduce a
swelling inmate population, King said.
King also confirmed that the Riley administration began Monday
accepting bids from more private prison operators should the state
have to transfer additional inmates. The state is paying LCS under an
"emergency contract," which is not subject to the state's bid law, for
at least 60 days.
Expedited parole hearings and any necessary transfers will
continue, King explained, until the system is in compliance with all
court mandates.
With the Sunday transfer, Tutwiler now has about 1,000 inmates. It
was designed for 545, and Campbell said the current goal is to reduce
the population to 750.
According to the Department of Corrections' latest figures, 18
major facilities now house about 20,000 inmates, more than double the
designed capacity. That does not include more than 1,500 state
prisoners awaiting transfers from county jails into state facilities.
Riley's predecessor, Don Siegelman, considered contracting with
private, out-of-state firms, including LCS, but his administration
found those alternatives to be too expensive or otherwise impractical.
Prisoners' rights advocates have criticized moving prisoners out of
state, claiming private prisons offer poor rehabilitation programs and
have ill-trained security. They've also said putting great distances
between prisoners and their friends and family is harmful.
Campbell and Patrick LeBlanc, a managing partner of LCS, conceded
Monday that prisoners are better rehabilitated when close to home.
LeBlanc said his company would expand its visiting hours -- usually
a morning and afternoon session each Saturday and Sunday -- to
accommodate visitors to the Alabama prisoners.
"We're trying to make a good situation out of a bad situation," he
said in a teleconference with Alabama reporters Monday.
Still, LCS has had trouble housing out-of-state inmates before now.
The state of Idaho shipped about 300 prisoners there in the 1990s but
pulled them out after a July 1997 riot.
The same year, Idaho officials released an audit of the LCS prison.
The inquiry noted inadequate staff training, too much use of pepper
spray, a lack of record keeping about when force was used against
prisoners, and conditions that didn't meet the accreditation standards
of the American Correctional Association.
LeBlanc told the Mobile Register in a 2001 interview that seeking
accreditation was too expensive.
He dismissed criticism of private prisons Monday, telling reporters
that his Basile facility has 13 self-help programs -- from GED classes
to Alcoholics Anonymous -- and jobs within the prison to offer
inmates.
The facility has one guard for every 12 to 15 inmates, depending on
fluctuations in the population. The ratio at Tutwiler is about one
guard for every 11 inmates, according to Corrections Department
statistics.
The Alabama inmates will be held separately from other inmates in a
minimum security housing unit that LeBlanc compared to military
barracks.
Campbell said he had personally toured the Basile facility and
compared it favorably to Tutwiler: "I think they're both good. They're
both safe."
He credited the difference between Alabama's per-prisoner spending
rate -- the lowest among all state governments -- and even-lower LCS
rate partly to bureaucratic expenses, such as mandatory paperwork and
cumbersome purchasing procedures.
Campbell said the 70 women were notified of the transfer early
Sunday evening. He described "mixed reaction" among the group, though
he said there was no "extreme reaction" from any of the transferees.
Lisa Kung, an attorney for women inmates who filed a lawsuit over
conditions at the prison, said she was "furious" that the prisoners
were transferred without notice.
"They jumped to this irresponsibly and without aggressively
pursuing other options," said Kung, who works for the Southern Center
for Human Rights.
The inmates selected represented a cross-section of crimes,
Campbell said, but all of them had had no history of security problems
in the prison and have no record of mental or physical health
problems. He said inmates close to their release dates were not
considered for transfer.
Campbell said there were mothers among the transfer group. Marital
and parental status was not a consideration in choosing which inmates
to move, he said.
