More Alabama prisoners are now calling a Mississippi lockup home. 100 inmates arrived at the prison in Tutwiler, Mississippi Friday morning. The move is a part of an effort to comply with a court order to ease overcrowding in Alabama prisons.

This latest transfer brings the number of Alabama prisoners at the facility to 300. 1,400 more prisoners are set to make the move to Mississippi over the next two months. At least one Alabama corrections employee will stay at the Mississippi facility as an on-site monitor.

More inmates go to Mississippi

By Mike Cason
Montgomery Advertiser


The flow of Alabama prison inmates across the state line continued Friday as 100 male prisoners traveled on two buses to Tutwiler, Miss.

Friday's shipment brings to 609 the number of male and female inmates sent to private facilities in Mississippi and Louisiana this year to relieve prison crowding.

Department of Corrections Commissioner Donal Campbell and spokesman Brian Corbett toured the Tallahatchie County facility Friday, where the male inmates are being held.

"I know it will sound like I'm just blowing smoke, but I've never seen a happier group of inmates," Corbett said. "They say the food is better. They're in a new, cleaner, more organized facility. It's an air conditioned facility. Just their general living conditions are better."

The state now has sent 300 male inmates to the facility in northwest Mississippi. It has sent 309 female inmates to a private prison in Louisiana.

Campbell said the moves are temporary measures, although he has set no time limit on them.

The state prison system is under court orders to relieve a backlog of inmates from county jails.

Also, U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson issued a preliminary finding in December that Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in Elmore County was so crowded and understaffed that its conditions were unconstitutional.

The transfers of the women out of state have dropped the inmate population at the main Julia Tutwiler facility to less than 750, a goal the Department of Corrections set in filings with Thompson's court, Corbett said.

The state has a contract with LCS Corrections Services of Lafayette, La., to house the female inmates at its facility in Basile, La. The cost is $22.50 per day, per inmate, Corbett said.

That's cheaper than inmates housed in state, which costs about $27 a day, Corbett said.

For the male inmates, the state has an emergency contract with Corrections Corporation of America to house male inmates for $27.50 a day. Corbett said other companies will be invited to bid for a more long-term contract.

Sonny Brasfield, assistant executive director of the Association of County Commissions of Alabama, which represents counties that sued the state to relieve jail crowding, acknowledged that the transfers have helped. The number of state inmates in county jails has dropped from 2,745 in December 1,801 as of the end of May, according to the Department of Corrections.

Montgomery County Circuit Judge William Shashy has ordered the state to remove all inmates from its county jails within 30 days of sentencing.

"Our position is that the 30-day grace period is just something the court has given the department," Brasfield said. "The law says that the prisoners are really the state's responsibility from the first day they become a state inmate."

The Department of Corrections asked the Legislature for a $146 million increase in funding for next year, which would amount to more than a 60 percent increase. Corbett said $60 million would go to build a new women's prison.

The Legislature will meet in special session in September to pass the state budgets.