By Mike Cason
al.com
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Alabama spends less than most other southeastern states to maintain its prisoners, although the state is paying substantially more per inmate than a few years ago.
At a budget hearing this week, Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm showed legislators a chart that ranked Alabama fifth out of nine southeastern states with a daily average cost of $83.
North Carolina spent the most per day on inmates, $173. After that was a big drop-off to Florida, which ranked second at $114, followed by Tennessee ($107), South Carolina ($105), and Kentucky ($98).
The three states with average daily costs less than Alabama’s were Georgia ($82), Louisiana ($69) and Mississippi ($65).
Hamm gave the numbers, which are from the 2021 fiscal year, during an informal hearing Tuesday with members of the budget committees of the House and Senate.
Hamm noted the consequences of spending less than most other states. The U.S. Department of Justice has sued Alabama over violent conditions in its understaffed, overcrowded, and aging prisons. And Alabama is also dealing with a decade-old lawsuit over mental health care for inmates, a case that has resulted in a federal court order for the state to add 2,000 correctional officers, essentially doubling the staff, by July 2025.
“Keep spending less, do we keep having systemic litigation and other issues? Or do we spend more? We don’t have more. There’s two trains of thought on that,” Hamm said.
Alabama’s low rate of spending on prisons compared to other states is not a new development. A 2015 report by the Vera Institute said Alabama spent $14,780 per year per inmate, less than any other state. The national average was about $33,000 per inmate at that time.
On another chart, Hamm showed that Alabama’s daily cost to maintain inmates has risen 21% in four years, from $72 in fiscal year 2020 to a projected $87 in fiscal year 2024.
Medical costs for inmates and salaries for security staff were the biggest components in the increase, the chart showed. The ADOC signed a $1 billion, four-and-half year contract with a medical provider last year. The ADOC increased pay for correctional officers last year, raising starting pay to $50,000 and up, as part of an effort to hire and retain more security staff. Here is a link to Hamm’s presentation.
Sen. Greg Albritton , R- Atmore, chair of the Senate budget committee, cited numbers showing that ADOC’s budget, including federal funds, grew 34% from 2019 to 2023, from $548 million to $732 million. That increase was not the result of housing more inmates, Albritton noted. The prison population has been relatively stable the last few years, hovering at about 20,000 to 21,000.
“We don’t anticipate there being a decline here because the numbers will continue to grow, both inmates, and otherwise,” Albritton said. “Is that a fair statement?”
“That’s a fair statement,” Hamm said.
Hamm told lawmakers the ADOC has not yet determined its budget request for next year. The legislative session starts in February.
Albritton, the Senate budget chairman, noted that in addition to its growing operational costs, the ADOC needs funds for construction. The Legislature has appropriated money for a 4,000-bed specialty care prison in Elmore County which is slated for completion in May 2026 at a project cost of $1.25 billion. But a second 4,000-bed prison in Escambia County has not been fully funded and construction has not started.
Since Alabama began discussing plans to build new prisons almost a decade ago, there has been some talk that modern prisons could function with fewer correctional officers than Alabama’s older prisons. The new prisons will be mostly cells, unlike the dormitory-style older prisons.
But Hamm said he wanted to correct any misconception that the state can save money by scaling back its correctional staff with newer prisons. He noted the federal court order, which essentially requires the ADOC to double its staff.
“We’re going to operate as efficiently, as professionally and as constitutionally as we can,” Hamm told the legislators. “Whatever y’all appropriate the Department of Corrections , we’re going to operate that within those means. But we can’t control outside forces. We can only control us. We can’t control the courts.”
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