A member of the Southern Poverty Law Center brought up several points about the problems Alabama prisons face in a talk given at Auburn First Baptist Church at 7 p.m. on Monday, March 16. The event was hosted by the League of Women Voters of East Alabama.
Maria Morris, managing attorney in the SPLC’s Alabama office, stressed the need for improvement in areas such as overcrowding, victimization and lack of proper resources in adult prisons across the state.
“I knew when I came here that Alabama’s prisons were extremely overcrowded, and I came from California where we worked on overcrowded prisons there, but there’s no other place in the United States where prisons are running at these kinds of levels,” Morris said.
According to Morris, one facility is operating at more than 300 percent capacity; Kilby Correctional Facility, a men’s prison built for 440 people, has been housing more than 1,400 inmates for years.
Morris also said Alabama prisons are mostly full of disadvantaged people. Besides the majority of African-American inmates in Alabama prisons, there is also a high number of mentally ill inmates because of the closure of several mental health facilities.
Alabama has the third highest incarceration rate in the country after Louisiana and Mississippi, but is ranked 23rd in the nation in terms of violent crime rates, according to Morris.
Another major point Morris touched on was the severe underemployment of prison guards, and the widespread lack of professionalism on the job. There is also underemployment of health care professionals in the prison system, which factors into the need for better medical and mental health care for inmates.
“We are trying to run a professional organization, and that’s one of the things that is critical for the Alabama prison system to get better,” Morris said. “It needs to happen that the wardens and all of the people underneath them see that it’s good and respected and rewarded to be professional in the way they run their prison system.”
The audience asked several questions and provided their own input throughout the talk as well.
One member of the audience, Martha Leonard, said she enjoyed the talk.
“I think it was very beneficial to everybody that’s got loved ones in prison, and I feel like people are trying to help the inmates and help their loved ones improve their life when they do get out, and improve their life while they’re in prison,” Leonard said. “The public needs to get more involved in the prison systems.”
Sara Wood, board member of the League of Women Voters of East Alabama and member of the SPLC, said she thought Morris did a wonderful job of outlining the complexities of state prison problems.
“It’s not just fixing overcrowding, it’s fixing health care, and it’s really about changing the perception that a lot of people have of prisoners,” Wood said. “If we really want to fix the issue, we need to get to the root cause of why we’re in this problem in the first place.”
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