ACCA’s Brasfield warns ‘big crisis right over the horizon’ for county jails as ADOC blocks inmate transfer to prisons

Since late March, the Alabama Department of Corrections has drastically limited the number of inmates it is allowing into its facilities, an action which was taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

However, as the courts are resuming criminal trials, the ADOC has created a burden for the jails in Alabama’s 67 counties, which have a backlog of state-sentenced inmates sitting in county jails awaiting transfer.

During an interview with Mobile radio’s FM Talk 106.5 on Friday, Association of County Commissions of Alabama executive direction Sonny Brasfield warned the current arrangement was unsustainable.

“Certainly in the last nine months, the state of Alabama has significantly limited its acceptance of state-sentenced inmates from the jails into Department of Corrections,” he said. “Today, when we get the report, we fully expect there to be more than 2,000 state-sentenced inmates that are sitting in county jails. And then there are another 1,300 or so who were parole and probation violators that are also awaiting transfer. There is a big crisis right over the horizon.”

Brasfield said the state of Alabama was paying counties out of CARES Act money to help shoulder the burden, but the jails continue to be overwhelmed.

“One of the positive things about the CARES Act is that administration has not turned a deaf ear,” Brasfield continued. “The administration understands that the decision they make to slow down, and in some months, stop intake, has put counties under a significant strain. So counties are receiving $28 per day per inmate from the CARES Act funding to cover costs. What we’ve said to the state all along is that money is only buying us time so that the state can resume a regular intake of inmates. And that money runs out December 30, unless Congress takes some answer, and even so, counties are not able to hold these inmates long-term simply if the state can provide money to do that. Jails are not long-term facilities. They are not constructed for that purpose. And if we move to the rural parts of the state, there are just not enough beds for us to assume the job of the Department of Corrections.”

@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Alabama, the editor of Breitbart TV, a columnist for Mobile’s Lagniappe Weekly, and host of Mobile’s “The Jeff Poor Show” from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. on FM Talk 106.5.