Federal Judge Orders Alabama To Fix Prisons Now

In January of 2014, Yellowhammer Founder Cliff Sims wrote a story predicting what happened today—Alabama failed to reform its prisons, so a federal judge is intervening as a result of a lawsuit against the state’s prisons.

As Sims said in that article,

To put it plainly, Alabama has the most serious prison crowding problem in the country. It’s so bad that we’re running the risk of federal courts stepping in and ordering the haphazard release of thousands of prisoners from the state’s lockups.

While it hasn’t gotten to that point yet, Federal Judge Myron Thompson has made it clear that if Alabama doesn’t do something soon, the federal courts will.

Today, Judge Thompson released an order related to the case pending case against the State of Alabama and Department of Corrections. Specifically, his order addresses overcrowding and mental health care for prisoners. In his ruling, the judge said the psychiatric care of Alabama’s inmates is “horrendously inadequate” and that it violates the U.S. Constitution because he deems it “cruel and unusual punishment” of the nearly 3,500 inmates receiving mental health treatment in Alabama’s overcrowded prisons.

Some ten months after Sims 2014 prediction, the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of inmates with mental illness. Judge Thompson’s 302-page ruling today says the evidence “extensively and materially supported the plaintiffs’ claim.” To find a solution, Thompson said, “The court emphasizes that given the severity and urgency of the need for mental-health care explained in this opinion, the proposed relief must be both immediate and long term. No partial final judgment shall issue at this time as to the claim resolved in this entry.”

In response, Governor Kay Ivey released a statement, which said:

There are obviously several issues within our prison system that must be addressed. Over the next few weeks Commissioner Dunn, his staff, and my office will be reviewing Judge Thompson’s order.

I am committed to providing justice to all Alabamians by ensuring constitutionally-permissible conditions for all prisoners. I will be working closely with Commissioner Dunn and the leadership in the House and Senate to address the issues raised in today’s order.

All appropriate options at my disposal, including the possibility of a special session, will be considered as potential remedies to address the judge’s order.

Senator Cam Ward (R- Alabaster) has also been a central figure in this issue, advocating for the necessary reforms long before this ruling. Speaking to Yellowhammer today, Senator Ward said:

Going back to 2011 we had a prison population of  193% capacity. We have taken steps to reduce it and it’s down to 172% capacity, but obviously that’s still too high. In addition to Judge Thompson directing us to address the mental health of these prisoners, he points out that our prisons are still overcrowded. The fact is, this has been ignored for far too long and if we want to avoid releasing prisoners as Cliff noted in his 2014 article, we must pay the price to solve the problems the judge has ordered us to address. There’s no silver bullet answer, but it can be done if we have the political fortitude to do it. California largely ignored a ruling from a federal judge in a very similar case, and they eventually got to the place where the federal courts took over their prisons. Obviously, Alabama does not want to end up like California, so we must address this problem now.

Related: The Alabama Legislature should pass a budget that fully funds Prison Reform (Opinion)