Alabama Corrections commissioner: Department will miss court-ordered staffing target
2024-08-21
Disclosure: State of Alabama-based writer. This article is a work from cited sources for informational purposes and is used with permission. No affiliate links are included.
by Ralph Chapoco, Alabama Reflector Originally published on August 13, 2024
(Alabama)- The head of the Alabama Department of Corrections said on August 13, 2024, that the department will not likely meet a court order to hire an additional 2,000 corrections officers by next July.
Commissioner John Hamm told lawmakers during a budget hearing that DOC has made progress in recruiting candidates to oversee and manage individuals incarcerated within different facilities in the state. But Hamm said the department would “probably not” meet the staffing requirement as set out in the Braggs v. Dunn lawsuit over the physical and mental health needs of those incarcerated in the prisons.
“There is that number, but we are going to hire as many as we can for as long as we can,” Hamm told reporters during an interview after the hearing.
Hamm added, “We have been averaging 55 correctional officer trainees in academy classes through four years, and we also get to count our correctional security guards, of which those are 30, 40, 50 per class. So, what is that, 200? We probably added 300, but doing 2,000 by July of 2025?”
Alabama’s prisons have been plagued violence, due to understaffing and overcrowding. In 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice sued the state over the conditions in Alabama’s men’s prisons, alleging that they violated inmates’ Eighth Amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishment.
The Braggs vs Dunn lawsuit was filed in 2014 by inmates who alleged they received inadequate mental health care treatment in Alabama’s prison facilities. The court agreed with the plaintiffs and issued several orders dealing with oversight for people with severe mental illness or those with a history of self-harm.
The court also mandated that the ADOC increase the staff of corrections officers by 2,000 to have the personnel to adequately meet the mental health treatment of people who are incarcerated.
Hamm also said retention remained an issue in the prison as officers continued to resign.
In January 2022, Corrections had about 2,100 full time officers working in the facilities, according to one of Hamm’s presentation slides. That number decreased to about 1,700 by April 2023, but rose to 1,953 as of June, Hamm said. Lawmakers have attempted to address the staffing issue through improved pay and benefits for officers.
“In 2019, we passed a law to allow bonuses to be paid,” said Sen. Greg Albritton, R-Atmore. “We have been paying out about $10 million just on bonuses to retain people and to get them promoted and to move them along.”
Almost 1,200 people have attended 76 recruiting events the department has hosted this year so far with another 47 planned for the year.
Even with that, not everyone who attends a recruiting event will be correctional officers, as some are unable to meet the qualifications. Of the 1,200 candidates who began corrections officer training, Hamm said, only 453 of them passed the physical agility and ability test.
Katie Glenn, a senior policy associate with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which filed suit in the Braggs v. Dunn case, said the department could resolve its recruitment issues by addressing the systemic issues in state prisons, “like the violence that we see, the extortion that we see.”
“Issues related to staffing have been present in ADOC for years now,” she said. “Every time there is a budget hearing, or these concerns are raised, representatives of the Alabama Department of Corrections make it seem like it is not their fault or there is nothing they could possibly do to attract and retain more people.”
At one point, Hamm mentioned the temperature in facility, which not only affects the prison population but also the correctional staff.
“Last legislative session, the last several sessions, and I am sure in sessions to come, we have seen ways in which ADOC can address overpopulation,” Glenn said. “If you are unable to meet the threshold of people employed by the organization, and you need to bring those ratios of incarcerated people to correctional officers down, the only way to do that is to have fewer people inside of those facilities.”
Rising prison construction costs
Hamm also focused on new prison construction, with the completion of the Elmore prison set for summer 2026. Legislators passed a law to construct two new facilities for a total price of about $1 billion.
That amount will now be enough to construct a single facility, the Elmore facility, for about $1.2 billion including fixtures and other amenities.
Lawmakers had been counting on the new prison to help defray the increasing operational costs, as well as the increasing amount that Corrections, along with Medicaid, has consumed of the General Fund budget.
The trend, according to Hamm, is only set to increase. He mentioned laws that the Legislature passed, such as the reduction in correctional incentive time law passed by legislators in 2023, as factors. Both the prison population, and the budget needed to maintain custody of the population, will increase in the future.
The frustration among the lawmakers was evident throughout the hearing, as Hamm tried to explain that he was not part of the ADOC when many of the issues with the department began.
“This is your problem,” Albritton finally said at one point.
This article is republished from The Alabama Reflector under a Creative Commons license.
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They keep procrastinating about hiring these guards, I’ll bet if it was something about young white men it would have been done!! But poor Black men they don’t give a damn!!!!
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