Ivey responds to criticism over new prison bill

Last month, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed into law a new prison reform bill that includes $1.3 billion towards the building of two new mega prisons and the purchase of a vacant building for a third. Ivey and state legislatures have received criticism for the bill, including now from Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall.

The bill comes in response to a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit against the state because of Alabama’s vast overpopulation problem in prisons. At a recent Enterprise Rotary Club meeting, State Senator Rhett Marques said that the state has been running at 160 percent capacity in its prisons.

“This has been a situation that has been building and has gotten to the point where we did not have a choice, we had to do something,” Marques said at that meeting.

Ivey called the signing of the bill a “major step forward.”

“Today’s bill signing on the construction part of the issue is a major step forward,” Ivey said after signing the bill. “This is a pivotal moment for the trajectory of our state’s criminal justice system.”

State Rep. Steve Clouse, of Ozark, also called the bill a big step forward. Clouse sponsored the bill in the state legislature.

“For the last 40 or 50 years, we have not maintained our prisons,” Clouse said. “It always comes up at the bottom of the barrel.”

Much off the criticism levied at the bill includes the fact that $400 million of the $1.3 billion comes from COVID-19 relief money from the federal government. That is nearly 20 percent of the state’s COVID-19 federal funding.

“There are many needs here in the State of Alabama and there are many people who need these funds,” State Rep. Juandalynn Givan of Birmingham said of the bill. “But they saw an opportunity to take the Biden money, that $400 million, because it was just like liquid water flowing through their hands.”

U.S. House Judicary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler even sent a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in attempt to prevent the state from “misusing” the COVID-19 relief funds for the construction of prisons.

That bill also included some provisions intended to ease the burden on the prison system in other ways, as well. The new bill will allow for the release of inmates early based on their sentenced time – though that provision doesn’t apply to child sex offenders – and would go into effect in 2023. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall publicly criticized this aspect of the bill.

“Consider that just six months ago, the legislature enacted yet another law that would reduce time served in prison under the ‘Education Incentive Time Act,’” Marshall said. “As introduced and passed unanimously by the Alabama State Senate, rapists and murderers were to be considered for parole up to 12 months early for taking advantage of educational programing in prison.

“Despite being publicly chided by a Republican member of the legislature for getting involved, my office successfully fought to have most violent offenders removed from the legislation.”

Marshall said that he agrees that the state needs new prisons but doesn’t agree with the possibility of letting certain inmates out early.

“I’m glad we’ve all agreed that we need to build prisons, but strangely, I seem to be alone in the view that most of our current prison population ought to stay locked up,” Marshall said. “The policymaking in this state is completely and utterly detached from what law enforcement and prosecutors see day in and day out.

“There must be a reckoning of real-life consequences of these decisions. It is time that the Alabama public speak up and speak out about this dangerous, and seemingly endless trajectory of ‘criminal justice reform.’”

While Ivey admitted to not reading Marshall’s comments last week, she responded to his criticism.

“The bottom line is, you’ve got to have incentives for prisoners (to) have good behavior,” Ivey said. “We need more prison criminal justice reform measures, but we’ve got to build a building so we can put the prisoners in a safe place and have space to teach them and deal with mental health and medical issues and teach them a skill,” Ivey said. “We will be working on more criminal justice reform. It is going to take two and a half to three years to build, so we’ve got time to put more reforms in place.”