By Craig Ford
Ford is a Democrat from Gadsden and the Minority Leader in the Alabama House of Representatives.

Prisons could be the issue that defines the Alabama Legislature in 2017. Gov. Bentley has said he may call a special session to address the issue, and has indicated that he will revive the prison construction bill he first proposed in his 2016 State of the State address.

In recent years, numerous lawsuits have been filed relating to the conditions in our prisons. Violence and riots have increased as the number of corrections officers has decreased, and even the federal government has begun an investigation of violence, rape and overcrowding in our prisons.

Our prisons are so old, overcrowded and underfunded that there is a real possibility of a federal judge ruling that the state is violating the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment.” If a judge were to make that ruling, the state could be forced to either spend more tax dollars on prisons or release thousands of prisoners back into society.

This is a situation that every lawmaker wants to avoid.

One solution, proposed by Gov. Bentley and some state leaders, is to build four new “super prisons.” They argue that these new prisons will not only provide more appropriate accommodations for the inmates, but also allow the prison system to more efficiently manage larger numbers of prisoners with fewer correctional officers.

While we do need to replace some of our oldest prisons and with newer, more efficient facilities (Tutwiler Prison, in particular, is in desperate need of being replaced), building new prisons will not solve the problem by itself.

Trying to solve our prison problem by building new buildings would be like trying to fix a low-performing school just by building new classrooms.

Just as the new school would still have the same students, teachers and administrators; these new prisons would still have the same prisoners and the same overworked and underpaid wardens and correctional officers.

The rise in violence in our prisons isn’t because we have old buildings; it’s because budget cuts have left the system with far too few corrections officers to guard prisoners. Over the last five years, violence has doubled in our prisons while the number of corrections officers has declined by 20 percent. That is not a coincidence! And fewer recruits are signing up to be corrections officers because the conditions have become so dangerous.

So, if we are going to spend money to build new prisons, we have to spend money to hire enough corrections officers to run those new prisons. We also have to look at the way our prisoners are managed.

If we do this right, we can change lives, save the taxpayers’ money and make our state a safer place with a stronger economy.