We need prisons. They should confine violent felons and people who steal, whether from a convenience store or a pension fund.
But by every legal, financial, and humanitarian standard, the Alabama Department of Corrections is a failure. By the most basic measure of prison operations, Corrections isn’t doing its job.
Before any other consideration, prisons must be safe for staff and inmates. And they ought to offer those in the cells an opportunity to reform, even if the incarcerated never step outside the barbed wire again.
