Craig Ford: State leaders have lost their credibility on prisons

  With all the attention being given to the special election for the U.S. Senate, you may not have seen what has been happening in Montgomery with the prison crisis.

  Last year, Gov. Robert Bentley proposed a plan to build four new “super prisons” at a cost of about $800 million. At the time, a lawsuit had been filed claiming that the state’s prisons were overcrowded and did not provide adequate safety and healthcare services, which is a violation of the 8th Amendment that prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment.”

  State leaders claimed that building new prisons would solve all the problems by allowing the state to house the same number of prisoners without having to hire more guards or mental health care professionals.