Alabama prison commissioner John Hamm told lawmakers Wednesday that the price tag on the state’s new 4,000-bed specialized care men’s prison in Elmore County will be known next week.

Hamm told the Legislature’s prison oversight committee that the board that oversees financing will have the final guaranteed maximum price when it meets on Tuesday.

The Alabama Corrections Institution Finance Authority last met in March. At that time, the board raised the spending cap on the prison from the initial price of $623 million, announced in April 2022, to $975 million, a 56% increase. Officials said at the time the increase was because of inflation, design changes, and other factors.

Hamm said he expected the final price to be close to what was announced in March but acknowledged that inflation and other factors affecting construction projects in general could raise the cost over $1 billion.

Hamm showed lawmakers slides of work on the site, including stormwater and sanitary sewer systems, a water tower, and pre-cast concrete cells. The prison will include facilities for medical and mental health care. The design is 90% completed. The prison is expected to be finished in May 2026.

Alabama has not built a prison since the mid-1990s. As of July, the state held slightly more than 20,000 inmates in prisons designed to hold 12,000, according to the Department of Corrections monthly report.

In October 2021, the Legislature approved building the specialized care prison in Elmore County and a second 4,000-bed prison in Escambia County. The plan calls for some older prisons to close.

Lawmakers approved $1.3 billion in funding for both new prisons. Officials have not said how they will pay for the second prison now that the price of the first has risen sharply.

Hamm said the Escambia County prison will use the same design as the Elmore County prison, except it will not have the specialized facilities for medical and mental health care. Because of that, Hamm said the state will have a good estimate on the cost of the Escambia prison after the design of the Elmore prison is completed.

Hamm said some preliminary work has been done at the site of the Escambia County prison, including completion of an access road, some demolition, and receiving wetlands permit authorization from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

When the Elmore County prison is completed, three others nearby will close — Elmore and Staton prisons in Elmore County and Kilby prison in Montgomery. Hamm said inmates and staff at those three prisons will move to the new one.

The Elmore County prison will include 50 or more buildings on 300 acres, Hamm said. It will include about 45,000 square feet for vocational education programs such as welding, diesel mechanics, HVAC, and others taught by Ingram State Technical College. There will be several hundred beds for medical and mental health care.

With 4,000 beds, it will be much larger than any of Alabama’s 13 current men’s prisons, most of which have fewer than 1,500 inmates. The existing prisons are about 80% dormitory-style and 20% cells. Hamm said the Elmore prison would be different, about 70% cells. Standard cells will be eight beds but there will be six different cell designs, he said.

The U.S. Department of Justice sued the state in December 2020 alleging that conditions in men’s prisons violate the Constitution because of the violence, drugs, weapons, and other problems. The ADOC is also embroiled in a nine-year-old lawsuit over mental health care, medical care, and accommodations for inmates with disabilities.

Gov. Kay Ivey and legislators have said the new prisons are an essential part of a larger plan to reverse decades of neglect to the system because they will be safer and better designed for rehabilitation and healthcare programs.

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