Alabama is spending $1.25 billion to build a 4,000-bed prison for men intended to help with the crowding, violence, weapons, and drugs that plague the state’s aging and understaffed correctional facilities.
But state lawmakers got a reminder Wednesday that there is no plan to replace Julia Tutwiler Prison, the state’s only major prison for women, which opened in 1942.
A woman who served time at Tutwiler on a drug distribution charge told the Alabama Legislature’s Joint Prison Oversight Committee that problems go well beyond the old building’s structural shortcomings and include rampant drug sales and use.
Rachel Elledge, who is 41 and from Montevallo, said she went to prison four years because of bad choices she made because of a drug addiction.
What the public needs to know, Elledge told the lawmakers, is that women in similar circumstances have limited opportunities to change their lives at Tutwiler and are at risk of being more damaged when their incarceration ends.
“I was taken out of an environment that was fueled by violence, drugs, all kinds of crazy things that were led by criminals and thugs,” Elledge said.
“And I was sentenced to another environment that was just as violent, that drug use was rampant, but this time it was run by the Alabama Department of Corrections.”
Elledge said one correctional officer told her he put two daughters with the money he made selling drugs in the prison.
Elledge was sentenced to Tutwiler in 2021 and was released on parole in 2022 after she was accepted for a spot at Lovelady Center, a Christian residential facility in Birmingham that helps women rebuild their lives after addiction.
Elledge now works for the Lovelady Center as the volunteer coordinator. She said she will continue to advocate for women who are where she was a few years ago.
One problem, Elledge said, is there are waiting lists at Tutwiler to get into programs that can help women with drug addictions. She never got into a program during her time in the prison.
“These women are stabbing each other, they’re hitting each other in the face with bricks over a $12 drug debt that wouldn’t even exist if they weren’t bringing it in, if our corrections officers were not bringing it in,” Elledge said.
“There’s got to be reform, there’s got to be change, there’s got to be accountability.”
The prison oversight committee periodically holds public hearings for family members of inmates, former inmates, and other advocates to talk about their experiences and problems with the system.
Ten people spoke to the committee on Wednesday, including a man whose son was killed in prison last year and a woman whose son was initially denied parole after the parole board chair accused him, falsely, of lying about a program that he had completed in prison.
The young man’s claim was verified and he was paroled.
Read more: Alabama families tell lawmakers of parole mishaps: ‘We are listening’
Lawmakers thanked the speakers after the hearing, the third held by the committee.
Sen. Clyde Chambliss, R-Prattville, the chairman, told the audience the committee is not empowered to make immediate changes because the prison and parole systems fall under the executive branch.
But previous hearings have had some impact.
In response to a public hearing in December 2023, during which family members of inmates told about their loved ones being raped, beaten, and killed in prison, and about their difficulties in getting information, Chambliss sponsored a bill to create a new team of employees at the Department of Corrections responsible for providing information to the family members of incarcerated men and women. The bill passed.
Tutwiler has been in the public spotlight before, including in 2014 when an investigation by the Department of Justice found what it called “a history of unabated staff-on-prisoner sexual abuses and harassment.”
In 2015, the state and the DOJ entered a consent decree intended to fix the conditions that allowed the abuse.
Last year, DOJ scaled back its oversight, saying that the state was in compliance with all 44 provisions in the consent decree.
While the state took steps address those problems from a decade ago, it has not made replacing the 83-year-old prison a priority.
Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, a committee member, pointed out that the state is building the new specialty care prison for men in Elmore County, plus a second men’s prison in Escambia County.
“And I just think it sends a horrible message that we’re allowing women to live in a squalor, in a hell hole, while we focus on building another facility for men,” England said.
Elledge said she was frightened by the environment when she came to Tutwiler in 2021. She tried not to draw any attention to herself.
“It was my first time in prison so it was a little scary,” Elledge said. “I just rode my bunk and kept my head down.”
Elledge said the temperature in the dorms, which are not air conditioned, can exceed 100 degrees.
“I think it gets a little more violent during the summer months because it’s hot and miserable,” she said.
Elledge’s main message is about what she said was the proliferation of drugs and the limited programs to help the inmates with addiction problems.
“Even though we were behind that fence, we’re still human beings,” Elledge said. “We have a drug problem, most of us.
“And I speak for myself. Yes, I was an addict. It was choices that I made in my addiction, but I never was able to receive any kind of help.
“We’ve got to change, we’ve got to set some programs that allow these ladies to transition and realize that there’s another way to live besides with the life that they’re coming out of.”
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