This is an opinion column.

Well, that’s just perfect.

Say its name: The Governor Kay Ivey Correctional Complex.

Ivey Prison. Just perfect.

I laughed out loud when I learned the state’s new $1.25 billion men’s prison in Elmore County will be named for our governor — courtesy of the Alabama Corrections Institution Finance Authority, with Ivey’s blessing.

I laughed and cringed. Laughed, cringed and shook my head.

Laughed because it is absolutely fitting, as I all but called last year. Prisons are Ivey’s thing. Maybe more than anything else she’s hyped since taking office in 2017.

She’s led the long-overdue replacement of the horrid prison system’s most antiquated facilities. And she’s been an unyielding proponent of executions in the mighty name of law and order, even when the victim’s family was against it. Even when the state couldn’t get it right.

I cringed at the thought of someone some day lamenting, “Dang, my cousin just got 20 years down at Ivey.”

Then I shook my head because our governor, who will leave office at the end of her current term, could have scripted a much more noble legacy. She could have been lauded, honored and heralded for so many other accomplishments. Actions that could have improved, elevated — even extended — the lives of generations of Alabamians.

Instead, her name will be chiseled into the walls of a prison. A prison in this state.

A state whose system was deemed unconstitutionally horrific by the U.S. Department of Justice, which sued Alabama citing violent conditions. A state where incarcerated men and women are sardined into inhumane spaces and provided with few resources to help them rehabilitate, rebuild and reclaim life.

A state where too many of our incarcerated die for reasons sometimes hidden from their families. Or because our heartless tough-on-crime zealots are loathe to allow the terminally ill and no-longer-dangerous-to-anyone to transition at home.

A state where the parole pipeline is choked by a singular figure who acts as if her calling is to feed the state’s need for cheap prison laborers.

A state where, under Ivey’s watch, Alabama logged the most executions in recent memory and even changed the rules on death warrants to give the state more time to execute more people. The state even found a new way to kill people, suffocating inmates with nitrogen, something no other state had done and something veterinarians deemed too cruel for strays.

Congratulations, governor, this prison system is all yours. It’s your legacy.

That’s how Alabamians yet unborn will know you, will remember you: Ivey Prison.

Just perfect.

To be sure, having a prison named for you isn’t always a dubious homage. Julia S. Tutwiler, for whom the state’s prison for women is named, was heralded as the “angel of prisons,” as an advocate for reform, especially safer conditions. That’s before the facility became infamous for sexual assault by guards.

The William E. Donaldson facility in Bessemer was named for a correctional officer who was killed by an inmate in 1990 while trying to dispense medicine. But today it’s just known as another of Alabama’s ridiculously dangerous and deadly prisons.

“It is heartbreaking that we as Alabama citizens, when our loved ones go into an Alabama prison, we pray every day that they do not come out in a body bag because that’s what happening repeatedly,” said Kelly Helton of Foley, speaking to lawmakers this year on behalf of a friend whose son was severely beaten at Donaldson.

Ivey won’t be the first Alabama governor with a prison named in their honor. Kilby Correctional in Montgomery County is named for Gov. Thomas Erby Kilby, who occupied the office between 1919-1923.

Ivey visited Kilby two years ago to prove the prisons are fine, no matter what the DOJ argues. But today Kilby is one of the more overcrowded close-security prisons in the state, with 1,461 beds in a facility designed for just 440. That math ain’t mathin’. It’s dangerous, as proven by this: Kilby saw 13 sex abuse cases and 11 new death investigations in just the third quarter of this year.

Ivey could have done much better. Should have done much better.

Instead, she could have built a legacy of lifting our children from the darkest depths of the education barrel. State education funding is at record levels and test scores are rising in every subject. Alas, according to U.S. News & World Report, we’re 43rd in the nation in K-12 education.

So, no high-flying Gov. Kay Ivey Elementary schools.

She could have been known as Gov. Jobs. In March, she touted that some $49 billion had been invested in the state since she became governor. At the same time, however, the state’s workforce participation lags the national average, even as it slowly ticks upward.

Gov. Kay Ivey Workforce Training Centers? Who’d show up?

She could have forged a legacy of making Alabama — still fighting an image tainted by its sordid racial history and hateful laws and policies — more welcoming. With open arms for all. Instead, she giddily signed into law a bill scorching diversity, equity and inclusion programs and spaces at public institutions (already causing some bright faculty minds to consider leaving or retiring) and two anti-LBGT laws.

One of the latter laws turns doctors into criminals by banning gender-affirming surgery in trans youth, a decision that should be between a physician, the patient and the patient’s family — with the governor nowhere to be seen.

Gov. Kay Ivey Welcome Centers? Please.

Gov. Kay Ivey Public Library? Forget that, too.

As GOP lawmakers considered bills to lock up librarians, Ivey turned around and appointed a top critic to the Alabama Public Library Service Board.

Most assuredly, Ivey could have easily been known as the state’s most pro-life governor ever – and not because she signed one of the most Draconian anti-abortion laws in the nation.

She could have been hailed as the state’s most pro-life governor ever by ensuring that on her watch 220,000 more working families could afford health insurance. She could have helped rural hospitals stay open instead of shuttering due to financial strains. And she could have championed solutions to help more babies live vibrant, healthy lives beyond their first birthday, reversing Alabama’s grim rise in infant deaths.

She could have expanded Medicaid.

Alas, she’s not the life governor, she’s the death and dangerous prisons governor.

Gov. Kay Ivey Hospital and Prenatal Centers? Nah.

Just plaster her name upside a prison wall. Right where it belongs.

I was raised by good people who encouraged me to be a good man and surround myself with good people. If I did, they said, good things would happen. I am a member of the National Association of Black Journalists’ Hall of Fame, an Edward R. Murrow Award winner, and a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary. My column appears on AL.com, and digital editions of The Birmingham News, Huntsville Times, and Mobile Press-Register. Tell me what you think at [email protected], and follow me at twitter.com/roysj, Instagram @roysj and BlueSky.