Inmates Seek to Advance Lawsuit Against Jefferson County

Inmates who are passing time in the overcrowded Jefferson County, Ala., jail say the county’s municipal bankruptcy case has gotten in the way of their jailbreak.

A handful of inmates who sued Jefferson County Sheriff Mike Hale in August over their allegedly poor living conditions want the county’s bankruptcy judge to lift the protective legal shield that has halted lawsuits against the county since it filed for Chapter 9 protection in November.

Alabama attorney H. Doug Redd urged Judge Thomas Bennett of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Birmingham to allow the inmate lawsuit to move forward despite the bankruptcy-induced halt, known as the automatic stay.

“The overcrowded conditions at the jail are a threat to the general public of Jefferson County and the State of Alabama,” Redd wrote in court papers. “Unless this automatic stay is lifted to allow plaintiffs to pursue their claims, the loss of human life is inevitable.”

The overcrowding lawsuit was brought by several inmates who were arrested for falling behind on child support payments and violating probation, Redd said in court papers. At the time that it was filed, the lawsuit claimed that Birmingham’s jail was designed to handle 600 inmates but housed more than 1,700 inmates.

The problem of overcrowded jails extends far beyond the Alabama county’s border. The issue has cropped up in Arizona, California and South Carolina, where critics have called for reform, pointing to inhumane living conditions within jails for those arrested for what they call trivial, nonviolent crimes.

In 2007, a Pew Center for Research study focused on the alarming increase in prison population rates and the equally concerning cost that municipalities will have to bear to expand the footprint of their detention centers. At the time of the study, it estimated that the cost of accommodating new inmates could absorb $15 billion in state resources in a period of just five years.

In lawsuits similar to the one brought against Jefferson County’s sheriff, the American Civil Liberties Union has fought on behalf of inmates. Shortly after a major U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that ordered California to confront the problem, David Fathi, the director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project said the ruling “crystallizes the urgent need for California to invest in meaningful parole and sentencing reforms and alternatives to incarceration, especially for low-level, non-violent offenders,” according to ACLU’s blog.

“Reducing the number of people in prison not only would save state taxpayers half a billion dollars annually, it would lead to the implementation of truly rehabilitative programs that lower recidivism rates and create safer communities,” he said.

Jefferson County’s financial troubles haven’t been blamed on its public-safety costs but on sewer-system upgrades that put it on the hook for more than $3 billion in bond debt. The upgrades were meant to prevent raw sewage from spilling into local streams and rivers.