By Brian Lyman
Montgomery Advertiser
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Whatever their other thoughts about his performance, no one questions former Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner Kim Thomas’ earnest desire to address the crisis in the state’s prison system.
But his departure from the position last week after four years appeared to signal that even his supporters believed new leadership was needed to start the long and difficult process of alleviating chronic overcrowding in Alabama’s correctional facilities, which stood at 186 percent capacity in September.
Overcrowding — a problem that long predated Thomas — has undergirded many of the other issues in the system. There have been at least six homicides at the St. Clair Correctional Facility in recent years. The U.S. Department of Justice has reported sexual violence and harassment of inmates at the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka; DOJ is conducting an investigation of the facility. Additional allegations of physical or sexual violence have been leveled at three other state prisons, including the Elmore County Correctional Facility, and state officials have openly discussed the possibility of the system falling into receivership
Critics of the system were particularly concerned that Thomas, who had held several positions in the Department of Corrections, seemed unwilling to remove officials and correctional officers in some of the most violent prisons.
“We documented really serious problems at Tutwiler that reflected really gross abuse by correctional staff and the warden,” said Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Montgomery-based Equal Justice Initiative, which has called on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the system and has sued the state over the St. Clair violence. “I think you have to respond strongly to that. He really did not make personnel changes I thought were essential at the personnel level.”
Efforts to contact Thomas last week were unsuccessful.
A new direction
Gov. Robert Bentley announced last week that Col. Jefferson Dunn, who currently runs the Thomas Barnes Center for Enlisted Education at Maxwell Air Force Base, would become DOC commissioner after retiring from the Air Force in March. State officials, if not going as far as Stevenson, said last week it was time to change course.
“Governor Bentley selected Colonel Dunn because he is a proven leader with a strong record of military service,” said Jennifer Ardis, a spokeswoman for the governor, in an email last week. “The governor wanted someone who was not connected to the prison system to lead the department. Kim Thomas was a loyal member of the governor’s cabinet for four years. The governor appreciated his leadership to the department.”
The move came just two days before the Council of State Governments presented a series of proposals to the Alabama Prison Reform Task Force aimed at alleviating the crisis. Sen. Cam Ward, R-Alabaster, the head of the task force, said Thomas had a job “nobody can win in.”
“In order to enact the reforms we’re going to have to make in the corrections system, it’s going to require someone new,” he said. “This is not at all an indictment of Commissioner Thomas’ service. Sometimes when you have to have bold reforms, you need to have someone who was never involved in it.”
Both Stevenson and Maria Morris, an attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has sued the state over the issues in the system, said they did not doubt Thomas’ interest in improving the system and praised him for listening to their concerns.
“He had an openness and awareness of the problems, and I think he had a sincere desire to fix them,” Morris said. “Though we had to go to litigation, it was good to get to the table and talk about that before advancing.”
Nevertheless, the groups advanced with litigation, in part because of growing frustration with what they viewed as Thomas’ inability to make needed personnel changes. A 2012 National Institute of Corrections report on Tutwiler said former Tutwiler warden Frank Albright “tried to be a champion for women’s issues but has been unable to effect changes due to the lack of personal, physical and fiscal resources at his disposal.”
The report also accused Albright and other leaders at the prison of not understanding “the importance of explaining policies and procedures to those who work for them.” Albright was transferred to Kilby Correctional Facility in Montgomery and later retired from the system.
Thomas helped implement policy changes at Tutwiler designed to address the abuse that had occurred, but Stevenson said he believes the “constraints were internal” in sanctions for the personnel involved.
“I think Kim is well intentioned and earnest,” Stevenson said. “But I also think he was beholden to the system and the personnel that shaped and molded him. You really can’t create the reforms our system needs if you feel beholden to people you’ve known a long time, or feel constrained to loyalties.”
Morris said SPLC would have liked to have seen Thomas make moves “that indicated to the correctional staff that what is valued is professionalism.”
“Where there were problems with wardens, wardens should be removed,” she said. “Instead, what we see a lot of is them moving around or promoting them. I think it’s a terrible message.”
Ward, who called Thomas a “personal friend,” said the commissioner never expressed to him any disagreement about proposed reforms, and said the Alabama Legislature, which holds the purse strings for the department, “has not given the commissioners the support they’ve needed over the years.”
“My feeling is that as a whole, and not just Commissioner Thomas, but all of us were too slow to respond to allegations at Tutwiler and other facilities as well,” he said. “Having an outsider come in not affiliated with state government or the Corrections Department can only be beneficial.”
Morris acknowledged the “serious systemic problems” at Corrections. “The facilities are crumbling, the people are being warehoused in them. There’s clearly a lack of an appropriate level of mental and physical health care. These are problems going on and (they) have been growing worse and worse.”
But both Morris and Stevenson said they believed forceful leadership was needed at the top of the system, and hoped Dunn could provide it.
“We can hope for a long-term improvement, but this is a very critical situation in Alabama,” Stevenson said.