By Mike Cason
al.com
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm gave state lawmakers an update Wednesday on the state’s new prison, a 4,000-bed specialty care facility for men in Elmore County.
Hamm told the Legislature’s prison oversight committee that the Governor Kay Ivey Correctional Complex was 75% completed as of September.
Ivey has spearheaded efforts to build new prisons in Alabama for the first time since the 1990s.
Hamm also told the committee Wednesday that substantial pay raises for correctional officers have helped boost the security staff at the Alabama Department of Corrections by about one-third.
The Ivey Correctional Complex is expected to be completed next year and will cost about $1.25 billion to build and equip.
The complex will include 54 buildings - 17 buildings for housing inmates, 12 medical buildings, and 25 support buildings. The total inmate count will be:
- 1,168 minimum security beds
- 1,536 medium security beds
- 192 maximum security beds
- 720 medical and mental health beds
- 384 intake beds
The complex will include facilities operated by the Alabama Community College System for vocational training. Hamm said that will include high-demand trades such as welding, plumbing, electrical, industrial maintenance, HVAC, and others.
“We’re going to have state of the art, brand new equipment that’s going into that building,” Hamm said.
“The community college system has done a great job of actually seeing what’s needed in the communities and tailoring our inmate education programs to that,” he said.
In October 2021, the Legislature approved a $1.3 billion plan to build two 4,000-bed prisons, one in Elmore County and one in Escambia County.
The cost of the Elmore prison rose sharply after an initial estimate of $623 million.
Lawmakers are still working on assembling funds for the Escambia County prison and passed a bill earlier this year to increase by $500 million how much the state can borrow with bonds for prison construction.
Ivey and legislative leaders have said the new prisons were an essential part of the solution to problems identified by the Department of Justice in a lawsuit over unsafe conditions in Alabama’s men’s prisons, filed in December 2020.
Ivey called the prison building plan an “Alabama solution,” to the problem.
A new documentary released on HBO takes its title, “The Alabama Solution,” from the governor’s words, and presents a grim look at the dangerous conditions inside the state’s prisons five years after the DOJ lawsuit started.
Alabama’s prison construction plan is not intended to increase the total number of beds in the system but to replace beds in the state’s aging, overcrowded, and understaffed prisons.
As of August, the ADOC had an in-custody population of 21,803 inmates, an increase of 790 over 12 months, in facilities with a designed capacity of 12,115.
That includes 13 prisons for men, Tutwiler Prison for women and two smaller facilities for women, as well as minimum security work centers and work release centers.
In March 2023, the ADOC substantially increased pay for correctional officers as part of an effort to resolve a severe shortage.
Starting pay for officers who complete the 10-week academy rose to at least $50,712, about $12,000 to $15,000 more than under the old plan, with the potential for substantially higher pay within a couple of years.
Hamm told the committee that the increased compensation, plus stepped up recruiting efforts, coordination with the community college system, and hiring events, has reversed what was a decline in staffing a few years ago.
The security staff increased from 1,774 in March 2023 to 2,368 in October 2025 , a 33% increase.
Hamm said the ADOC expects to have 484 training academy graduates this year, which would break a previous record of 380.
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