Gov. Kay Ivey announced today that her administration will seek bids for building three regional prisons for men to replace aging, cramped facilities that the Alabama Department of Corrections has said are too costly to maintain and repair.

The governor said new prisons are a necessary part of a larger plan to fix a system plagued by violence, a severe shortage of correctional officers, overcrowding, and what a federal judge ruled are unconstitutional deficiencies in mental health care.

“Alabama truly does have a major problem with our overcrowding of our prisons and it’s a challenge that we Alabamians must solve, not the federal courts,” Ivey said.

Ivey and Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner Jeff Dunn outlined the plan during a press briefing today. Dunn said current cost estimates are a total of about $900 million but no final estimate has been determined.

The Ivey administration says money saved from closing aging, outdated prisons and consolidating operations will pay for the new construction. The administration said the savings from updating and improving the efficiency of prisons will be $79.6 million annually.

“We have no plans to ask for additional appropriations to pay for this,” Dunn said.

The financing arrangement is still to be determined, Ivey said. Those options include an agreement under which the state would lease and operate prisons built by private companies, or a state bond issue to pay for construction.

“All options are one the table,” Ivey said. “We’re still gathering data.”

Today’s announcement was expected. Ivey had said during her inaugural address in January that she would soon make an announcement on building prisons.

The ADOC has hired a project management company, Hoar Program Management, under an $11.5 million contract to prepare the plans needed to request proposals from companies to build the prisons. The company started work on the project last year. Mike Lanier of Hoar Program Management said the company will work over the next nine to 12 months to develop plans and recommendations that will help determine decisions such as which existing prisons will close and where the new prisons will be built.

Mike Lanier, left, of Hoar Program Management, talks about the work the company is doing in preparing for the Gov. Kay Ivey administration to issue requests for proposals to build new prisons. On the right is prison commissioner Jeff Dunn.

Two of the new prisons would probably house an estimated 3,000 to 3,500 prisoners. The third would have additional space for centralized services for prisoners with special needs, including the oldest, the infirm and those with mental illness. That prison would probably have a larger capacity.

Dunn said key improvements that can come with new prisons are better medical and mental health care and better facilities to offer vocational and rehabilitation programs, which he said would reduce prison recidivism.

U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson ruled in June 2017 that mental health care in Alabama prisons was “horrendously inadequate.” The ADOC is under a court order to roughly double its security staff by adding 2,000 correctional officers over the next few years.

Dunn told lawmakers last month that the ADOC would seek a $42 million increase in its General Fund appropriation next year, with most of that intended to hire 500 new correctional officers and boost security staff pay by 20 percent to help hire and keep more on the job.

Alabama’s prison population stands at about 160 percent of what the prisons were designed to hold. Some have fewer than half of the number of correctional officers needed.

Dunn said violence rates in prisons are unacceptably high and that the decades-old facilities were not designed to provide the level of medical and mental health care expected in prisons today.

“Currently, most of our medical and mental health facilities were just after-thoughts in the design of the facilities and they do not serve the needs of the inmate population,” Dunn said.

Dunn said deferred maintenance costs in Alabama prisons exceed $700 million.

“We’re on an unsustainable track with respect to maintaining the conditions of our facilities,” Dunn said.

The commissioner said Alabama’s prison facilities are not conducive to educational and treatment programs needed to prepare inmates for their eventual release from prison. He said 95 percent of prisoners will return to their communities.

“We are long past the time in which we need to commit more of DOC’s resources towards providing basic education, adult education, literacy, treatment and vocational education," Dunn said. “Again, these facilities are not equipped to provide that to any significant degree.”

Dunn was asked why the plan does not call for replacement of Julia Tutwiler Prison, the state’s only major facility for women and one of the oldest prisons. Dunn said conditions at Tutwiler have improved dramatically since 2014, when the U.S. Department of Justice found conditions there unconstitutional because of sexual abuse and harassment of inmates by staff.

“While we have a long way to go we are very pleased with how well that facility is being managed and the treatment and the education and the opportunities that are being given to the female inmates that reside there," Dunn said. "It’s becoming a national model in women’s services.”

Dunn said replacement of Tutwiler could be considered later but that the facilities for men in medium- and maximum-security custody were the highest priority.

Talking points presented at today’s briefing included some of the reasons the Ivey administration said the new prisons are needed:

-- Deferred maintenance costs in existing prisons exceed $700 million.

-- To properly maintain current, dilapidated facilities would cost twice as much as building new ones.

-- If issues are not addressed, state prisons could face a federal court takeover.