In the wake of a blistering report from the U.S. Department of Justice, Gov. Kay Ivey is moving ahead with her plan to build three large men’s prisons as a major part of her response to Alabama’s chronically crowded and understaffed correctional system.

The DOJ report released Wednesday acknowledged the “incredibly poor physical shape” of the state’s prisons but focused instead on the violence, sexual abuse, drug trade and extortion that led investigators to conclude that the prisons are so dangerous that there is reasonable cause to believe the state is in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

The report said new prisons might solve some problems but said “new facilities alone will not resolve the contributing factors to the overall unconstitutional conditions.”

Ivey said today she is committed to working with the DOJ to address the problems. The governor said she is proceeding with plans to build prisons, expected to cost about a billion dollars. Ivey said she expects a request for companies to make proposals to build the prisons will be released sometime this spring.

Attorneys with two advocacy groups with a history of shedding light on abuses in Alabama prisons said the DOJ report demands that the state move with urgency to make the existing prisons safer.

“We have an emergency and we have to act immediately to protect the lives of the people who are incarcerated,” Charlotte Morrison, senior attorney at the Equal Justice Initiative, said. “So, the priority has to be a short-term plan to bring about immediate reform.”

It was the EJI that sparked an investigation into Julia Tutwiler Prison that led to DOJ findings in 2014 that conditions at the women’s prison were unconstitutional because of sexual abuse of inmates. The EJI’s federal lawsuit over violence at St. Clair Correctional Facility in 2014 preceded the DOJ investigation that resulted in Wednesday’s new findings about Alabama’s prisons for men.

Ivey and Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner Jeff Dunn have not said new prisons will fix all the system’s problems. They have asked the Legislature for a $40 million budget increase next year, with much of that aimed at hiring 500 new correctional officers and increasing pay to help keep officers on the job. Overall, the ADOC has said it needs to add about 2,000 new officers.

Ivey, who became governor in April 2017, has repeatedly said the state will fix the prisons. The DOJ report comes while the state is also embroiled in a federal lawsuit over health care for inmates. A federal judge ruled in 2017 that mental health care was “horrendously inadequate.”

“I’ve said we’ve got a major crisis,” Ivey said today. “And we’re going to address the problem.”

The DOJ report gives the state 49 days to propose a plan. The report includes more than 40 short-term and long-term recommendations on understaffing and overcrowding, violence, contraband, sexual abuse, and facility conditions.

Ivey said today new prisons would help with the chronic understaffing.

“Having new facilities goes a long way to the retention of staff,” Ivey said. “It’s one thing to hire five hundred, a thousand new corrections officers but you’ve got to retain them. And so having safe, workable facilities goes a long way to the retention.”

The Ivey administration hired Hoar Program Management for $11.5 million to study needs and develop a request for proposals to build prisons. Ivey is considering a plan to engage private companies that would build the prisons and lease them to the state. Former Gov. Robert Bentley had proposed a bond issue to build prisons. The Legislature considered several versions of Bentley’s plan but did not pass it.

House Speaker Mac McCutcheon, R-Monrovia, said today the DOJ report called for immediate action.

McCutcheon said the House and Senate are putting together an emergency task force to address the issues raised in the report and help craft the state’s response. He said that work cannot be delayed.

“What we’ve got to do is just make this a priority and move forward,” McCutcheon said. “Especially in cooperation with the Department of Justice. And they’re willing to sit down and work with us. So, now is the time we need to do it.”

McCutcheon said the task force would include legislators, officials from the executive and judicial branches and corrections professionals.

McCutcheon said the goal is to develop a comprehensive response. Asked about prison construction, he said that needs to be in the mix because the physical shortcomings of the current facilities contribute to the dangerous conditions.

“I don’t think we can talk about these issues without at least having that as part of our discussion,” McCutcheon said.

Lisa Graybill, deputy legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the DOJ report makes it clear that Alabama cannot build its way out of the prison crisis. The SPLC represents inmates in the federal lawsuit over health care.

“DOJ’s letter makes clear that the simple but incredibly expensive solution of construction isn’t going to address its problems,” Graybill said.

Graybill said fixing the infrastructure problems at prisons is critical but questions the Ivey administration’s plan. It calls for three prisons housing 3,000 or more inmates. Graybill said smaller facilities with more staff interaction with inmates should be considered if the state is going to build prisons.

“I think addressing the physical infrastructure and potentially constructing some new prisons would be things to consider,” Graybill said. “But there’s been a real lack of transparency about exactly what these plans actually are. There’s been a real resistance to providing detailed information about where the new prisons will be. Exactly how are they going to be constructed? How many people will be in them? What prisons are going to close?”

At a press conference in February announcing the plan, the Ivey administration said those decisions about which existing prisons will close and where the new prisons will be built had not been made.

The Ivey administration says fixing Alabama’s current prisons is too costly and that closing the aging facilities and consolidating operations at regional prisons would save about $80 million a year, enough to cover the cost of building the new prisons.

Sen. Cam Ward, R-Alabaster, who has led prison and criminal justice reform initiatives in the Legislature, said prison construction is one of multiple components in a comprehensive solution. Ward said the Legislature could also consider sentencing reforms, including changing the penalties for some property crimes. Lawmakers passed a reform package in 2015 that has helped reduce the prison population, although it is still at 180 percent of capacity in the major prisons, the DOJ said.

Ward called the DOJ report “deeply humiliating” and said the findings are at odds with Alabama’s posture as a state steeped in Christian ideals.

Ward said the nature of politics is at the root of the crisis.

“No one wants to fund prisons,” Ward said. “They’d rather fund schools or stuff that gets them votes back home. Nobody gets a vote back home supporting what’s going on in prisons. But as the complaint pointed out, you’re treating people like you wouldn’t treat dogs. And for a country of laws and obviously we have pushed up on the Eighth Amendment here.”