VIEWPOINT | New prisons quickly turn into billion-dollar money pits

Guest column by Jackson McNeely, founder of Block the Brierfield Prison in Alabama

I am a lifelong Republican from Alabama, a conservative state similar to South Dakota. Like you, I believe in low taxes, small government, hard work, personal responsibility and individual liberties. I write to you with this warning: beware of billion-dollar prisons.

Alabama has had a prison crisis for as long as anyone can remember. Overcrowding, violence, corruption and even death are routine features of our state’s correctional facilities. Six years ago, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey announced that she planned to fix it all by building several new prisons, including one that was proposed for my rural community. Though the plan has gone through several different iterations, one thing has remained a constant: the prisons always cost more than the government tells you.

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The current version of Gov. Ivey’s prison construction spree – which was formally adopted by our state legislature back in 2021 – promised that two new prisons would be built for about $670 million apiece. Most of the construction would be financed by huge new debts taken out by the government, but a sizable chunk would also be taken from our state’s general fund – more than our annual appropriations for the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Commerce, and the Office of the Attorney General combined.

At the time, we were assured that this was the “fiscally responsible” thing to do. But years later, what have we gotten in return for this massive expenditure of tax dollars? Not even a single finished prison. One of them hasn’t begun construction. The other one is only half-built, and cost overruns have resulted in that single prison alone costing well over a billion dollars. So much for fiscal responsibility.