The Examiners of Public Accounts found some disturbing things going on within the prison system in a recent audit.

The Examiners of Public Accounts released separately an audit of the Department of Corrections and a special audit of the department’s Decatur work-release facility. The audits flagged problems with work-release operations in Decatur, Birmingham and Loxley.

The audit of the Decatur facility specifically criticized an old policy that allowed Department of Corrections employees and their relatives to hire work-release inmates. The audit found that the majority of inmates were not paid promptly, some were not paid at all and inmates were sometimes checked out for days at a time without a job to do.

The department ended the policy last year because of the potential for abuse and security problems, spokesman Brian Corbett said.

Corbett said two employees still owe inmates money for work, and the department is trying to correct that. One owes $1,500, and the other owes $700, he said. One employee is paying on an installment plan. The other is serving overseas in the military.

One of the audits noted that work-release inmates were charged $3 co-pays for inmate-initiated use of medical services, $5 for round trips to work and $25 for drug tests if they failed.

“It appears that the Department of Corrections does not have specific legal authority to charge these fees,” auditors wrote. The report recommends that in the future, the department charge inmates only fees authorized by law.

It appears that many of the issues raised have already been addressed, but I would hope they have gone further and determined what allowed the violations to occur in the first place.

Sphere: Related Content