Alabama prisons

To fully understand what is at the root of the horrific Alabama prison conditions -- overcrowding, lack of basic health care -- described in today's New York Times, it helps to witness how state government operates. The Times writes of one north Alabama prison:

An emaciated 39-year-old wasted away after begging a doctor for sandwiches. A 29-year-old with pneumonia was short of breath when he arrived at the unit, but waited two days to see a doctor and get a prescription; he never received the medication, and on the fourth day, he suffocated. A 41-year-old, also struggling to breathe, was sent off to a hospital two hours away in a prison van with no medical help, even after a guard urged that he be rushed in an ambulance. "He'll be fine," a nurse said, but the man had a heart attack on the way and died.

Operating under a "we'll be fine" mindset, the state Legislature recently completed a special session to write its fiscal year 2006 budget. The budget, which includes a hefty raise for state employees, relies on $250 million in one-time funds, meaning when lawmakers write the '07 budget next year they'll have to either cut the budget by that much or raise more revenue. (Good luck on that second one during an election year.)
As colleague Hardy Jackson put it recently, this sort of governance is like the the sharecropper mentality that always makes compromises this year in hopes that next year's crop will bring in riches.
Given this, no one should be surprised by the prisons-on-the-cheap form of budgeting that generally ignores the well-being of prisoners, who if they survive their time in jail will someday return to our streets.