Last week, the United States Department of Justice released the findings of their investigation into Alabama’s Tutwiler Prison for Women. They laid out an environment where one-third of the staff has had sex with the inmates there, one of the officers fathered a child with an inmate, the women are forced to trade sexual favors for necessities and those who have reported sexual misconduct have been threatened or punished. These are unacceptable living conditions even for some of the most hardened criminals, but many in Tutwiler are not that. Instead, they are non-violent criminals. To make matters worse, the prison officials have known about the sexual misconduct at Tutwiler since 1995.
A study released last year by the National Center for Educational Statistics detailed Alabama’s terrible performance in schooling, as well. While many states performed better or about average with the international average of math and sciences, Alabama students performed worse. The only other state to rank in the bottom of math and sciences was, unsurprisingly, Mississippi. That’s to say nothing of the fact that Alabama has a poverty rate of 19 percent, a 27 percent child poverty rate and 45 percent of single-parent families with related children below poverty.
None of this is particularly surprising to those who pay attention to Alabama politics, but very little productive action is taken to combat some of the issues that Alabama faces. The Alabama Legislature has just recently gotten back into session, and, as usual, the bills that are making the most news are not helpful to the average Alabamian. The House of Representatives just passed a bill allowing individuals who have a moral objection to abortion, tubal ligation or human stem cell research to not be forced to perform procedures. Why an individual who opposes those procedures would be doing them in the first place perplexes me.
Another bill in Senate committee would require individuals on welfare to do 20 hours of community service a week. This was based on the representative’s drive through a neighborhood that had trash and graffiti where individuals were sitting on their porches. How this representative knew that these people were on welfare or that it’s their duty, rather than the city’s, to pick up the trash is beyond me. Why those who receive welfare, rather than corporations that get huge bailouts or farm subsidies, are the only ones targeted seems a bit strange as well. Also, that will surely help the individuals find a job to get off welfare as well, right?
It’s also important to remember that the legislature’s way of fighting to help Alabamians in failing schools was a giant handout to private schools with no guarantee that students will be able to actually transfer out of failing schools. Instead, it will likely result in public schools getting even less funding and those students who cannot afford to transfer getting an even lower quality education. There’s a reason that lawsuits have been filed against it on claims such as equal protection.
The Alabama legislature has a great deal of issues that it could actually be addressing including the regressive tax system, the unconstitutional conditions in Tutwiler Prison, the failing schools or Alabama’s high poverty rate. Instead, it has chosen over the years to focus on passing bills that result in more lawsuits, such as the Alabama Accountability Act or its multiple anti-abortion bills or bills that benefit a small amount of Alabamians.
Matthew Bailey is a second-year law student. His column runs biweekly on Thursdays.
