A Senate bill to create more outside oversight of the state’s crowded and dangerous facilities was originally expected to get a committee vote this morning.
That vote was canceled after Sen. Larry Stutts said he’s reached an agreement with the Alabama Department of Correction for a pilot program in a few of its facilities. That action doesn’t require legislation, he said.
“We’re going to do direct oversight through the (Alabama Department of) Examiners of Public Accounts with either three or four prisons in the Alabama Department of Corrections,” Stutts said Wednesday afternoon on the Senate floor. “I want to thank all the people that worked on this to get to this point. We’re going to do that for the next year and then come back and address the need for possible legislation.”
Stutts told Alabama Daily News the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women and two or three men’s facilities will be in the initial program.
Stutts also thanked from the Senate floor the family members of incarcerated Alabamians and others who spoke in favor of his bill during a public hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee meeting Wednesday morning.
That included Rachel Elledge, who was sentenced in 2022 to Tutwiler.
“I was taken out of a very violent, drug-ridden environment and put into another very violent, drug-ridden environment, except this time it was run by the Alabama Department of Corrections,” Elledge told lawmakers.
“… We need some outside oversight on these facilities… we need help.”
Stutts’ Senate Bill 316 would have created a new oversight coordinator position and office in the examiners’ department. The office’s duties would have included monitoring the safety and retention of correctional officers and staff and the “occurrence of systemic issues within the Department of Corrections which negatively impact the health, safety, welfare, and rehabilitation of individuals in the custody of the department.”
It also created a Corrections Oversight Board made up of lawmakers, advocates, medical and mental health professionals, family members and spouses of current inmates and formerly incarcerated people.
Stutts previously said he introduced the bill to increase accountability within the prison system, repeatedly referencing “The Alabama Solution,” a 2025, Oscar-nominated documentary chronicling poor prison conditions and violence allegedly committed by corrections officers.
Tim Mathis told the committee he was extorted by inmates and prison staff before his son died in 2024.
“I never had an idea that a 15-year sentence would turn into a death sentence,” he said.
Stutts said he’d met with ADOC about the bill three times prior to Wednesday’s meeting.
“This is a serious situation and I understand there’s expenses involved,” he said. “But we’ve spent millions and millions of dollars on settling lawsuits (against) the department of corrections while there are others pending. The cost is not the issue, it’s humane treatment, it’s accountability and it’s transparency. And those are the issues that I hope to address.”
Kelly Betts, a spokesperson for the ADOC, told ADN the department has expanded its constituent services, a resource intended for family, advocates or other constituents to submit concerns about those in ADOC custody.
“This expansion is a direct result of Senate Bill 322 and the recommendations of the Joint Legislative Prison Oversight Committee,” she said about the 2024 law. “The Constituent Services Coordinator position was filled in 2024, and 14 Facility Liaison positions were hired for ADOC major correctional facilities. The new Constituent Inquiry Form went live on the ADOC website in 2024 and is used to input and track inquiries.
“In 2025, Constituent Services processed 6,453 constituent complaints and resolved 6,450, achieving a 99.95% resolution rate.”
The state is under a 9-year-old federal court order to improve staffing in its prisons and ADOC Commissioner John Hamm earlier this year told lawmakers 2025 was a record year for hiring at the department, but about 1,800 more officers were needed to meet the court’s goal.