Alabama’s next governor has to fix the Alabama Department of Corrections.
Can we agree on this, please?
Could this be the thing that unites us all—the thing that Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and progressives, nerds and dummies, Bammers and Aubs all come together to demand? That the bottomless cess pool of corruption, financial waste and embarrassing illegalities at ADOC has to be cleaned up? Please?
Because while it has long been a source of unending negativity for the state, it has now reached a level of profound ignorance that even I find astonishing.
Consider last Thursday’s meeting of the Alabama Legislature’s Contract Review Committee as a prime example. That meeting stalled out for a few minutes as state Rep. Chris England, flabbergasted and dismayed, tried to get to the bottom of ADOC’s latest legal services contract.
That contract was a $200,000 agreement between the state and the Butler Snow law firm, which engaged that firm to monitor bankruptcy proceedings involving the company, YesCare, that ADOC selected to provide health care in our prisons back in 2023. There is a clip of this extended exchange that has made its way around Facebook, thanks to freelance reporter Beth Shelburne.
If you have not seen this clip, prepare to be dismayed and flabbergasted yourself, but know that everything I’m about to tell you is something that happened in real life in this state.
As it rocketed towards bankruptcy in several states, YesCare, which has been on the verge of bankruptcy since 2023, when ADOC signed the deal with the company despite England and others warning officials that there was no way YesCare could complete the contract, decided to do one thing to save money.
It stopped paying employees.
It didn’t stop them from coming to work. It didn’t stop asking them to do their jobs and care for the sick and dying patients within Alabama’s prisons. It didn’t cut executive pay or corporate benefits. It didn’t stop paying lawyers.
It just stopped paying the employees in Alabama’s prisons.
Even when ADOC fronted the company nearly $12 million so it could pay those employees, YesCare instead took that money, paid out one pay period and stiffed the employees on a second check that they were owed. At Thursday’s hearing, the general counsel for ADOC said that David Goldwasser, the chief restructuring officer for YesCare, told her that the money Alabama provided went towards “other things.”
Yeah, I bet it did.
England said out loud exactly what you’re thinking right now: “That’s fraud.”
He encouraged ADOC attorneys to contact the Alabama Attorney General’s Office and file a formal complaint alleging aggravated theft by deception.
That, of course, will only happen if we can convince Steve Marshall that either Joe Biden or Barack Obama is somehow involved. Maybe if he thinks it’s YesWeCanCare?
On the issue of the contract itself—the one for $200,000 and the only reason this whole charade came before the Contract Review Committee in the first place—things somehow get even more insane.
That contract is essentially hiring a firm that was caught by a federal court using AI to write briefs, and was severely reprimanded. Those briefs, just by the way, were submitted on behalf of the state of Alabama. In a case defending ADOC.
Additionally, the lead attorney on prison issues for the firm, Bill Lunsford, who has made more than $40 million since 2020 representing ADOC, was also an advisory member of the board for … come on, you know. I don’t even have to tell you at this point, do I?
It’s YesCare.
We found this out because ADOC had to pull the original contract with YesCare back in 2023 when a whistleblower alerted the agency that YesCare was using insider information not provided to other bidders. Where did it get that information? Maybe from the guy who had rep’d the state on dozens of prison-based lawsuits, England suggested during the meeting last week.
What are we doing here?
Alabama taxpayers are forking over big bucks to prop up a prison system that is, to put it lightly, a mess. We’re one of the deadliest prison systems in the free world. We have corruption running rampant within that system. The violence and squalid conditions are so bad that even the Trump Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against us. And we’re somehow getting worse, not better.
That mess of a system has cost Alabama taxpayers more than $5 BILLION over the last five years.
Y’all realize that it would cost significantly less to operate a prison system that was well functioning, right?
It would cost way less to pay the guards proper wages and benefits and offer significant pensions, which would deter bad behavior and cut off many of the costly lawsuits and investigations involving guard behavior.
It would cost way less to properly feed and care for the inmates, which would reduce healthcare costs, poor behaviors and costly lawsuits stemming from inadequate care and poor treatment.
It would cost way less to provide proper training programs and drug treatment programs, which would cut down on recidivism, reduce the prison population and eliminate the need for new, billion-dollar prisons.
Look, I get that fixing prisons isn’t a sexy campaign promise to make—and really, that’s our fault, as voters, for not making it one—but it’s an issue that could be a legacy-maker if handled properly. Yes, it will take money on the front end, and it will take a spine.
But what we have right now is an embarrassment to all good and decent people, and we should be ashamed of it.
