Facing a Justice Department lawsuit over Alabama’s notoriously violent prisons, state lawmakers on Monday began a special session on a $1.3 billion construction plan that would use federal pandemic relief funds to pay part of the cost of building massive new lockups.

Gov. Kay Ivey has touted the plan to build three new prisons and renovate others as a partial solution to the state’s longstanding troubles in its prison system. The proposal would tap up to $400 million from the state’s share of American Rescue Plan funds to help pay for the construction.

“It’s the right thing to do,” Republican Sen. Greg Albritton said of the construction plan.

But critics of the plan say the state’s prison problems go beyond building conditions — and urged the state to look to more sweeping sentencing reforms. They also argued that the state should not be using pandemic relief dollars to build prisons.

U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler of New York sent a letter Monday to Treasury Department Secretary Janet Yellen asking Treasury to “prevent the misuse of (American Rescue Plan) funding by any state, including Alabama” to build prisons.

Republican legislative leaders said they are comfortable they can legally use the funds because the American Rescue Plan, in addition to authorizing the dollars for economic and health care programs, says states can use the money to replace revenue lost during the pandemic to strengthen support for vital public services and help retain jobs.

The Department of Justice last year sued Alabama, saying the state prisons for men are “riddled with prisoner-on-prisoner and guard-on-prisoner violence.”

The department noted in a 2019 report that dilapidated conditions were a contributing factor to what it called unconstitutional conditions but emphasized that, “new facilities alone will not resolve the contributing factors to the overall unconstitutional condition of ADOC prisons, such as understaffing, culture, management deficiencies, corruption, policies, training, non-existent investigations, violence, illicit drugs, and sexual abuse.”

The state has disputed the accusations from the Justice Department but has acknowledged problems with staffing and building conditions.

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