Alabama has the highest death rate from COVID-19 in the United States. As of Sept. 29, 2021, a total 692,737 Americans have died of the virus. Alabama has had the ninth-highest rate of COVID-19 infections, with more than 16,000 for every 100,000 citizens. Alabama has had around 289 of every 100,000 residents die of the 2019 novel coronavirus. During the most recent surge of the pandemic, led by the spread of the delta variant, Alabama is averaging almost 100 deaths per day from the virus. The Heart of Dixie also has the dubious distinction of having the fifth-lowest vaccination rate in the country at 42%.  

Republican Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama is overseeing the decimation of her state during a time of great trial and tribulation, but she knows what she will do with the Democratic-driven federal funds, passed through the legislature, to help fight the pandemic: she’s going to build prisons. On Monday, the Cotton State’s legislators and Gov. Ivey began talking about spending almost 20%—that’s $400 million—of its American Rescue Plan funds to build three large prisons and renovate a few others. 

U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler of New York sent a letter to the Treasury Department, asking Secretary Janet Yellen to stop this madness: “Directing funding meant to protect our citizens from a pandemic to fuel mass incarceration is in direct contravention of the intended purposes of the ARP legislation.”

The Alabama prison system has been the subject of myriad lawsuits and civil rights violations, and brutalities, along with bright and shiny examples of the kind of corruption GOP-run government spaces promote, over the past many years. Last year the Department of Justice sued Alabama because of the outrageous levels of violence in their penitentiary system. Republican state senator Greg Albritton is excited to use federal money meant for public health to get redirected towards shoring up the truly awful Alabama prison system that keeps getting mired in lawsuits and scandal. “We have let this go for a long, long time. We’ve been trying for six years to find the answer.” 

Like everything else in the pandemic, Alabama’s cruel, corrupt, and criminally neglected corrections system has been exposed. “The Alabama department of corrections reported a total of 2,040 Covid cases among inmates in Alabama prisons and 1,138 positive tests among staff as of 21 September.” The GOP is hoping that a light set of reforms put into their big billion-dollar prison spending spree will offset how clearly cynical the entire enterprise is. The Associated Press reports that this legislative session to throw pandemic cash at building more prisons “includes two policy changes: proposals to make retroactive both the 2013 sentencing standards and a 2015 law on mandatory supervision of released inmates.” They expect this might all “up to 700 inmates to apply for reduced sentences.”

Alabama incarcerates 28,000 people in state prisons with another 13,000 in local jails. Their incarceration rate per 100,000 residents is dwarfs the world’s rate as well as the United States’ average. They also disproportionally imprison Black Americans over white Alabamans at a predictably white supremacist level. The homicide rate within their prisons is 10 times that of the national average. They incarcerated a man for 35 years for stealing $50 from a bakery!

Gov. Ivey sent out a statement that began exactly like you’d expect: “The Democrat-controlled federal government has never had an issue with throwing trillons [sic] of dollars toward their ideological pet projects.” She went on to attack Rep. Nadler for pushing a political agenda. She also insisted that the American Rescue Plan Act allows the funds to be used “for lost revenue,” and so spending the federal funds to house people in prisons was perfectly legal.

Yup. So lefty “pet projects,” like keeping children out of poverty, paying a living wage, and public health initiatives are just like the GOP “pet project” of massive incarceration spending. Got it.

Related: An attorney for Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has been arrested on child solicitation charges

Related: Alabama sheriff who pocketed around $750,000 in prison food money loses re-election bid

Related: Man convicted of stealing $50 from bakery finally set free after 35 years in prison