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Tutwiler prison inmate Kathryn Canty has all the qualities of a prime work release candidate: a good behavior record, less than three years left to serve and an accounting degree along with several vocational certificates.

But she also has HIV, and inmate advocates say Alabama is the only state with a prison system that bars those with HIV from participating in work release.

"I'm a worker," said Canty, who finishes her 4 1/2-year sentence next month. "Work release would have been a great help for me to catch up with technology as well as saving money to get back on my feet. Things change in a month, let alone four years."

Work release is the closest thing to freedom behind bars in Alabama, allowing select inmates to hold free-world jobs, earn money, wear plain clothes and spend the day without supervision of corrections staff.

Scoring a spot in the program is coveted, but inmates have to meet several criteria first, and being HIV-free is one of them.

"Many states have a work release system. Alabama is the only state that does not allow prisoners who are HIV positive to participate in work release," said David Fathi, director of the U.S. Program of Human Rights Watch, a nonprofit group that monitors human rights cases worldwide.

"If 49 other states can allow HIV positive prisoners ... Alabama could do it too," he said.

Alabama corrections officials attribute the ban in part to medical requirements - including special diets and nurse-observed pill taking for HIV inmates - reached in a 2004 settlement of a lawsuit over dismal health care for those with the virus that causes AIDS.

The department maintains that Alabama's work release program is unique in allowing inmates to be free of staff supervision, making the medical monitoring stipulations under the settlement impossible to meet.

But prison officials in several states, including Southern neighbors Tennessee, Louisiana, Florida and North Carolina, said they have work release programs similar to Alabama's, and none of them bar inmates with HIV from being eligible.

"I'm really surprised to hear that," North Carolina corrections spokesman Keith Acree said. In North Carolina "as long as the inmate is physically able to work, they can do work release. If their medical condition gets to a point where they can't do the job, then they have to put them on some other program," he said.

Some Alabama lawmakers and the American Civil Liberties Union have been pressing corrections officials to remove the work release restriction.

"I think we're dealing with a long custom here in Alabama. There's fear here," said Margaret Winter, associate director of the ACLU's National Prison Project. "Certainly we have no reason to think anything the commissioner is doing is based on malice - far from it, but there needs to be a rational look at the facts."

Alabama Corrections Commissioner Richard Allen said the situation is under review and that the issue is not a large one.

"We're talking about a very small number of inmates - a handful of women and maybe a score of men when you consider who's eligible with the other criteria," he said. "They can't be murderers, they can't be rapists, so we're looking at it. We haven't decided."

This week there were 15 HIV-positive females at Tutwiler prison and about 278 HIV-positive males at the Limestone prison for men. Those with HIV have separate sleeping quarters and are barred from several prison jobs, including working in the kitchen and serving meals.

Alabama corrections officials loosened some of their restrictions on HIV positive men and women in recent months. But work release is still off limits.

Canty, who has completed courses in anger management, professional development and commercial interior design, applied for work release in 2005, 2006 and 2007, hoping with each round her growing stack of certificates would help her case. Each time she was turned down.

"I felt abandoned or just like I don't matter," she said recently.

"They really haven't given us a reason that stands on any foundation," she said. "We're able-bodied and willing to work - mentally and physically able to work."

Edward Harrison, president of the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, said the medical monitoring cited by Alabama prison officials can be a valid concern. But he said he assumes officials are open to alternate approaches "if it can be done without compromising security and health."

"We want our patients to do well and be receiving proper medication and their treatments, but ... we know resources aren't limitless, so there's tremendous pressure to provide resources in an efficient manner," he said. "Usually in the current fiscal problems that are facing most states, counties, it's easy to imagine why a system has to make decisions that are difficult. It's something we do on a daily basis."

Alabama inmates with HIV are allowed to participate in a Supervised Early Release Program that allows them to live away from the prisons near their end of sentence, but work release is the only corrections program where inmates can earn money.

That's a big draw for those who are looking to get a head start while still locked up, said Kenneth Henderson, who is about halfway through a two-year sentence at Limestone for a parole violation.

"(Work release) would benefit everybody in life," he said.

"I feel like it will stop the repeaters from making simple mistakes. Sometimes you can't help yourself when you don't have no friends, no family. You don't have a plan," Henderson said. "But with work release you can build your money up. Now you can say 'I got myself a job, I can work, I can get myself somewhere to stay."'

Ruth Naglich, the department's associate commissioner of health services, pointed to the improved conditions and medical care for HIV inmates today compared to 2002, when more than 10 male inmates with HIV died in that year alone.

"Since we've implemented those changes, it's been almost four years that an inmate has died an HIV-related death," Naglich said. "It's a wonderful thing, so it thrills us that what we're doing is working."

Naglich said another concern is that allowing inmates with HIV to work freely in the community without supervision could expose them to sickness and potentially spread HIV infections.

But both Fathi and Acree said that's a moot point because those granted the chance at work release are model inmates who aren't planning on misusing the opportunity.

Ultimately Alabama has to decide if it's in the state's best interest to keep inmates with HIV from one of its best re-entry programs, Fathi said.

"It's really about public safety. That means less crime, fewer people returning to prison and ultimately it means a safer society for everybody," he said. "So by denying work release to inmates with HIV who would otherwise be eligible, Alabama is shooting itself in the foot."

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