SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
DOJ Launches Unprecedented Investigation into Alabama Prisons
'Only the most egregious of conditions would prompt the federal government to open a major investigation into the state's prison system'
Oct 07, 2016
Alabama's notoriously inhumane and overcrowded prisons are to be investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice, in an unusual move the agency announced late Thursday.
"Only the most egregious of conditions would prompt the federal government to open a major investigation into the state's prison system," said Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) president Richard Cohen, which is currently suing the state of Alabama for its treatment of prisoners. "We welcome the investigation."
"It's a giant investigation. This is rare," Lisa Graybill, a staff attorney for the SPLC, told the Guardian. The newspaper noted that previously "Graybill worked for the federal unit that will investigate Alabama, and said the closest comparison in memory was an examination of Puerto Rico's juvenile jails."
"Taking on a whole state is unusual and possibly unprecedented," Graybill said.
Alabama's prisons, currently operating at 183 percent of capacity, are the most overcrowded in the country and some of the most unsafe and violent.
"The Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) is profoundly overcrowded, dangerously understaffed and simply incapable of running safe and secure prisons that protect the physical and mental health of the people in custody," said Eldon Vail, a former corrections administrator, in a report (pdf) on Alabama's prison system that was published in July. "It is a system in a state of perpetual collapse."
"[M]ost Alabama prisons use large dormitories that house between 90 and 150 prisoners. Underneath large incandescent lights and large fans, single beds and bunks are just 2 feet apart, while rival gangs occupy different corners of the rooms that more or less resemble large barns," explained local news outlet AL.com. "Adding to that, lack of space, bathroom facilities, and almost non-existent recreational time has increased tensions inside the dorms."
"At Kilby, a prison just outside of Montgomery, the occupancy rate is 266 percent over capacity with a 50 percent shortfall in guards," AL.com noted.
The Justice Department investigation was reportedly prompted by a series of violent incidents and strikes, most notably the strike last month that saw prisoners protesting dire work conditions that they compared to slavery. Prisons in Alabama, particularly the notoriously violent Holman prison, were at the forefront of the strike--many guards at Holman even joined the striking prisoners. Months prior to the strike, the same maximum-security prison was the site of two deadly riots.
In the Justice Department's letter (pdf) announcing the investigation, the department wrote to Alabama Governor Robert Bentley that "we will investigate whether Alabama: (1) adequately protects prisoners from physical harm and sexual abuse at the hands of other prisoners; (2) adequately protects prisoners from use of excessive force and staff sexual abuse by correctional officers; and (3) provides prisoners with sanitary, secure, and safe living conditions."
"The Constitution requires that prisons provide humane conditions of confinement," said principal deputy assistant attorney general Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. "We hope to work cooperatively with the state of Alabama in conducting our inquiry and ensuring that the state's facilities keep prisoners safe from harm."
Governor Bentley, a Republican, has responded to the investigation by touting his "Alabama Prison Transformation Initiative," which calls for the construction of more prisons.
However, "Alabama's prisons are out of control because the state incarcerates too many people and the prisons are poorly managed," SPLC's Cohen argued in response to the governor's plan. "Governor Bentley thinks the answer is to spend $1.5 billion on building new prisons, but the problems facing the Alabama Department of Corrections cannot be solved by construction."
"If we embark on a costly and ill-planned massive prison construction plan without carefully calibrating it to coincide with continued, significant decreases in the state's prison population," Cohen added, "we're likely to end up where we started--with too many prisons and an unnecessarily high prison population that uses state resources that could be better spent on increasing public safety and improving the lives of all Alabamians."
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Alabama's notoriously inhumane and overcrowded prisons are to be investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice, in an unusual move the agency announced late Thursday.
"Only the most egregious of conditions would prompt the federal government to open a major investigation into the state's prison system," said Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) president Richard Cohen, which is currently suing the state of Alabama for its treatment of prisoners. "We welcome the investigation."
"It's a giant investigation. This is rare," Lisa Graybill, a staff attorney for the SPLC, told the Guardian. The newspaper noted that previously "Graybill worked for the federal unit that will investigate Alabama, and said the closest comparison in memory was an examination of Puerto Rico's juvenile jails."
"Taking on a whole state is unusual and possibly unprecedented," Graybill said.
Alabama's prisons, currently operating at 183 percent of capacity, are the most overcrowded in the country and some of the most unsafe and violent.
"The Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) is profoundly overcrowded, dangerously understaffed and simply incapable of running safe and secure prisons that protect the physical and mental health of the people in custody," said Eldon Vail, a former corrections administrator, in a report (pdf) on Alabama's prison system that was published in July. "It is a system in a state of perpetual collapse."
"[M]ost Alabama prisons use large dormitories that house between 90 and 150 prisoners. Underneath large incandescent lights and large fans, single beds and bunks are just 2 feet apart, while rival gangs occupy different corners of the rooms that more or less resemble large barns," explained local news outlet AL.com. "Adding to that, lack of space, bathroom facilities, and almost non-existent recreational time has increased tensions inside the dorms."
"At Kilby, a prison just outside of Montgomery, the occupancy rate is 266 percent over capacity with a 50 percent shortfall in guards," AL.com noted.
The Justice Department investigation was reportedly prompted by a series of violent incidents and strikes, most notably the strike last month that saw prisoners protesting dire work conditions that they compared to slavery. Prisons in Alabama, particularly the notoriously violent Holman prison, were at the forefront of the strike--many guards at Holman even joined the striking prisoners. Months prior to the strike, the same maximum-security prison was the site of two deadly riots.
In the Justice Department's letter (pdf) announcing the investigation, the department wrote to Alabama Governor Robert Bentley that "we will investigate whether Alabama: (1) adequately protects prisoners from physical harm and sexual abuse at the hands of other prisoners; (2) adequately protects prisoners from use of excessive force and staff sexual abuse by correctional officers; and (3) provides prisoners with sanitary, secure, and safe living conditions."
"The Constitution requires that prisons provide humane conditions of confinement," said principal deputy assistant attorney general Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. "We hope to work cooperatively with the state of Alabama in conducting our inquiry and ensuring that the state's facilities keep prisoners safe from harm."
Governor Bentley, a Republican, has responded to the investigation by touting his "Alabama Prison Transformation Initiative," which calls for the construction of more prisons.
However, "Alabama's prisons are out of control because the state incarcerates too many people and the prisons are poorly managed," SPLC's Cohen argued in response to the governor's plan. "Governor Bentley thinks the answer is to spend $1.5 billion on building new prisons, but the problems facing the Alabama Department of Corrections cannot be solved by construction."
"If we embark on a costly and ill-planned massive prison construction plan without carefully calibrating it to coincide with continued, significant decreases in the state's prison population," Cohen added, "we're likely to end up where we started--with too many prisons and an unnecessarily high prison population that uses state resources that could be better spent on increasing public safety and improving the lives of all Alabamians."
Alabama's notoriously inhumane and overcrowded prisons are to be investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice, in an unusual move the agency announced late Thursday.
"Only the most egregious of conditions would prompt the federal government to open a major investigation into the state's prison system," said Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) president Richard Cohen, which is currently suing the state of Alabama for its treatment of prisoners. "We welcome the investigation."
"It's a giant investigation. This is rare," Lisa Graybill, a staff attorney for the SPLC, told the Guardian. The newspaper noted that previously "Graybill worked for the federal unit that will investigate Alabama, and said the closest comparison in memory was an examination of Puerto Rico's juvenile jails."
"Taking on a whole state is unusual and possibly unprecedented," Graybill said.
Alabama's prisons, currently operating at 183 percent of capacity, are the most overcrowded in the country and some of the most unsafe and violent.
"The Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) is profoundly overcrowded, dangerously understaffed and simply incapable of running safe and secure prisons that protect the physical and mental health of the people in custody," said Eldon Vail, a former corrections administrator, in a report (pdf) on Alabama's prison system that was published in July. "It is a system in a state of perpetual collapse."
"[M]ost Alabama prisons use large dormitories that house between 90 and 150 prisoners. Underneath large incandescent lights and large fans, single beds and bunks are just 2 feet apart, while rival gangs occupy different corners of the rooms that more or less resemble large barns," explained local news outlet AL.com. "Adding to that, lack of space, bathroom facilities, and almost non-existent recreational time has increased tensions inside the dorms."
"At Kilby, a prison just outside of Montgomery, the occupancy rate is 266 percent over capacity with a 50 percent shortfall in guards," AL.com noted.
The Justice Department investigation was reportedly prompted by a series of violent incidents and strikes, most notably the strike last month that saw prisoners protesting dire work conditions that they compared to slavery. Prisons in Alabama, particularly the notoriously violent Holman prison, were at the forefront of the strike--many guards at Holman even joined the striking prisoners. Months prior to the strike, the same maximum-security prison was the site of two deadly riots.
In the Justice Department's letter (pdf) announcing the investigation, the department wrote to Alabama Governor Robert Bentley that "we will investigate whether Alabama: (1) adequately protects prisoners from physical harm and sexual abuse at the hands of other prisoners; (2) adequately protects prisoners from use of excessive force and staff sexual abuse by correctional officers; and (3) provides prisoners with sanitary, secure, and safe living conditions."
"The Constitution requires that prisons provide humane conditions of confinement," said principal deputy assistant attorney general Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. "We hope to work cooperatively with the state of Alabama in conducting our inquiry and ensuring that the state's facilities keep prisoners safe from harm."
Governor Bentley, a Republican, has responded to the investigation by touting his "Alabama Prison Transformation Initiative," which calls for the construction of more prisons.
However, "Alabama's prisons are out of control because the state incarcerates too many people and the prisons are poorly managed," SPLC's Cohen argued in response to the governor's plan. "Governor Bentley thinks the answer is to spend $1.5 billion on building new prisons, but the problems facing the Alabama Department of Corrections cannot be solved by construction."
"If we embark on a costly and ill-planned massive prison construction plan without carefully calibrating it to coincide with continued, significant decreases in the state's prison population," Cohen added, "we're likely to end up where we started--with too many prisons and an unnecessarily high prison population that uses state resources that could be better spent on increasing public safety and improving the lives of all Alabamians."
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.