On Tuesday, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey delivered her state of the state address in a packed gathering of legislators, staff, and supporters in the historic 1859 Alabama State Capital Building. Minutes earlier, families of deceased state inmates gathered outside the same building to protest the conditions in which their loved ones were housed by the State of Alabama and remember those prisoners who died while in state custody.
The Vigil for the Victims of the Alabama Department of Corrections was organized by the Woods Foundation. The rally was held on the Capitol Steps. Nearly 100 protesters attended the event. The protestors held photos of incarcerated Alabamians who had died prematurely while in the custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC).
Following the Capitol Steps remembrance of the dead inmates, the group moved their rally to the historic Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.
Woods Foundation founder Lauren Faraino addressed the rally.
“We are here to wake up our politicians and wake up the people of the state of Alabama,” Faraino said. “They will tell us that prisoners should stay in prison until the last day of their sentence. They will tell us that parole is not an option. We are here to tell them that a prison sentence should not be a death sentence.”
“Alabama has the highest in-custody death rate of any state in the nation,” Faraino said. “Alabama has the highest murder rate. Alabama has the highest suicide rate,” for prisoners compared to the other 52 prison systems.
The Ivey administration has addressed the issue of Alabama’s overcrowded prisons by beginning construction of two new mega prisons in Elmore and Escambia Counties.
“We don’t need more prisons,” Faraino said. “We don’t need to give more money to a corrupt and failing agency.”
According to the Wood Foundation, the murder rate for prisoners by prisoners is eight times the national average, and most suicides are prisoners in solitary confinement. The Woods Foundation also claims that assaults by corrections officers show a “pervasive pattern [of] excessive force.” They claim that the use of batons, chemical spray, physical altercations, and kicking by the guards often result in the deaths of prisoners.
They claim that the vast majority of incarcerated men in prisons are addicted to deadly drugs often brought in by prison staff.
ADOC Commissioner John Hamm recently told legislators that most of the contraband (drugs, weapons, and cell phones) are thrown over the fence.
The Woods Foundation alleges that rapes of inmates occur “at all hours of the day and night…occurring in the dormitories, cells, recreation areas, the infirmary, bathrooms, and showers.”
Former ADOC Corrections Officer Stacy George also spoke to the protestors.
George told Alabama Today that the conditions in the prison facilities are “just awful. It’s terrible.”
Fariano claims that ADOC has not notified the next of kin when their relatives have died in the penitentiary.
“I can’t tell you how many of the families tell me that they found out that their sons and brothers had died on Facebook,” Fariano said.
The ADOC has a chronic shortage of corrections officers. The low ratio of guards to prisoners means that guards aren’t there to protect prisoners from violence by other prisoners. It also means that guards receive little oversight, and often there is no one to intervene if a prisoner attempts suicide or drug overdoses until it is too late.
In her state of the state address, Gov. Ivey did not mention the high mortality of the prisoners or justice reform but did say that she supports increased pay and benefits for the corrections officers.
“Here in our state, we have and we will always back the blue, and that means standing behind the men and women who serve Alabama as Corrections officers,” Ivey told legislators. “That is a tough – and too often thankless calling, not just a job, and we must continue to make increasing their salaries and benefits a priority.”
George did express some optimism that raising pay for corrections officers would result in the prisons being able to recruit and retain more officers.
Fariano accused the leaders of the state of Alabama of being apathetic about the plight of the prisoners.
“The politicians of the state of Alabama do not see these faces as victims, but they are victims,” Fariano said.
The state of Alabama has been accused by the U.S. Department of Justice of having prison conditions so poor that it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and is unconstitutional under the eighth amendment.
The legal costs of defending against that and other lawsuits is costing ADOC funds that could otherwise be going to improve prison conditions or adding staff. Federal Judge Myron Thompson has ordered the state to hire an additional 2,000 corrections officers in a lawsuit brought on behalf of current and former prisoners by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). ADOC has adopted a new healthcare provider and attempted to improve mental health services for prisoners to address the issues brought up in that litigation. However, the number of guards has declined since Judge Thompson gave that order.
The legislature has boosted funding for ADOC after years of neglect. ADOC received a state general fund (SGF) appropriation of $595 million in fiscal year 2023, as well as $400 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to kickstart construction of the new mega prisons.
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