Advocacy group: Alabama has prison suicide crisis
An advocacy group charged Friday that Alabama officials have failed to address a rising suicide rate in state prisons despite a federal court order to improve conditions for mentally ill inmates. Attorneys representing inmates in an ongoing lawsuit over mental health care argued state officials have done “precious little” to address inmate suicides. “People are killing themselves in our prisons because conditions are horrendous,” Southern Poverty Law Center President Richard Cohen said at a news conference outside the Alabama Statehouse. The organization said there have been 13 suicides in 14 months, the latest one on Wednesday. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey’s office and the prison system did not immediately react to the allegations. A prison system spokesman said the department was working on a response. However, a state lawmaker said the prison system is working to improve conditions, but cautioned it will take time. “There is no question the suicide rate is higher than it should be. The data speaks for itself,” said state Sen. Cam Ward, who chairs a prison oversight committee. Alabama Department of Corrections monthly reports list that they were four inmate suicides in fiscal year 2017 and six in 2018. In late December and January, there were three suicides within four weeks in the state prisons. With their 8-year-old granddaughter beside her, Jerri Ford wiped away tears as she described the loss of her husband, Paul Ford. “He was our everything, everything and we don’t have him anymore. And it’s not right,” Jerri Ford said. Paul Ford, 49, was found hanging last month from a bed sheet in his cell at Kilby Correctional Facility. He was serving a sentence of life in prison without parole following a murder conviction. In court filings, the SPLC said, Ford had a prior suicide attempt and spent much of the past year in a restrictive setting or on some form of crisis watch. Jerri Ford said in the months before his death, she began to worry about her husband’s mental state. “He was seeing things, hallucinating. … He was scared to go to sleep,” she said. Inmate lawyers have asked a federal judge to block the state from placing prisoners with serious mental illnesses into segregation units or similar settings, where they said the extreme isolation becomes an incubator for worsening mental health symptoms. The judge responded by asking for the state to provide information on how many inmates are in such settings. U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson in 2017 ruled that mental health care in Alabama prisons was “horrendously inadequate.” In court filings, the state contends it has added mental health staff and is working to increase the number of corrections officers working in state prisons. Corrections Commissioner Jeff Dunn told lawmakers last month that the department is seeking a funding increase to hire 500 additional corrections officers, what he called a “down payment” amid plans to eventually add 2,000 correctional officers Ivey is expected to announce a proposal soon to replace state prisons, possibly leasing facilities built by private firms. The SPLC criticized the push for prison construction, saying the plan will be costly when the state faces a staff shortage. “Jamming thousands of people into some shiny new building will not solve the constitutional violations,” Maria Morris, an attorney with the SPLC, said. Republished with permission from the Associated Press
Warden testifies in trial over prisons’ mental health care
In late February, Alabama prison inmate Billy Lee Thornton stepped onto his cell bed, put a shoe string around his neck and hung himself from the light fixture, according to an incident report written by a correctional officer who witnessed the incident. The correctional officer, who had been at the door of Thornton’s segregated cell talking with him about medication, immediately called for help. As two officers rushed into the cell at Holman Correctional Facility and reached for Thornton, the string broke and Thornton fell, hitting his head. Thornton was rushed to the hospital. Four days later he was taken off life support. U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson, who last year ruled that Alabama provides “horrendously inadequate” mental health care to state inmates, ordered a Monday hearing on the circumstances of Thornton’s death and the death of another inmate. Holman Warden Cynthia Stewart testified Monday in federal court that Thornton was placed on mental health observation but not a suicide watch after a previous attempt to kill himself. Thornton was on the prison’s mental health caseload and had already attempted to hang himself on Dec. 27, 2017. A mental health evaluation presented to the court described him as hearing voices that told him to kill himself. He was placed under mental health observation, not a suicide watch, and stayed in a crisis cell under more intense supervision until Jan. 4. The plaintiff’s attorney Maria Morris said there is no documentation to show that Thornton received a mental health check 30 days after his release from the crisis cell. The 30-day check is required under a January 2017 court order that outlines a plan to protect possibly suicidal prisoners. After receiving another mental health evaluation where he was again described as having suicidal thoughts, Thornton was placed in a crisis cell on Feb. 22. He was released one day later. Morris said no documents show he received another mental health check before his death. Stewart said she didn’t know at the time about Thornton’s first suicide attempt. Bob Horton, a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Corrections, wrote in an email that the department is continuing to “investigate and evaluate the circumstances surrounding the death of the inmate at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility.” “This evaluation will include a review of actions of our contracted mental health staff and our correctional staff and whether those actions complied with departmental policy as well as any outstanding directives from the federal court,” Horton wrote. The department said the incident was currently classified as an attempted suicide. “I think today showed the Department of Corrections continues to leave prisoners who have severe mental health needs and have shown signs of dramatic decompensation in segregation at risk of harms to themselves without proper monitoring or treatment,” Morris said. Thornton was 31 when he died. His sister Taneisha Head, 29, was present at Monday’s hearing. “We’re just here for the truth,” she said. She said he never had a history of mental illness. “I knew my brother. He was coming home,” she told The Associated Press. “I told him we can’t wait till he comes home, and we can ride around in my new car and listen to blues.” Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
