Families of incarcerated Alabamians celebrate their role in securing an agreement for enhanced prison oversight in the Alabama Senate. From left, Sylvia Wright, Cindy Hamilton, Beth Smith, Tim Mathis, and Shantelle Quinley

Sen. Larry Stutts, R-Tuscumbia, who sponsored SB 316, the prison oversight bill, announced this development Wednesday on the Senate Floor. Stutts and Senate Pro Tem, Garlan Gudger, R-Cullman, acknowledged the contributions of a small group of parents, who were present in the Gallery. These families have faithfully pursued prison reform and safer conditions across ADOC by advocating at the State House, collecting photos and videos of horrific violence, and sharing their findings through mass emails. 

“We’re exponentially further along because of you,” Sen. Gudger told the families.

The agreement hammered out this week draws on elements of SB 316 by creating a process where certain employees at the Office of the Examiners of Public Accounts will visit selected prisons for inspections at any time (“golden key access”), collect and report data that’s made available to the public, and provide recommendations for improvement. 

“I feel like we’ve arrived at a really good position that is going to make a difference with the Department of Corrections in the coming years,” Sen. Stutts said. 

Appleseed’s Elaine Burdeshaw and advocates for prison oversight celebrate at the Alabama Statehouse.

Appleseed initially developed a prison oversight bill in 2024, which helped lead to the passage of SB 322, creating ADOC’s constituent services unit. Appleseed revisited the oversight bill this year and in collaboration with impacted families has been sharing data and stories of continued violence and dysfunction with the ADOC. “We are just moms and dads, regular people who experienced the reality of this system personally and could not unhear or unsee what’s happening inside,” said Cindy Hamilton, of Tuscaloosa, one of the group’s leaders.

The Oscar-nominated documentary, The Alabama Solution, illuminated the depth of the crisis for new audiences, spurring additional advocacy through the NoMore campaign. Additional support for oversight was provided by the national organization FAMM.

Supporters of prison oversight, including Appleseed’s Policy and Advocacy Director Elaine Burdeshaw, gathered at the Alabama Statehouse for a hearing.

“The newly announced pilot program to create more outside oversight of the Department of Corrections is positive movement that we are proud of. We believe this program will help bring some sunshine to a department that has long been shrouded in darkness, creating more transparency for the legislature, public, and families,” said Elaine Burdeshaw, Appleseed’s Policy and Advocacy Director. “We are grateful to Sen. Stutts, Pro Tem Gudger, and all the state departments who came to the table to make this possible. Most of all, we are grateful to the families and currently and formerly incarcerated people who continue to inform both our work on this issue and the solutions that will address it. As Pro Tem Gudger said, we wouldn’t be where we are now without them.”

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By Eddie Burkhalter, Appleseed Researcher

At the age of 14, Marvin “Trey” Taylor III found his father’s body. His pharmacist father died of an overdose, his family says. Mr. Taylor struggled for years with addictions afterward, and at the age of 32 was attacked inside Ventress Correctional Facility on Dec. 30, 2025.

Mr. Taylor was taken off of life support and died five days later inside Southeast Health hospital in Dothan, his mother, Jamie Stone, told Appleseed.

“We got there and he had bruises on his face, a cut on his eye. He was in a coma. They did a test the next day and he didn’t have any brainwaves. His brain stem was damaged,” Mrs. Stone said. He was removed from life support and died on Jan. 4, 2026. “He never woke up.”

Trey Taylor, following an assault at Ventress prison

Yet despite statements from the prison warden to both the mother and grandmother that Mr. Taylor had been assaulted, and photos taken at the hospital showing black eyes and large bruising across his face, his death certificate, obtained by the family and completed by a physician at Southeast Health in Dothan lists the cause of death as “subdural hematoma” and the manner of death as “Natural Causes.” A subdural hematoma is a type of bleeding near the brain that is most often the result of a head injury.

It was unclear on Tuesday why the death certificate lists the manner of death as “Natural Causes” rather than “Homicide.” Attempts to reach the physician whose name appears on the death certificate on Tuesday were unsuccessful, and questions to ADOC on Tuesday about the death certificate were not immediately responded to.

Mr. Taylor’s life took a hard turn when, as a young teenager, he found his father’s body, Mrs. Stone said. Her son spent the subsequent years mostly alone in his room and with few friends. He did enjoy fishing and would often go to a local skating rink on weekends, but eventually methamphetamine took hold of his life, she explained. Instead of removing him from the temptation of drugs, Alabama prisons exposed her son to new, more deadly drugs, including fentanyl, which he struggled with while incarcerated.

Mr. Taylor may be the first homicide victim this year among those incarcerated by the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC), a prison system besieged with overdoses, violence and death.

The death toll inside Alabama prisons in 2025 was nearly three times the national average. At least 202 people died inside Alabama prisons in 2025, Alabama Appleseed discovered through a records request to ADOC. Alabama’s prisoner mortality rate in 2025 was 957 deaths per 100,000 people, compared with a national average across state prisons of 330 deaths per 100,000, according to the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics.

That was a drop from the 277 deaths in Alabama prisons in 2024, following another slight decline from the record high 327 in 2023. While the decline can be considered progress, the rate of deaths across Alabama prisons dramatically exceeds the death toll in other state prison systems, and continues to be high despite multiple commissions, committees, hearings, lawsuits, and investigative reports.

On Ash Wednesday, Alabamians gathered on the Capitol Steps to remember those who died in state prison custody. Photo by Bernard Troncale

Alabama prison’s overdose mortality rate in 2023 was 20 times higher than the national average across all state prisons in 2019, the last year for which the federal government has made that data available. Illicit drugs are most often brought in and sold by Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) staff themselves, as publicized arrests and interviews with incarcerated people show, and while ADOC has made increasing efforts in recent months to catch and charge these employees, drugs and the overdose deaths persist. Just last week a woman employed with Yescare, the ADOC’s medical contractor was after a search of her home turned up significant amounts of meth, fentanyl, and other drugs.

Mrs. Stone said the prison’s warden called her on the last day of the year to tell her that he’d been attacked and was in the Dothan hospital. A bracelet on her son’s arm had the date of Dec. 30, so she assumes he was attacked that day. She has gotten little information from the prison, and Appleseed’s attempts to get information on his death from ADOC date back to Jan. 30, and as of March 10 Appleseed has not received a response.

Mrs. Stone believes her son was in debt to other incarcerated men over drugs, which are plentiful inside Alabama’s prisons and drive much of the violence and death. The last time she spoke to her son by phone was on Dec. 30, the day he was attacked. He’d asked for money, she said.

“He used to call every day saying he owed somebody money. He wanted me to put in on another guy’s account, and don’t put it on his, and I knew it was for drugs…so I wouldn’t send him anything,” Mrs. Stone said. “I assume they jumped on him because he owed money, because I’m pretty sure he did.”

Mrs. Stone said another family member about a month prior to his death sent money to pay off a previous drug debt he owed. It’s common for those serving inside Alabama prisons with drug addictions to generate debt to those selling, which often leads to violence and death, according to Appleseed’s tracking of prison deaths and interviews with impacted family members.

As for who attacked her son, Mrs. Stone said she hasn’t been told. “The only thing they told us is that they’ve got in isolation…he’s by himself and that they’re keeping him for his safety, and so that nobody can jump on him, and he can’t hurt anybody else until the investigation is complete,” Mrs. Stone said.

Patricia Blankenship, Mr. Taylor’s grandmother whom he lived with for many years prior to his incarceration, said the warden told her by phone that her son had been hit by another incarcerated man, and that she’s awaiting the results of an autopsy.

Mrs. Blankenship told Appleseed that her grandson struggled after his father’s death. She and her husband tried for years to get her grandson help with his addiction to methamphetamine, she said, and he spent time at an in-patient treatment facility for youth in Mobile, but nothing stuck.

Mr. Taylor in 2018 pleaded guilty to third-degree escape for leaving a court-ordered treatment facility and was sentenced to 20 years in prison, split to serve five of those years in ADOC with three years of probation. He had three prior felony convictions from 2013 connected to his grandmother’s credit card for credit card fraud, possession of a controlled substance and theft of property, which enhanced his sentence under Alabama’s Habitual Felony Offender Act.

Mr. Taylor was later released on probation, but in 2023 was charged with domestic violence harassment and was sentenced to one year in prison on April 30, 2025, and his probation was revoked on the previous escape charge, according to court records. He was denied parole at an Aug. 6, 2025 hearing and was set for another parole consideration in August 2028. He had an expected end of sentence date of Sept. 28, 2038.

Mrs. Blankenship explained that her grandson struggled with addiction and made mistakes as a result, but the state had a responsibility to keep him alive.

“My grandson didn’t deserve to die. He didn’t deserve to die like that. Nobody does. They’re human, and they have families. They’ve got to change to keep these men from getting beaten up and killed,” Mrs. Blankenship said. “One lieutenant told me that they don’t have enough guards because they can’t keep them.”

In 2023, Mr. Taylor even completed ADOC’s 6-month Crime Bill drug treatment class, his grandmother said, and the warden told her he was in some sort of other class at the time of his death, but with so much drugs inside Alabama’s prisons she wonders how effective those classes are.

“I don’t know what good it does, They’ve got more drugs in prison than out here in the street,” Mrs. Blankenship said. She’s heard from others that it’s often the officers who bring in and sell the drugs.

Mr. Blankenship said she prays that Alabama’s lawmakers will do something to prevent more of these deaths. “I hope they do something. I pray they will. They’ve got to do something,” Mrs. Blankenship said. “I miss him so much. It’s hard to image him gone, because it’s hard to accept.”

The post Thirty-two-year old Marvin Taylor was beaten inside Ventress prison. So why does his death certificate say he died of natural causes? appeared first on Alabama Appleseed.

Sen. Larry Stutts, R-Tuscumbia

This bill is the result of years of investigations, litigation, and escalating prison expenditures that have failed to alleviate extreme violence, dysfunction, and the highest prison death rates in the country.  It comes as families of incarcerated Alabamians have increased their advocacy and outreach to elected leaders.

Core components of SB 316:

• Increases the responsibilities and authority of the position within the Department of Examiners of Public Accounts that was created by Sen. Chambliss’s SB322 in 2024 to serve the Joint Prison Oversight Committee– naming it the Prison Oversight Coordinator.

• • Allows the Prison Oversight Coordinator to visit any DOC facility for inspections at any time (“golden key access”), collect and report data that’s made available to the public, and provide recommendations for improvement, and gives them authority to investigate complaints from incarcerated people, their families, and correctional staff. 

• Creates a Corrections Oversight Board.

• • Made of lawmakers, medical and mental health professionals, formerly incarcerated people, family members of incarcerated people, and more. Tasked with holding at least one public hearing a year and reviewing the data, inspections and recommendations provided by the Examiners employee. 

• Removes investigation authority from the Department of Correction’s Law Enforcement Services Division and places it with the State Bureau of Investigations.

• • There have been documented issues with investigations within DOC facilities. Placing that authority with the State Bureau of Investigations provides a more transparent and independent process. 

• Provides one special prosecutor to each DA’s office with a major DOC facility in their district.

All prison-related criminal cases are referred to the local DA’s office, but these offices are overwhelmed by the large numbers of cases coming in and unable to prioritize them. Providing a special prosecutor to each office with a major facility in its district will help provide the needed resources and capacity to ensure crimes happening inside DOC facilities, by officers and incarcerated people alike, are handled appropriately. 

This legislation comes seven years in a crisis first identified by the U.S. Department of Justice.

In 2019, DOJ declared Alabama’s prisons for men unconstitutional. More than 1,500 Alabamians in prison have died since then. Meanwhile, the state has spent more than $5 billion on the prison system in the last five years – more than we’ve spent on public health, mental health, and child services combined. These costly prisons remain the deadliest in America.

On Ash Wednesday, Alabamians gathered on the Capitol Steps to remember those who died in state prison custody. Photo by Bernard Troncale

• Alabama’s prison mortality rate has been far higher than any other state in the nation for at least 2 years in a row. In 2023 and 2024, Alabama’s death rate was more than 100 deaths per 100,000 people. No other state comes close. 

The crisis at DOC is acute, and past efforts to improve prison culture and conditions have yet to produce noticeable positive outcomes. 

• Increased officer pay has brought in new officers– but significant numbers of current officers have been fired due to misconduct or criminal charges. Many more have serious documented allegations of misconduct, but the culture of ADOC and bureaucratic impediments restrict the ability for them to be disciplined or removed. The staff vacancy rate remains above 50%. 
• Efforts to increase programming and positive culture, like the creation of educational incentive time credits– an effort led by Sen. Chambliss, the Chair of the Joint Prison Oversight Committee– have not been implemented because of the dysfunction. 
• Even the costly construction of new prisons, despite the benefits that do exist, will not solve the underlying culture.

While many are aware of severe problems that exist at ADOC, increased transparency is necessary to weed out the roots of the dysfunction – where exactly are the problems coming from and how have they persisted, and even increased, despite the State being on notice from federal authorities for more than 6 years. With an ongoing crisis in Alabama’s prisons, there is no indication that change can or will happen on its own, regardless of leadership’s intentions.

While passing this form of oversight legislation now would be more responsive in nature, it would eventually act as a prevention mechanism— to avoid poor conditions and lawsuits, and keep us from ever getting to this point in the first place. Read more from bill sponsor Sen. Larry Stutts here.

Appleseed encourages Alabamians to reach out to their state legislators and express support for SB 316. Tell them:

As your constituent, I hope you will consider this issue– what’s at stake for incarcerated people and their families, correctional officers, our state budgets, and public safety– and encourage you to support Sen. Stutts’ legislation when you have the opportunity.

The post SB 316, Alabama’s Prison Oversight Bill, Has Been Filed. Now Let’s Get It Passed. appeared first on Alabama Appleseed.

Stephanie Lewis stood in front of the Alabama State Capitol steps with hundreds of others on Wednesday and pleaded for the system that allowed her husband to die to change. 

“It has to change. I know his life was not in vain,” Mrs. Lewis said of her husband’s January death at the Childersburg Work Release facility in Alpine. She’s still seeking answers from the Alabama Department of Corrections, but others inside the facility have said his death involved excessive force by officers. 

At least 202 people died inside Alabama prisons in 2025, which was nearly three times the national average. That was a drop from the 277 deaths in Alabama prisons in 2024, following another slight decline from the record high 327 in 2023.

On Ash Wednesday, Alabamians gathered on the Capitol Steps to remember those who died in state prison custody.

More than 1,500 Alabamians have died in state prison custody since Alabama’s elected officials were put on notice by the federal government in 2019 that state prisons were plagued by mismanagement, corruption, understaffing, nonexistent investigations, and violence, including homicides and sexual assaults.

On Wednesday, hundreds of family members harmed by these losses and advocates calling for change met outside the state Capitol to demand action. The Oscar-nominated documentary “The Alabama Solution” tells the plight of men inside the state’s deadly prisons fighting for change from inside. The film’s impact campaign “No More” helped organize Wednesday’s gathering. 

“I’m here today to seek justice for my son, who they murdered,” Sandy Ray, from Uniontown, told those gathered on Wednesday. Her son, Steven Davis, was beaten to death by officers in 2019. “And for all of you.” 

A woman grieves at a vigil for the 1,500 lives lost in Alabama prisons

The film documented the ADOC’s response to Mr. Davis’s beating death, which involved a $250,000 settlement paid to Ms. Ray, yet the officer involved remains on the state payroll and has been promoted to lieutenant.

Terry Williams spoke to Appleseed by phone prior to Wednesday’s vigil. His 22-year-old son, Daniel Terry Williams, was likely smothered to death in November 2023, according to the state’s chief medical examiner, and there was evidence on his body that corroborate what witnesses have said was his kidnapping and torture over a period of several days inside Staton Correctional Facility. He died the day he was set to be released from prison.

“It hurts a lot, knowing what he had to go through, and I couldn’t help him,” Mr. Williams said. 

Despite witnesses who saw Daniel Williams being held against his will in a secure prison staffed with officers, and despite clear medical evidence pointing to homicide and a suspect identified, that suspect has not been charged in Mr. Williams’s death. To date, no one has been criminally charged in connection with his death, which made headlines across the country and altered Alabama lawmakers that nothing they or the Administration had done in the four years since the DOJ report was released had sufficiently addressed deadly prison violence. 

Daniel Terry Williams, 22, was likely smothered to death on November 7, 2022 inside Staton Correctional Facility.

Appleseed’s executive director, Carla Crowder, addressed the Legislature’s Joint Prison Oversight Committee in a December 2023 meeting and presented documentation of ADOC failures that contributed to the death, part of a pattern of failures that has resulted in assaults, rapes, and killings of incarcerated individuals, many of whom were sent to prison for drug treatment and rehabililation.  “The 38-year-old suspect in this kidnapping, rape and torture was involved in nine instances of sex assault, rape, and stabbing since 2017 in ADOC while incarcerated. … There is no documentation that he was placed in segregation for any of these assaults. There was no disciplinary action by ADOC,” she said.

Daniel Willaims’ father questions how prison staff would allow such a thing to happen, and said he is seeking justice that so far hasn’t been offered to his family. “Put them in a single cell for the rest of their lives. I want them to sit there and think about what they did,” Mr. Williams said. 

Kelly Ballentine with her grandson, Wayland, drove all the way from Florence to attend the vigil.

Tim Mathis lost his son to an overdose inside Elmore Correctional Facility on June 4, 2024, minutes after talking to his father by phone. Mr. Mathis, from Dothan, frequently appears before lawmakers demanding accountability and reform.

Overdose deaths, and especially those deaths known or suspected of being caused by fentanyl, have soared in the state’s prisons. The overdose mortality rate in Alabama’s prisons in 2023 of 435 per 100,000 people was 20 times the national rate across state prisons.

What his son’s autopsy report shows is that the state’s medical examiner believes Chase died of accidental “mixed Drug toxicity (fentanyl and fluorofentanyl).” Fluorofentanyl is a synthetic form of fentanyl first produced in the 1960s.

“There’s probably been someone who’s died in the system while we’ve been standing here,” Mr. Mathis said to those assembled outside the Capitol.

Dothan father, Tim Mathis, speaks about his son, Chase Mathis, who entered prison in a wheelchair and never came home. Photo by Bernard Troncale

Asked by Appleseed whether he believes some of Alabama’s decision-makers in Montgomery aren’t aware of the prison crisis, Mr. Mathis explained that he thinks it might be more complicated than that.  “Some of them just don’t know. Some of them are just ignorant to it, and then again, maybe some of them don’t want to know,” he said. 

The post Families from Florence, Dothan, Tuscaloosa, Prattville and Countless Places In Between Line the Alabama Capitol Steps Honoring the Hundreds of Lives Lost in Alabama State Prisons appeared first on Alabama Appleseed.

By Eddie Burkhalter, Appleseed Researcher 

MONTGOMERY, AL — Bennie Haggins sat in a waiting area before his pardon hearing was set to begin on Wednesday  in Montgomery and talked about what he hoped was to come. Only 33 living Alabamians had been on parole longer than Mr. Haggins, who was released on parole June 3, 1991, and had been under supervision with limited opportunities and movement since then.

“I’m ready to be free,” Mr. Haggins said. 

Standing in front of the three-member Pardons and Paroles Board moments later board member Darryl Littleton asked Mr. Haggins, 71, what happened the day of the robbery. The board regularly asks all those applying for a pardon to discuss the circumstances around the crime that resulted in their incarceration. 

Bennie Haggins, along with family members and supporters, celebrate his pardon following his successful hearing on October 8.

Mr. Haggins, 71, fought back tears and with a cracked voice explained that his childhood and young adult life were difficult. “I had no direction. I was on my own,” Mr. Haggins said. He apologized to his victim, referring to her by name. Mr. Littleton later noted that he remembered his victim’s name. 

Mr. Haggins’s father abandoned the family when he was very young, and his mother followed suit when he was nine. He was raised by his grandmother and was kicked out of school in the 11th grade. Struggling with addiction, he turned to petty theft in the late 1970s. In May 1983, Mr. Haggins, in a drunken state, robbed a convenience store of $29. No one was physically injured in his crime and he was caught a short time later. He pled guilty and was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole because of his previous property crimes. 

“I take full responsibility for what I did,” Mr. Haggins told the board members, and he also told them about the transformation his life took after leaving prison. 

From prison, he went to work for the Sterilite Corporation in Birmingham and soon after began volunteering with the American Red Cross, which eventually hired him onto the Emergency Disaster Services team, where he would travel to weather-impacted areas and help those most in need. He spent a decade at Red Cross before being hired at the Jimmie Hale Mission in Birmingham 2022 as an intact coordinator, helping the unhoused find respite. When the weather turns freezing he drives the mission van out into the Birmingham streets looking for those who need a warm palace for the night. 

“When’s the last day you’ve had off?,” Board Chair Hal Nash asked Mr. Haggins, who responded: “I don’t take days off.” 

Bennie Haggins working at the Downtown Jimmie Hale Mission, where he assists with intake and with ensuring unsheltered people are provided safety and shelter on freezing nights.

Perryn Carroll, executive director of the Jimmie Hale Mission, spoke on behalf of his pardon and said that Mr. Haggins has used his past as a catalyst “both to change his life and to change countless other lives.” 

“Bennie’s story is a perfect illustration of why parole is such a crucial part of our criminal justice system,” Scott Fuqua, Appleseed attorney, told board members. “And he is a shining example of what is possible when those convicted of crimes are not judged solely by their worst mistakes, but instead as a person who still possesses the human spirit and the limitless potential for positive change.” 

After deliberating Mr. Haggins’s pardon application, and the pardon and parole applications of three others at the hearing, the board voted to approve a full pardon for Mr. Haggins. As of that moment he would no longer have to report to a parole officer or pay the monthly $40 supervision fee. He’d be free to vote and to travel out-of-state, something that kept him from going on cruises with his wife and daughter. 

“Overwhelmed,” Mr. Haggins said after the vote. 

“When I look back, I destroyed my whole life, but God blessed me with the opportunity to get it back, and I took full advantage of it and tried to help as many people as I could help, and I haven’t stopped,” Mr. Haggins said. And that won’t stop now that he’s pardoned, he said. There’s much left to do. 

The post After 33 years on parole, Bennie Haggins, 71, is granted a pardon appeared first on Alabama Appleseed.

Since 2019, when the United States Department of Justice issued a 56-page report calling out unconstitutional violence, death, and corruption across the entire Alabama prison system for men, Alabama Appleseed has been dedicated to guiding communities across Alabama to a better understanding of the human rights crisis in our prisons. We do this by lifting up stories of individuals and families most harmed by this broken system, by researching and documenting evidence-based solutions and alternatives to needless incarceration, and by providing legal services that free older, rehabilitated Alabamians who then share their personal stories of hope and redemption. 

A crowded dorm in an Alabama prison

Appleseed shares our work widely across the state, connecting with faith groups, civic organizations, students, elected officials and everyday Alabamians who learn about this crisis and want to get involved. We have developed resources for advocates geared toward educating everyday Alabamians and empowering them to create change. 

In the six years since we embarked on these efforts there has been some progress. And for that we are grateful. But given the depth of the dysfunction within state prisons, the need for major systemic reform remains. As laid out below, elected officials vowed to address these brutal conditions back in 2019. Money has poured into the prison system, yet institutional corruption and senseless violence remain rampant. The documentary, The Alabama Solution, painfully exposes these wrenching conditions to a broader audience, demanding a bold response from our state.

Below is a list of research and resources for advocates across Alabama who wish to learn more about this pressing issue, get up to speed on the responses of our elected officials, and use that knowledge to get involved in crucial reform efforts, including holding these leaders accountable.

The Problem: “The combination of ADOC’s overcrowding and understaffing results in prisons that are inadequately supervised, with inappropriate and unsafe housing designations, creating an environment rife with violence, extortion, drugs, and weapons.” United States Department of Justice

The U.S. Department of Justice’s report in 2019 detailed how Alabama’s prisons for men were violating constitutional rights of the incarcerated by failing to protect them from prisoner-on-prisoner violence and sexual abuse. The DOJ’s subsequent follow-up report in 2020 noted systemic problems of unreported or underreported excessive use of force incidents, a failure to properly investigate these abuses and attempts by correctional officers and their supervisors to cover up these violations. 

Appleseed’s summary of the DOJ report highlights the inability of the Alabama Department of Corrections to protect incarcerated men from sexual and physical violence and the DOJ’s finding that Alabama prisons had a homicide rate eight times the national average at the time. Appleseed’s summary also makes clear that the DOJ’s report states new prisons alone won’t solve the crisis. 

The beating death of Steven Davis in October 2019 at Donaldson prison underscored the ADOC’s inability to control excessive force by correctional officers, even after being on notice of the federal investigation.

Sandy Ray, whose story is featured in “The Alabama Solution,” shows members of the Criminal Justice Study Group photos of her son Steven Davis as a vibrant young man, then after being beaten by prison officers.

The DOJ filed the federal government’s lawsuit against the State of Alabama and the Alabama Department of Corrections in December 2020 and filed an amended complaint in May 2021. 

Irrefutable documentation of pervasive violence, illegal drugs, and deaths in Alabama’s largest law enforcement agency

This crisis has resulted in a shameful and embarrassing national spotlight on the state. The New York Times called Alabama’s prisons “gruesome.”   In a Fox News report, then-Sen Cam Ward called the findings, “deeply humiliating,” and “disgusting.” Politico called the situation a “humanitarian crisis,” in an article quoting Adam Gelb, president and CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice: “It’s a state that has chased itself around in circles for the past two decades, and there have been some modest improvements, but the system remains terribly overcrowded and filled with people who in many cases should never have come through the front doors.”

St. Clair Correctional Facility

Locally, the Montgomery Advertiser’s reporting includes the story of the beating death of Steven Davis at the hands of correctional officers at Donaldson Correctional Facility. Seven months after the DOJ’s 2019 report the newspaper’s reporting found that “prison officials have withheld food from men, micromanaging minor disciplinary infractions while violence and unexpected deaths continue unabated, including nine which occurred during the reporting of this story in September and October.” The 2019 Advertiser article “American horror story’: The prison voices you don’t hear from have the most to tell us” detailed conversations with incarcerated people who tell of chaos, violence and corruption. 

Unfortunately, the situation got worse. Prison Legal News reported more than one death a week in 2022, and bizarre situations such as the videotaped beating of prisoner Jimmy Norman on the rooftop of the Elmore Chapel by a guard. 

In-depth reporting by WBHM’s Deliberate Indifference podcast details how Alabama’s prisons became the deadliest in the country, looks closely at understaffing and overcrowding and through the voices of the incarcerated, correctional officers and others, sheds more light on a crisis that was decades in the making. 

Appleseed in 2023 began publishing the “Cruel and Unusual” series of reports that focused on the people harmed by Alabama’s overreliance on excessive sentences, which trap people in deadly, dysfunctional prisons long after they have paid their debt, including Ronnie Peoples, a cancer patient who at the time had served more than two decades of a life without the possibility of parole sentence for crimes in which no one was physically harmed. Appleseed’s subsequent research followed Mr. Peoples as he fought to get adequate cancer treatment while still incarcerated. 

The prison crisis has captured headlines across the country, portraying Alabama in a problematic light.

Appleseed also spoke to the family of Christopher Mount, who was killed on Mother’s Day 2023 inside a segregation cell with another man in Easterling Correctional Facility. Mr. Mount’s daughter, then-17-year-old MaKayla Mount, in December 2023 told the story of her father’s death and impact on her life to members of the Legislative Joint Prison Oversight Committee. She carried the urn with his ashes into the Statehouse.

MaKayla Mount holds an urn containing her father Christopher Mount’s ashes at the Prison Oversight Committee’s hearing.

Also in the “Cruel and Unusual” series is the plight of Leon Hotchkiss, who is serving a 40-year sentence for growing marijuana. Mr. Hotchkiss, 70, with myriad health problems, has been assigned to the minimum-security Loxley Work Release Center for years and has held multiple jobs in the community. Even so, he was denied parole in February 2023. 

Appleseed in April 2023 noted the fourth anniversary of the DOJ’s 2019 report on Alabama’s prisons, which found that between the report’s release and the anniversary date, 698 people died in state prisons. Appleseed’s research also noted that the month that DOJ’s report was published in 2019, Alabama prisons were at 168 percent capacity, and at the time of Appleseed’s publication, prisons remained at 168 percent capacity. 

Daniel Terry Williams, 22, was likely smothered to death on November 7, 2022 inside Staton Correctional Facility.

Alabama Daily News reporting on the December 2023 public hearing of the Legislative Joint Prison Oversight Committee includes comments from impacted family members who told of deaths, assaults, torture, extortion of those family members and of the indifference of prison staff.  In AL.com’s subsequent reporting on the Committee’s July 2024 meeting the mother of Derrick Martin, killed by another incarcerated man in Elmore Correctional Facility, told members that her son discussed with her the stabbing and beatings he suffered during six years behind bars.

In 2024, Alabama prisons remained unconstitutionally dangerous places, Appleseed found, where more than 1,000 people had died inside Alabama prisons since the DOJ’s 2019 report release. The national spotlight again glared on the state with the kidnapping and torture death of 21-year-old Daniel Williams at Staton prison, days before his scheduled release. An Appleseed investigation found that the suspect in Mr. Williams’ death was involved in nine instances of sex assault, rape, and stabbing since 2017 while incarcerated in ADOC, yet he was never placed in segregation to prevent additional victimization. No criminal charges were ever filed. Numerous deaths are also the result of dangerous drugs brought in by prison staff.

Violence by ADOC officers has remained pervasive. The Alabama Reflector in May 2025 published the first of the four-part series “Blood Money” that details 124 lawsuits that ADOC settled between 2020 and 2024, 94 of which involved complaints of excessive force by officers. The cost of defending those lawsuits pushed ADOC’s legal spending over $57 million since 2020. 

The State of Alabama’s Responses

Gov. Kay Ivey in 2019 announced the formation of the Governor’s Study Group on Criminal Justice Policy that was to “receive and analyze accurate data, as well as evidence of best practices, ultimately helping to further address the challenges facing Alabama’s prison system.” While the study group’s recommendations, released in January 2020, did include suggestions on spending and ways to reduce recidivism, the group declined to take up more substantive sentencing reform measures. Former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Champ Lyons, who chaired the Study Group, issued this warning five years ago: “The time for action is now. We dare not abide by a status quo that risks the potential for costly and disruptive intervention by federal authorities.”

The Governor’s Study Group on Criminal Justice Policy. Photo courtesy of the Associated Press.

Ivey in May 2021 signed several criminal justice reform bills into law, but only one bill would have a minimal impact on prison populations by reducing prison sentences by up to one year for incarcerated people who complete academic and vocational programs. Instead of making a serious effort to reduce the prison population, the Governor’s Office forged ahead with a massive, costly prison construction plan, insisting “this Alabama problem has an Alabama solution.” 

Alabama’s new 4,000-bed prison is under construction in Elmore County. While the project was initially projected to cost $623 million, the cost ballooned to $1.28 billion. Lawmakers told Alabama Daily News that the state has secured 60% of the cost of a second 4,000-bed prison, to be built in Escambia County. Neither of the new prisons is expected to ease overcrowding, however, as the legislation authorizing prison construction requires the closing of several existing prisons, and acknowledges the intent of the law is to “replace existing prison facility capacity.” 

The state is spending billions on incarceration, yet the money hasn’t made a dent in the violence and death inside prisons. An Appleseed analysis found that state prison expenses over a five fiscal-year period, from 2022-2026, will reach $5 billion. That monumental figure includes the annual General Fund allocations to the Alabama Department of Corrections, plus the costs of new prison construction including debt service, but does not include the at least $57 million paid out of the state’s General Liability Trust Fund in recent years on ADOC legal expenses, primarily private contract attorneys to defend officers accused of misconduct and to defend the ADOC in federal class action litigation over unconstitutional prison conditions.

The Alabama Joint Prison Oversight Committee was formed by legislation in 2021 and in meetings held since, those members have heard from directly impacted families members and from ADOC officials. One product of those discussions was the formation of ADOC’s Constituent Services unit, tasked with answering family members’ questions and concerns about the health and safety of incarcerated loved ones. Oversight Committee Chair Sen. Clyde Chambliss, R-Prattville, sponsored legislation that allowed ADOC to hire an additional 15 people to staff that unit. 

In an effort to increase hiring and bolster retention efforts, Alabama in 2023 increased correctional officer pay, so that officer trainees can earn between $52,000 and $58,000, with a 27% pay hike after 18 months. One year later, ADOC officials told lawmakers that the department wouldn’t meet a judge’s order to hire an additional 2,000 officers by mid-2025. In 2024, ADOC announced a partnership with the Alabama Community College System that would see the system offer a free career prep program for people interested in working for ADOC. Enrollees in the program can earn up to nine tuition-free college credit hours. 

Overall, even with the knowledge that the prisons are deadly and unconstitutional, Alabama lawmakers have passed bills that lengthen sentences, reduce parole and good time, and increase the prison population. The Alabama Sentencing Commission released research in September, 2025 showing that prisons “could see inmate populations rise by nearly a third by 2030 due to new punitive laws passed by the Legislature. The Commission, working with Applied Research Services, a research firm that studies criminal justice, estimated the population in custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections could grow from 21,753 to between 24,000 and 28,000 inmates, depending on the number of people that the ADOC admits each month on average.”

Appleseed’s efforts: Justice for people, justice for Alabama

Since 2019, Appleseed has been working with stakeholders across Alabama to raise awareness about this crisis, develop evidence-based solutions, and garner bi-partisan support for meaningful reform. We’ve given dozens of presentations, testified before the Legislature, produced reports and policy briefs, and our team member Ronald McKeithen holds a seat on the Statewide Reentry Commission tasked with reducing recidivism. We will never stop beating the drum that to move beyond this crisis the state must develop alternatives to incarceration so that fewer people will ever enter the prison system, while also identifying (and freeing) older people who have paid their debt, aged out of criminality and whose permanent incarceration wastes resources.

That’s why Appleseed is also committed to direct legal representation and reentry services, focusing on older prisoners serving extreme sentences, who will likely die in prison without legal assistance. Our post-conviction and parole work has freed more than 30 people who have served more than 800 years combined in these prisons, people such as James Jones, 78, who served 43 years before we won his freedom. 

James Jones and Appleseed’s reentry team

Among our policy victories:

Grace Period Bill

In 2022, Appleseed advocated for the Grace Period Bill, which passed in its first session. The Grace Period Bill made it so individuals leaving incarceration have about 6 months before they have to begin paying back any of their legal financial obligations. This allows them time to obtain employment and begin getting back on their feet before they’re required to pay money they don’t often have on hand. 

Constituent Services Unit Bill

In 2024, Appleseed helped move SB322, a bill that, among other things, created the Constituent Services Unit at the Alabama Department of Corrections. This unit is tasked with responding to the concerns of family members, loved ones, and anyone else who has concern for an incarcerated person. The bill mandated an online form be publicly available on ADOC’s website, which is now up and running, and that there be a phone number associated with the unit. This bill was passed in large part due to the advocacy of families of incarcerated Alabamians. 

Second Chance efforts and successful legal work

In 2019, a judge reached out to Appleseed about a case where a man had been sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for crimes with no physical injury to a person. He had served over three decades for a $50 robbery at a Bessemer bakery. Appleseed represented this man, Alvin Kennard, and he was resentenced to time served and released. Since then Appleseed has discovered there are hundreds of older incarcerated people serving life without parole sentences under the state’s Habitual Felony Offender Act for crimes with no physical injury to a person. 

In the years since 2019 Appleseed has won the release of 23 people originally sentenced to die in prison, and nearly a dozen more freed through parole. Most are over the age of 60 and all of them served multiple decades in prison. Many of their stories are documented on Appleseed’s Second Chance Alabama website. Men once condemned to die for crimes with no physical injury– often when they were young or dealing with substance use disorders– are now living lives free with their families and friends, working as buffers for Town and Country Ford or drivers for Western Express Trucking, volunteering with church ministries, playing in dominoes tournaments and walking their dogs. We’ve developed a comprehensive reentry program staffed by reentry professionals to ensure they succeed. 

A group of Appleseed’s successful second chance clients, all freed from life without parole sentences

While providing the direct legal representation required to continue obtaining freedom for these individuals who remain incarcerated, Appleseed has also worked at the legislative level to create a state-level change that would allow these individuals and their cases to be reviewed systematically by judges across the state. While the Second Chance Bill has yet to pass, the bill made it to the final step in the legislative process two out of three years, and has garnered broad, bipartisan support from former state Supreme Court justices, prison ministries, a former U.S. Congressman, and Gov. Kay Ivey herself. 

Real Solutions are within reach, but we must move past slogans and political posturing

Appleseed’s 2020 “In Trouble” report surveyed 1,011 justice- involved Alabamians about their experiences in pre-trial diversion programming and drug court. We found that Alabama’s tangle of overlapping, unaccountable, and expensive diversion programs are not equally available to people who most need them. And structural obstacles force participants to make unconscionable choices in order to succeed, including committing new crimes. Appleseed recommends fully funding diversion programs and alternatives to incarceration, rather than relying on program participants to foot the bills. We assisted the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office in the development of Reset, a program that does just that.  

Alabama’s reliance on life imprisonment for a wide range of offenses has resulted in soaring numbers of older, incarcerated people trapped in prison until death. Appleseed’s 2022 report “Unsustainable” details Alabama’s rapidly-aging prison population and rising cost to the state to care for the more than 7000 incarcerated people over age 50. Appleseed recommends passage of a “second look” bill that would provide a mechanism for judges to review the sentences of people serving life and life without parole under Alabama’s Habitual Felony Offender Act, who have already served decades and have demonstrated rehabilitation. Expanding medical furlough laws to work as intended can also immediately alleviate systemic strain while recognizing the humanity of the individuals in Alabama’s prisons. 

In 2025 Appleseed published the “Positive Programs” report that gives examples of real-world prison programs, many led by incarcerated people, in other states that are reducing recidivism and instances of violence and fostering more humane conditions of confinement. Appleseed recommends that Alabama lawmakers, ADOC officials and other stakeholders should reach out to those out-of-state leaders to learn more about these programs, that ADOC should recognize the most successful programs are led by incarcerated people themselves and ADOC should increase its collaborations with universities and other programming partners.

You can learn more about these and other related issues by reading these and other Appleseed’s reports.

What YOU can do

Show up! The Joint Legislative Prison Oversight Committee has scheduled three meetings for 2026:

• January 28
• April 22
• July 22, which will be the annual public hearing during which individual members of the public may address the board.

The presence of everyday Alabamians, families and friends of incarcerated people, faith leaders, and advocates at these meetings has led to real, systemic change and has created a renewed focus on the crisis in Alabama’s prisons. We encourage you to attend! If you can’t, the meeting can be watched live or later on The Alabama Channel. Continued attendance by concerned Alabama’s is critical to ensuring legislators know their constituents are watching. Already, the committee has taken noticed of increased attention from the public. The October committee meeting was packed and a larger room was required to hold everyone. Great job advocates!

Find out who your state legislators are and get to know them! It’s important to not only know who they are, but to build a relationship with them so you can reach out to them proactively, rather than only in a reactionary way. They represent YOU– make sure they hear from you so they can do it well! Find contact information for your state senator here, and your representative here. You do not have to be an expert on criminal justice reform. You can simply share that you are a voter who cares about the rights and treatment of incarcerated people and you want to know what they are doing to make prisons safer beyond just building more of them. You can also contact Appleseed’s Policy Director, Elaine Burdeshaw, for tips on speaking with lawmakers. She can be reached at elaine.burdeshaw@alabamaappleseed.org.

Policy Director Elaine Burdeshaw at the Alabama Statehouse with Appleseed clients

Pay attention to criminal justice legislation during the 2026 Alabama Legislative session, which starts in January. Because 2026 is an election year, lawmakers feel pressure to avoid taking risks. Leaders who support even modest prison reform can be accused of being “soft on crime,” which is unpopular in Alabama and part of what has led to the crisis documented above. While 2026  will be a tough session for creating change through legislation, even tougher than the previous six sessions, where little was accomplished, lawmakers must hear from constituents!. Sign up for Appleseed emails to learn more about the issues, the bills, and how to engage with elected officials during this important session.

Host a presentation at your church, civic group, school, or business– reach out to us and we’d be happy to join you. Appleseed can provide reports and materials to educate you and your colleagues. Also, our formerly incarcerated clients can be part of a presentation to provide vital insight on prison conditions and the urgency of reform.

Spread the word. Tell your friends, neighbors, community members about what you know. Advocacy and change often move at the speed of relationships– the more we all know, the more we can do together! Appleseed’s website contains numerous ways to learn about these issues and get involved. You can also request a presentation by Appleseed. Our policy experts, legal staff, and formerly incarcerated clients speak across the state (and sometimes in other states!) about all aspects of Alabama’s criminal justice system. Email us at admin@alabamaappleseed.org to request a presentation.

Visit the #NoMore Campaign website. The Alabama Solution campaign website contains more data, policy suggestions, and a call to action for all Alabamians to get involved. Visit NoMoreAlabama.com.

Finally, if you have a loved one who is sick or being mistreated in an Alabama prison, you should be able to get information about them. ADOC in 2025 formed the department’s Constituent Services unit staffed with employees at each major prison tasked with providing information to concerned family members and acting upon pleas from those family members and advocates for help when incarcerated people are in danger. That online form can be found here. 

The post Learn, Connect, Advocate — Appleseed’s Prison Reform Toolbox appeared first on Alabama Appleseed.

Deandre Roney died June 9, 2024, after being stabbed at Donaldson Prison.

There were 277 deaths in Alabama prisons in 2024, a slight decline from the record high 325 from the previous year, but the state’s prison deaths remain more than four times the national average. Appleseed obtained last year’s death count through a records request to the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC). 

Although the official count from ADOC puts last year’s deaths at 277, the actual number could be higher. Appleseed’s records request to ADOC last year seeking the names and dates of death for those incarcerated persons who died in 2023 produced a list that included 325 deaths, which was a record high, but subsequent records requests to the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs, which collected in custody death data from ADOC for submission to the federal government, and ADOC’s own quarterly reports, included deaths that were not identified in the 325 supplied to Appleseed by ADOC. Appleseed is working to clarify the actual number of deaths in 2023. 

Alabama’s prisoner mortality rate is 1,358 deaths per 100,000 people, compared with a national average across state prisons of 330 deaths per 100,000, according to the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The large numbers of deaths last year only add to the tally of deaths since the federal government put Alabama on notice. There have been 1,322 deaths in Alabama prisons from the April 2019 release of the U.S. Department of Justice’s report detailing the horrific violence and unconstitutionally dangerous conditions in the state’s prisons through the end of last year. 

The federal government in December 2020 sued the state and the Department of Corrections alleging that the state “fails to provide adequate protection from prisoner-on-prisoner violence and prisoner-on-prisoner sexual abuse, fails to provide safe and sanitary conditions, and subjects prisoners to excessive force at the hands of prison staff.” The state has paid private, contract attorneys more than $20 million to defend these conditions and the trial has been pushed until April, 2026.

These deaths take a toll on families across the state, devastating parents, siblings, and others who held out hope that their incarcerated loved ones would someday be free and home with them. The following are just a few of the many deaths we’ve learned about this year:

Klifton Adam Bond (source Facebook)

The fourth person to die in 2024 was Klifton Adam Bond, 38, who was found dead in his cell at St. Clair Correctional Facility on Jan. 4, 2024. Mr. Bond was attacked on Nov. 6, 2023 at Donaldson Correctional Facility and remained in a hospital intensive care unit for 12 days, according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of his mother. 

Joshua Hamer with his son Joey (photo courtesy of his family)

A more recent death was that of Joshua Hamer, a 41-year-old father who was beaten to death in November. He’d been incarcerated on a probation violation stemming from an 8-year-old theft conviction for not returning Redbox rental movies and video game disks in 2016, according to court records. 

Chase Mathis died inside Elmore Correctional Facility on June 4 in the minutes after his father last spoke to him by phone.

Chase Mathis died inside Elmore Correctional Facility on June 4, 2024, in what the autopsy shows that the state’s medical examiner believes was an accidental “mixed Drug toxicity (fentanyl and fluorofentanyl).”

“I know why he was in the prison, but he shouldn’t have died there,” Mr. Mathis’s father, Tim Mathis, told Appleseed. He places the blame for his son’s overdose death squarely on the back of ADOC for allowing drugs inside the prisons. 

Kerry Dale Presnell, 36, was beaten and killed on Nov. 14, 2024, at Elmore Correctional Facility. 

Jamal Wilson, 38, was assaulted at Elmore Correctional Facility and died on Nov. 1, 2024. ADOC said at the time that he was found unresponsive on his bed and had a head injury and abrasions on both legs. 

Deandre Roney was one of four men at Donaldson Correctional Facility who died over a three-day period in June. Mr, Roney died June 9, 2024, at UAB Hospital after being stabbed in his back and in his head. Mr. Roney and his family had begged ADOC to keep him safe from a man who’d already stabbed him once, but he was not moved to safety.

Several of these families have appeared at the Legislative Joint Prison Oversight Committee to share their stories. Lawmakers on that committee have shown increasing concern for holding state officials more accountable for Alabama’s dangerous prisons. The committee meets next on January 22 at 10:30 am in room 807 in the Alabama Statehouse. 

Appleseed is working to investigate Alabama prison deaths. If you have information to share with us about the death of a loved one in the Alabama prison systems, please contact us at admin@alabamaappleseed.org.

The post Death toll inside Alabama prisons reaches 277 in 2024 appeared first on Alabama Appleseed.

By Eddie Burkhalter, Appleseed Researcher

Alonzo Nathaniel Williamson died after being found in respiratory distress at Limestone Correctional Facility on May 8th, just five days before his 37th birthday (photo courtesy of his family).

In the hours after Alonzo Nathaniel Williamson died after being found in respiratory distress at Limestone Correctional Facility on May 8th, the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) declined to follow its standard procedure of arranging a medical death investigation to ascertain the cause of his death. As a result, Mr. Williamson’s grieving family is left not knowing what exactly killed him  just five days before his 37th birthday.

That’s because UAB Hospital terminated its longstanding agreement with ADOC to conduct autopsies and/or toxicology screens on suspected natural and overdose deaths on April 22, 2024, ADOC told Appleseed. 

“Since that time, the department has made numerous inquiries, but has been unable to find another vendor to provide autopsies for ADOC inmates who died of natural causes or suspected overdoses,” the ADOC spokeswoman wrote to Appleseed. 

The agreement between ADOC and UAB Hospital had the department paying $2,200 per autopsy and $100 per toxicology test, according to court documents filed in a lawsuit. That revenue may not have been enough to overcome the fallout of a recent lawsuit families filed against UAB after discovering that their incarcerated loved ones’ bodies were returned to them for interment missing internal organs. 

Alonzo with his brother, Marcus (photo courtesy of his family).

“UAB has terminated its contract with the Alabama Department of Corrections and no longer performs autopsies for ADOC,” a statement from UAB to Appleseed reads. “The UAB Department of Pathology has been in compliance with laws governing autopsies to determine the cause of death of incarcerated individuals under the appropriate clinical standard, and a panel of medical ethicists reviewed and endorsed our protocols regarding autopsies conducted for incarcerated persons. UAB has one of the highest ranked pathology programs in the country, is accredited by the College of American Pathologists and is staffed by credentialed physicians who are certified by the American Board of Pathology.” 

In response to Appleseed’s questions about whether the department would request a state-funded autopsy for Mr. Williamson, ADOC noted that state law doesn’t mandate the department do so for suspected natural or overdose deaths.  

“All inmate deaths are investigated by the ADOC’s Law Enforcement Services Division. However, under existing state law, post-mortem examinations or autopsies are only required for deaths resulting from unlawful, suspicious or unnatural causes. (Ala. Code Section 36-18-2).  In those cases, the deceased is transported to the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences for an autopsy. Additionally, all deaths that occur in Jefferson County, Alabama, fall within the jurisdiction of the Jefferson County Coroner and are transported to the Jefferson County Coroner’s Office for post-mortem examinations and/or autopsies,” ADOC’s statement reads. 

“Deaths not covered under Ala. Code Section 36-18-2 receive a toxicology screen prior to being released to the inmate’s family. Although the department previously contracted with UAB hospital to conduct autopsies on suspected overdose or natural deaths; UAB terminated its long-standing agreement with the department, effective April 22, 2024.  Since that time, the department has made numerous inquiries, but has been unable to find another vendor to provide autopsies for ADOC inmates who died of natural causes or suspected overdoses,” the statement continues. 

A reduction of transparency surrounding in-custody deaths in Alabama comes as state prisons are seeing more deaths than ever. Alabama prisons in 2023 saw record high deaths for a second straight year, with 325 lives lost. This total means more than 1,000 people have died in state prison custody since 2019 when Alabama government officials were put on notice of conditions so dangerous and deadly that the state was violating the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Altogether, there were 1,045 deaths in Alabama prisons from the April 2019 release of the U.S. Department of Justice’s report detailing the horrific violence in the state’s prisons through the end of last year, according to ADOC’s statistical reports and data Appleseed gathered through records requests.

“I just want to know what happened to my son,” Carol Williamson told Appleseed. 

A grieving family’s unanswered questions

Mrs. Williamson said that the prison’s chaplain first notified her by phone of her son’s death, and said at the time that he’d been found unresponsive in his bunk and had died from a suspected overdose. Statements from other incarcerated men who reached out to her family, notations in her son’s medical records made the day he died and a statement from ADOC to Appleseed tell a different story, however. 

Alonzo and his mother, Carol Williamson (photo courtesy of the family).

Mr. Williamson’s medical records from his time incarcerated were with his body when he arrived at the funeral home. They say that at 8:30 a.m. on the day he died, an incarcerated man took Mr. Williamson by wheelchair to the prison’s infirmary, and that Mr. Williamson “got on the stretcher by himself.” 

“He was alert and oriented but short of breath and very diaphoretic,” the records state. The medical term diaphoretic means excessive sweating due to a secondary condition. 

“The inmate stated that he had been short of breath for 3 or 4 days. He appeared to be having an anxiety attack,” the record states. “…The PT lost pulse suddenly.” 

The record states that Mr. Williamson was given a shot of Narcan, a drug used to reverse an opioid overdose, in his left thigh at 8:36 a.m. and nasal Narcan four minutes later. Medical staff began CPR at 8:41 a.m. and an ambulance was called at 8:45a.m.. Several notes in those records say “no shock advised.” 

Staff continued CPR until his death, at 9:04 a.m., according to those records, which note that the ambulance was canceled at 9:05 a.m. 

ADOC in a response to Appleseed seeking confirmation of Mr. Williamson’s death also stated that he was found in the prison’s yard, not in his bunk, as the chaplain told the family.  

“On Wednesday, May 8, 2024, an inmate death was reported at Limestone Correctional Facility. Inmate Alonzo Nathaniel Williamson was discovered in respiratory distress in the yard. He was taken to the Health Care Unit where life-saving measures were administered. Unfortunately, medical staff were unable to resuscitate him, and he was pronounced deceased by the attending physician,” an Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) spokeswoman wrote to Appleseed. 

An investigator with ADOC’s Law Enforcement Services Division who’s investigating Mr. Williamson’s death told Mrs. Williamson that the chaplain likely had incomplete or inaccurate information when he called to inform her of the death. Appleseed has spoken with other families who have received similar incorrect information on loved ones’ deaths from chaplains in several different prisons. 

“He was a good kid. He loved to fish, and hang out with family. He was family-oriented,” Mrs. Williamson said of her son, whom the family calls Lonnie. 

From left: Alonzo with his brothers, Jacob, and twin brother Lorenzo (photo courtesy of his family)

Lonnie’s twin brother Lorenzo, whom the family calls Renzo, is taking his brother’s death hard, his mother said. The two were very close. When Lonnie fell out of a tree growing up,  Renzo limped for two weeks, she said. 

“He’s not good. He’s not good,” Mrs. Williamson said of Renzo.

The family made the decision that if they were going to get answers as to what killed Lonnie, they’d have to take the investigation on themselves. They paid a private pathologist $5,500 to conduct an autopsy, but it’s unclear if they’ll get those answers, because Mr. Williamson’s body was embalmed by the funeral home before the pathologist conducted the autopsy, which took place on May 15th. That pathologist told the family he believes he can still find answers for them, but the family worries that won’t be the case. 

To help the family shoulder the burden of paying for the autopsy, the family set up an online fundraiser. 

Mrs. Williamson said Mr. Williamson had been off of drugs for three years prior to his death, and that he looked like himself at a viewing held for the family, but that the medical records from his time incarcerated show he may have overdosed in 2022. Dangerous drugs are readily available in Alabama prisons, and deaths by overdose or for other drug-related reasons, including retaliation for unpaid drug debt, are common.

But there’s also reason to think Mr. Williamson may have died from medical neglect, the family explained. He was stabbed seven times by another incarcerated man at Limestone in December, and released back to the prison in January, his mother said. The stabbing punctured a lung, but even long before the stabbing Mr. Williamson has been complaining to family about trouble breathing and chest pains. His mother is unsure if he received adequate followup care following the stabbing, which only exacerbated his breathing problems. 

If it was drugs that killed him, how and why were drugs inside Limestone prison, Mrs. Williamson asked. She noted the recent arrest of Limestone’s warden, Chadwick Crabtree, who’s charged with second-degree possession of marijuana, unlawful possession of a controlled substance, manufacturing of a controlled substance, and possession of drug paraphernalia. Crabtree is alleged to have grown psychedelic mushrooms at his home, according to court records. 

A shortage of funding and expertise

“Anytime a person in our community dies while in the custody of this government….We as a people should want that death vetted,” Jefferson County Chief Deputy Coroner Bill Yates told Appleseed. 

“You remove a post mortem exam from the equation, it opens up rampant rabbit trails in speculation,” Mr. Yates said of the families seeking answers for their deceased incarcerated loved ones. “In my experience, medical legal death investigation in Alabama is dysfunctional. It needs to be revamped.” 

Alonzo with his niece, Kinna (photo courtesy of his family).

In Jefferson County, unlike every other county in Alabama except for Mobile and Tuscaloosa counties, a board certified forensic pathologist investigates unnatural deaths, and by local law must investigate all in-custody deaths. Jefferson County prior to 1977 operated under the coroner system, which saw the election of typically untrained and uncertified lay people by the county’s voters. The legislature abolished that system in 1977 that system, replacing it with the Jefferson County Coroner/Medical Examiner’s Office, which requires the coroner/medical examiner of Jefferson County to be a board certified forensic pathologist. 

Mr. Yates explained that Jefferson County’s large population can adequately fund his office, whereas in many other smaller population counties, that’s not the case, and those coroners’ offices often work with few resources. He described one such small county that didn’t have a vehicle able to transport deceased persons. 

“The problem I see is the state of Alabama coroner law does not require that the coroner take jurisdiction to determine cause and manner of death in in-custody deaths,” Mr. Yates said. He would like to see that law changed to require coroners to take jurisdiction over all in-custody deaths. 

“There are different levels of jurisdiction, but at a minimum, you should be the one signing a report. You, as the coroner, should be the one signing the death certificate for cause and manner of death. How you go about doing your investigation, that should probably be left to the coroner, as to the extent of it,” Mr. Yates said.

That’s where funding comes into play. Some county coroners have told the Alabama Department of Corrections that in-custody deaths should be handled by ADOC’s contracted health care providers, which have state board certified doctors on staff. 

“Somebody dies in your prison, don’t contact me. I don’t need to know about it,” Mr.  Yates said those coroners have told ADOC. 

“They can make them do it,” Mr. Yates said of ADOC requiring vendor-employed doctors to handle in-custody deaths. “But they’re a contracted entity by the Department of Corrections, so if you go back to this idea of all in-custody deaths being vetted by an outside source, then I don’t think you really should have that vendor doctor in-house signing the death certificate. It’s really just common sense.” 

Some county coroners have said they’ll sign death certificates for in-custody deaths, but they decline to request post-mortem exams or have toxicology screenings done, and they may also decline to take custody of the body, and instead require the body be sent to the funeral home of the family’s choosing, Mr. Yates explained.

“Or they can take it one step more and they say, well, I’ll come to the scene and look at the body, but I’m not doing anything else, other than signing the death certificate and do a report,” Mr. Yates said. 

State law doesn’t allow a county coroner to order a post-mortem exam through the State Medical Examiners Office. To get a state-funded autopsy done, a coroner must by law get permission from the local district attorney, circuit court clerk or judge, or from the governor, Mr. Yates said. He explained that local DA’s are typically focused on handling criminal matters, not deaths in which there isn’t thought to be a crime committed, such as a suspected in-custody natural or overdose death. 

To complicate matters, state law requires that, even if a coroner gets permission to order a taxpayer-funded post-mortem exam by the state Medical Examiner’s office, the extent to which that exam is done – whether a full autopsy or simply a review of the body, or a toxicology screening – is decided upon by the forensic pathologist at the state Medical Examiners office and not the local coroner. State law also says that transporting the body to the state medical examiner’s office is the responsibility of the law enforcement agency that would have jurisdiction to investigate, if there needed to be a criminal investigation done, Mr. Yates said. 

“So where does their interest end?” Mr.  Yates said of those local law enforcement agencies.  “If there’s no obvious signs of a criminal violation, naturally they’re going to lose interest.” 

If those local county coroners decide to forgo the state-funded post-mortem exam through the state Medical Examiner’s office, they can seek such exams from pathologists at local hospitals, but that cost falls upon the local coroner’s offices. That’s a burden many such offices cannot afford, Mr.  Yates explained. 

Alonzo with his grandfather, Gary Wallace (photo courtesy of his family).

He commended ADOC for having contracted with UAB Hospital years ago to conduct those autopsies, and said that while the public might think that in-custody deaths are the responsibility of local coroners to investigate, that burden, in all but a few counties, legally falls upon ADOC to manage and pay for. 

 “And I really do think they were kind of left out to dry in this situation. They’ve got prisons in all of these rural counties all over the state,” Mr. Yates said. 

He explained that he doesn’t have an opinion about who’s right or wrong in the missing organs matter, and said that while he doesn’t blame UAB Hospital for cutting ties with ADOC, given the immense public pressure and legal cases that have resulted, his office doesn’t have the resources needed to handle all of ADOC’s post-mortem needs. 

“We need another doctor as is, just to keep up with our case loads from Jefferson County,” he said, noting that homicides in his county do not make up most of his office’s workload, which instead is busiest investigating all other suspected unnatural deaths. 

“I think we need to not look at the Department of Corrections specifically. I think there needs to be a comprehensive rewrite of the coroner law in Alabama,” he said.

Mr. Yates explained that he hates what has happened between UAB and ADOC, and what it means for the outcomes of those in-custody death investigations. He recommended ADOC make a practice of referring all in-custody deaths to local coroners for examination.

Transparency Matters

It’s critically important to the families of those who died in custody, and to the public, to understand why these deaths are occurring, and when they were preventable, Aaron Littman, assistant professor of law at UCLA School of Law, deputy director of the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project and faculty director of the law school’s Prisoners’ Rights Clinic told Appleseed. 

“There is a national crisis of failure to report and understand deaths in custody, and the importance of that really can’t be overstated,” Mr. Littman said. “These deaths are happening out of public view, and in institutions that have total control over people’s access to information, access to medical care, institutions that are often plagued by violence, and often access to illegal substances.” 

Without those critical, substantive medical death investigations, the door is left open for all sorts of problems, Mr. Littman explained. 

“It might be the case that a death that is suspected of being of natural causes, is not. Either that’s because it is substance-related, or because it is in fact violence-related. Whether it is death that resulted from a medical process, but one that could have been easily avoided had appropriate medical care been provided in a timely fashion,” Mr. Littman said. “These are the sorts of things that we don’t know if death investigations aren’t conducted.”

There’s good reason to be concerned about less transparency when it comes to in-custody deaths in Alabama. ADOC has a history of misclassifying deaths, as the U.S. Department of Justice noted in a 2019 report. “There are numerous instances where ADOC incident reports classified deaths as due to ‘natural’ causes when, in actuality, the deaths were likely caused by prisoner -on- prisoner violence,” according to the U.S. Department of Justice’s findings in the report.

The death certificate for Christopher Latham, 40, who died on Oct. 10, 2023, following an assault by another incarcerated man at Ventress Correctional Facility on Oct. 4, lists the manner of death as an “Accident” despite also noting that the injury was the result of a “prison fight.” The death certificate, first obtained by ABC 33/40’s Cynthia Gould, lists the immediate cause of death as respiratory failure and the underlying cause as “Intracranial Trauma.” Mr. Latham had previously been struck in the head with a weight at Staton Correctional Facility prior to being taken to Ventress prison, where the second assault occurred, according to statements from his family and ADOC.

“In terms of drug use, to the extent that the prison system has an interest in addressing the problem of people dying of overdose, which of course it should, it’s important to understand what people are overdosing on,” Mr. Littman said. “So that requires a toxicology screen, and in my view, the failure to conduct medical examinations reflects a profound disinterest in keeping people healthy and safe.”

Alonzo Williamson (photo courtesy of his family)

There’s also a concern over who is making the decision that a particular in-custody death might be a suspected overdose or from natural causes, which in Alabama prisons now would mean no state-funded autopsy or toxicology screening. 

“Whether or not a person making that decision has some incentive to minimize the number of autopsies conducted, which they might if they work for the prison system, they’re unlikely to be qualified to make that decision,” Mr. Littman said. “If that person is an employee of the prison system, they are not a medical examiner.” 

“A well-functioning prison system considers information it receives about who is dying and how, and uses that information to adapt to change policies, to shift practices, to potentially hire more or different staff in some areas or another,” Mr. Littman said. “It responds to what it learns in order to improve things and keep people healthy and safe, and if you don’t have the information, you simply can’t do that.”

The post “I just want to know what happened to my son.” appeared first on Alabama Appleseed.

By Michael “Shoe” Schumacher

Michael “Shoe” Schumacher surrounded by his family.

Live from New Jersey, April 9, 2024 –It’s hard to believe that it’s been 3 years since my release from the hotel after 36 years of torture. It’s still like a dream to me with the fear of waking up and still being in an abyss filled with death and corruption.

God has really blessed me since I have been out, actually He has blessed me my whole life but I didn’t have enough sense to recognize or appreciate it. Since my release from Holman prison in 2021, I have been married to the love of my life Kathlyn, and I still can’t believe that! I have gone to college on the internet and have been certified as a logistics technician. Greg Womble, a filmmaker, and Elaine Witt, a journalist, got interested in Kathlyn’s and my story and produced a documentary film called “Love Without Parole.” The film has been shown in several film festivals across the country and PBS even picked it up and broadcasted it.

I have relocated to New Jersey to be with Kathlyn, and I had to learn a number of things. One is how to parallel park as there is nowhere else to park in the city. I got it down and went and passed my driving test and now am a licensed driver. I have gone and opened a bank account and have debit and credit cards. My credit score is in the very good category now and this amazes me because I can remember when I got out I didn’t even register. I am still paranoid of online banking but it’s how things are done in this day and age.

Kathlyn regularly reminds me that it’s not the early 80’s and prices are high, I have had a hard time swallowing how much things cost. It’s mind blowing to say the least. But I can pay for what I need because I got myself a full time job at a hospital for the mentally ill. I like the job because it provides me an opportunity to be a servant and I have always wanted to help others who can’t take care of themselves.

Folks still think I am crazy because I still find enjoyment in doing laundry and ironing. It’s awesome! I have found YouTube to be a very helpful tool. I have used it to learn how to cook different things. I even learned how to cook black eyed peas and ham hocks in the crock pot. Had to have them for New Years. I also enjoy doing the yard work, the weed eater was new to me but I have mastered that now. I got myself a mini chainsaw and this has been a treat. Now that I work full time I will have to figure out when I will do yard work.

I am better on my I-phone and can remember the day after my release Kathlyn bought me my smartphone and I didn’t even know how to turn it on. Now it’s just a way of life for me and I am amazed at the technology these days. I also continue to play Scrabble daily on the internet and even am a member of a Scrabble club that meets once a week.

Pappa Shoe and his grandson Akari.

I have found a Church that I like. God has blessed me in so many ways, as I think about it, He has given me everything I missed out on in the hotel those 36 years. I am now a Grandpa!. My daughter Kimberly had a baby boy eight weeks ago and his name is Akari. This is a new experience for me but I welcome it. How can you not love a baby? I am going to have a T-shirt made that says PAPPA SHOE! I am fixing to start reading to him out of the Scrabble Dictionary.

I stay in contact with 6 or 7 people in the hotel and they like to hear about what all I am doing and they use it as a safety line to help them hold on cause they can remember when I was in prison with a sentence of Life Without Parole and then here I am.

God is good all the time!

Special thanks to J. Mark White and Hope Marshall of White, Arnold, and Dowd, whose pro bono assistance helped secure Michael’s freedom.

The post Three Years of Freedom for “Shoe” appeared first on Alabama Appleseed.

By Eddie Burkhalter and Carla Crowder

This week marks the fourth anniversary of the U.S. Department of Justice report detailing such horrific and widespread violence, death, and sexual abuse inside Alabama’s prisons for men that state officials were forced into account for “severe, systemic,” constitutional violations meticulously documented in the 56-page report signed by all three Alabama U.S. Attorneys. 

“This problem has been kicked down the road for the last time,” Gov. Kay Ivey said in a statement, six weeks after the report’s release. “Over the coming months, my Administration will be working closely with DOJ to ensure that our mutual concerns are addressed and that we remain steadfast in our commitment to public safety, making certain that this Alabama problem has an Alabama solution.”

Those concerns were not addressed. The DOJ issued a second report in July 2020 detailing widespread use of excessive force, including deadly force, by corrections officers against incarcerated people. And in December 2020, the federal government sued the state and the Department of Corrections in a case that is scheduled for trial in less than 18 months. At that time, DOJ lawyers will attempt to prove that the state “fails to provide adequate protection from prisoner-on-prisoner violence and prisoner-on-prisoner sexual abuse, fails to provide safe and sanitary conditions, and subjects prisoners to excessive force at the hands of prison staff,” as alleged in the lawsuit.

Those of us closely following the state’s promised responses, the so-called “Alabama solution” to the federal intervention, had reason to believe that there would have been progress by now against the constant violence, overcrowding, understaffing, corruption, and mismanagement documented four years ago by the Republican-led Justice Department..   

Instead, all of the factors contributing to the “enormous breadth of ADOC’s Eighth Amendment violations” in the words of the DOJ, have gone in the opposite direction; they’ve gotten worse. Except for one – the population of individuals crowded into ADOC’s major facilities has declined by 511 since April 2019.  But during this time frame, 698 incarcerated people have died in these prisons, according to ADOC’s monthly statistical reports. Thus, much of that decline can be attributed to the matter at the heart of the litigation, that “Alabama is incarcerating prisoners under conditions that pose a substantial risk of serious harm and death.”

Given that the clock is ticking on a trial that will have major ramifications for public safety and the justice system statewide, it’s important for Alabamians to understand how we got here, what has transpired in response, and how other states have fared in similar situations. 

“Minimal Remedial Measures”

News headlines highlighting Alabama’s prison crisis

Alabama’s prison crisis was nothing new, but the federal government’s report –  technically a Notice required by the Civil Rights of Incarcerated Persons Act (CRIPA), that provides statutory authority for the federal government to investigate and intervene in a state’s systemic failure to protect the incarcerated – brought the crisis to the nation’s attention. 

Shameful neglect and abuse of thousands of Alabamians that had been hidden for years suddenly tumbled onto the front pages of publications ranging from the Montgomery Advertiser to the New York Times. Fox News quoted then-Sen. Cam Ward describing the findings as “deeply humiliating” for Alabama. “It’s disgusting. I mean, it is.”

If ADOC leadership were confused about how to begin to ameliorate the myriad of problems, all they had to do was to keep reading. 

The 2019 report listed “minimal remedial measures” ADOC should take to begin making prisons safer and avoid a lawsuit. Among them:

• contact the director of the National Institute of Corrections to arrange a joint conversation between the department, NIC and the DOJ to discuss the areas in Alabama prisons that needed immediate attention.
• develop a centralized system to contain autopsy reports of all incarcerated people who die in ADOC custody. 
• draft a policy requiring the screening of every person who enters prisons (staff, volunteers, visitors, etc…) and to implement that policy within one month.
• reclassify every incarcerated person for sexual safety issues, and ensure that potential predators are separated from potential victims. 
• immediately begin shakedowns to stem the flow of contraband, such that 15 percent of all housing areas are searched every day, with congregate areas searched every week.

An ADOC spokesperson in a response to Appleseed on Monday said the department was and is in contact with the director of the National Institute of Corrections to receive advice and training on correctional-related issues, including a recent training on staffing analysis. ADOC’s response did not address the question about the DOJ’s recommendation to develop a centralized system to contain autopsy reports of all incarcerated people who die in ADOC custody. 

ADOC also claimed in its response that some of the policies suggested by the DOJ were already in place and suggested that the federal lawsuit was premature. “Rather than continuing to collaborate with the ADOC to find workable solutions to these issues, DOJ surprised the state by abruptly filing suit in December 2019,” the ADOC stated. The lawsuit was filed in December 2020, twenty months after the Notice and following 52 deaths from homicide, suicide or drug overdoses in 2019 and 2020.

Subsequent DOJ filings, including the May 2021 amended complaint in the ongoing litigation, makes clear that ADOC has fallen short in addressing the primary contributor to the unconstitutional violence: contraband. (“ADOC told us that ADOC staff are bringing illegal contraband into Alabama’s prisons,” the 2019 report noted.) 

According to the DOJ, illicit cellphones and drugs that pour into the prisons through cell phone usage are a major contributor to the widespread violence, as “the inability to pay drug debts leads to beatings, kidnappings, stabbings, sexual abuse, and homicides.”  

The complaint goes on to note: “Although ADOC has not allowed visitors into Alabama’s Prisons for Men since March 2020 pursuant to COVID-19 restrictions, prisoners continue to have easy access to drugs and other illegal contraband,” suggesting visitors are not the source.

While ADOC has made arrests of officers charged with bringing in contraband, the flow of drugs, weapons and other contraband continues. Incarcerated people tell Appleseed that ADOC’s Correctional Emergency Response Teams often raid a prison dorm prior to a visit to the dorm by DOJ’s attorneys, clearing the area of contraband, only for it all to return shortly afterward. 

ADOC continues to insist that incarcerated people are single-handedly responsible for the delivery of contraband:  “The ADOC continues to employ a myriad of strategies to find and eliminate contraband in its facilities.  As the ADOC explores and develops new strategies, inmates continue to find new ways to introduce contraband.  Thus, ADOC’s efforts to find and prevent contraband are always evolving, and the department continues to look for new and innovative methods of eliminating the existence and introduction of contraband into its facilities,” the response reads. 

None of the numbers are moving in the right direction

A vigil in remembrance of the nearly 300 people who have died in Alabama’s prisons this past year was held on March 7, 2023 at the State Capitol. Photo by Lee Hedgepeth.

Year after year conditions have only worsened, and promises from state leaders then to fix the crisis have yet to materialize.

The DOJ report noted that an “egregious level of understaffing” results in increased violence and death, with prisons employing 1,072 of the 3,336 authorized officers. Four years later, ADOC Commissioner John Hamm stood in front of legislative budget leaders, basically threw up his hands at the persistent lack of security staff and asked with a straight face, “any suggestions you have we’re all ears.”

U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson in a separate case about mental health care in prisons in 2017 ordered the state to hire an additional 2,000 correctional officers, but in February, 2023, the judge warned the state that staffing remains critically low.  “We had horrendous understaffing in this department and something has to be done,” Thompson said.

 Again, the numbers are moving in the wrong direction.

ADOC’s quarterly report published in January states that for the fiscal year ending on Sept. 30, 2022, ADOC recorded a net decrease of 415 security employees. The latest quarterly report shows another net loss of 52 security staff as of Dec. 31, 2022. 

ADOC has added new types of security staff to try and boost numbers – cubicle operators who can only operate doors, and basic correctional officers who have a shorter training period than other officers. The agency raised salaries so that officers at maximum security facilities start at $55,855, a salary it would take 17 years as a public school teacher to earn. It’s too soon to tell if that salary will help recruitment. Nothing else has.  

These deficits are not abstract for thousands of Alabamians living in prisons and for desperate family members who just want their loved ones to finish their sentences alive.

In images shared on social media by incarcerated people, correctional officers in several Alabama prisons can be seen sleeping inside their cubicles. Incarcerated people tell Appleseed that they’re often left to fend for themselves if attacked. In instances when a person is critically wounded, officers have been slow to respond, sometimes resulting in death while other incarcerated men clamor to get officers’ attention to render aid.  

“Inmates have knives and axes and drugs including fentanyl; they are available in copious amounts in these prisons,” wrote the mother of a man serving 15 years at Limestone prison. “He was attacked while on the phone 3 days ago and said nothing to anyone about it because that’s what causes you to be stabbed. He was attacked this morning going into the bathroom and now has a broken rib and received 7 stitches in his mouth and sent back to his dorm.”

If understaffing is one ingredient in the deadly mixture that makes up state prisons, overpopulation is the other. 

The month that DOJ’s report was published in 2019, Alabama prisons were at 168 percent capacity, according to ADOC’s statistical report. Alabama prisons remained at 168 percent capacity in January, according to the latest report. 

To add to the deadly mixture, paroles in Alabama have plummeted since 2017. 

During the 2022 fiscal year the three-member Pardons and Paroles Board denied 90 percent of applicants for paroles, according to board statistics, down from 46 percent denied during fiscal year 2017, and Black applicants are being paroled less than half as often as white applicants. 

What happens when you have understaffed, overpopulated prisons? According to the DOJ report, “inadequate supervision that results in a substantial risk of serious harm.” The report highlighted five stabbing deaths in prisons that year in which those men had previously been stabbed and survived. “ADOC, with the knowledge that previously stabbed prisoners were at risk for further violence, took no meaningful efforts to protect these prisoners from serious harm—harm that was eventually deadly,” the report reads. 

The meticulous documentation of death after death after death seemed shocking in 2019. But shock gave way to resignation and this grim status quo is just that, just the way prisons are, for most of Alabama’s elected leadership. In a recent meeting to discuss prison conditions and possible solutions, a freshman representative dismissed our concerns, saying that prisons aren’t supposed to be “the Taj Majal.”  

Against the persistent backdrop, prison deaths have surged, reaching a record high 270 last year, more than double the 130 deaths in 2019 when the report was released and officials vowed to take the bloodshed seriously. At that time the homicide rate in Alabama’s prisons was eight times the national rate. It has gotten worse.

At least 95 of the 270 deaths in 2022 were preventable deaths: homicides, suicides, and confirmed or suspected drug-related deaths, according to investigative reporter Beth Shelburne. This is the highest number of preventable deaths since she began tracking them in 2018.

So far this year someone has died in Alabama prisons every other day. Our research has confirmed 36 prison deaths. Among those, 27 were suspected to be overdoses, one suicide and four suspected homicides.  

Study group formed, but results lacking

The Governor’s Study Group on Criminal Justice Policy. Photo courtesy of the Associated Press.

We are not suggesting state leadership has not responded to the allegations in the four-year-old report, but the meager responses have produced few results to assuage the breathtaking brokenness of Alabama’s largest law enforcement agency as documented in 2019.  And the 2023 legislative session so far has seen efforts to fast-track bills that will increase prison sentences and intensify the ADOC chaos.

Initially, the Governor’s Office promised a multi-faceted, data-driven solution. By executive order three months after the DOJ report was released, Ivey formed the nine-member Governor’s Study Group on Criminal Justice Policy and tasked the members with analyzing data and best practices, and seeking solutions to the prison crisis. 

Former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Champ Lyons and chairman of the Governor’s Study Group on Criminal Justice Policy

The task force met for seven months and in a 10-page letter to Ivey suggested modest sentencing reforms, a focus on educational and rehabilitative programs aimed at reducing recidivism and an increase in the number of people released early and placed on mandatory supervision. 

The study group noted that a 2015 law that allowed for early release and mandatory supervision for some incarcerated people only applied to those sentenced after 2015, and suggested it be expanded to those sentenced prior to the law being enacted. Under the law those sentenced to up to five years could be released as early as five months before the end of their sentence. Those serving up to 10 years could be released as much as a year early. 

A bill to impact those sentenced before 2015 passed decisively with bipartisan support in 2021. Its supporters saw it as a way to reduce recidivism and ease prison overcrowding, noting studies that found that monitoring those released does just that. 

Systematic problems with underfunded, chaotic victim notification systems slowed those early releases, Appleseed discovered, but once releases began, pushback was swift and now there is legislation to undo this slim bit of reform. 

“When this bill passed in 2021 originally, it was something that I was very much opposed to, and had concerns about the passage of,” Sen. Chris Elliott, R-Fairhope, told Alabama Reflector. Elliott filed a bill on Jan. 31 that would delay those early releases until 2030. 

Ivey’s study group also recommended enhanced early release incentives. 

Sen. April Weaver (R-Brierfield) introduced the Good Time Bill in the 2023 legislative session

“As with sentencing reform, public safety requires  great  caution  in  determining  who might  be  eligible  for  such  incentives,” study group chairman and former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Champ Lyons wrote to Ivey. “Nevertheless, we support the award of early release incentives for those inmates who complete certain courses and maintain good behavior while incarcerated.” 

The Alabama Legislature approved of that recommendation, and Ivey in May 2021 signed into law a bill that reduces prison sentences by up to one year for incarcerated people who complete academic and vocational programs while in prison.

But it didn’t take long for the Legislature to begin working to reverse that gain, and 10 months after Ivey signed that the Alabama Senate approved a bill sponsored by Sen. April Weaver, R-Brierfield, that would reduce the amount of “good time” incarcerated people can earn. 

Weaver has cited the June 2022 shooting death of Bibb County Deputy Brad Johnson as the impetus. Austin Patrick Hall, who has been charged in the death, was allowed early release on good time despite numerous infractions, both in and out of prison, including an escape, for which Hall was not charged for three years – until after Johnson’s death.

Had ADOC followed existing law and forfeited Hall’s good time after his escape from the Camden Work Release Center in 2019, or if Hall had been timely prosecuted for the escape, Hall would not have been out of prison when Johnson was shot, the Alabama Political Reporter noted in August 2022.

Rep. Chris England (D-Tuscaloosa) has repeatedly sponsored bills aimed at reducing the prison population and holding ADOC accountable

In reality, a dysfunctional system unable to follow laws already in place contributed to Johnson’s death. Lengthening sentences in prisons unable to provide rehabilitative services or even keep prisoners alive is unlikely to produce the public safety results Alabama deserves. It’s important to recognize that multiple instances in which lawmakers have toughened sentences were in response to individuals who have served time in these hellish settings, been released with no rehabilitation and then gone on to harm Alabamians. 

Not all lawmakers have been complacent. Rep. Chris England (D-Tuscaloosa) has repeatedly sponsored bills aimed at reducing the prison population and holding ADOC accountable. England’s bill requiring increased reporting by ADOC passed in 2022. The agency now posts quarterly reports that document drugs and weapons confiscated at the prisons. The reports routinely list free world weapons and even firearm confiscations. But no one in state leadership has expressed concerns about this new data.

Alabama’s long history of abusing the incarcerated until federal officials make us stop

When it comes to Alabama’s prison crisis, there’s nothing new under the sun. 

That’s how Austin Sarat, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College in Massachusetts, described the state’s prison problems, and placed them into historical context during a conversation with Appleseed. Sarat has been a visiting professor at the University of Alabama School of Law, teaching a course on punishment.

Sarat discussed U.S. District Court Judge Frank Johnson’s 1976 opinion in the landmark Alabama case Pugh v. Locke, in which the plaintiff, an incarcerated man named Jerry Pugh, sued ADOC for failing to protect him and others from violence in violation of the Fourth and Eighteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. 

U.S. District Court Judge Frank Johnson’s 1976 opinion in the landmark Alabama case Pugh v. Locke. Photo by Birmingham News.

Johnson agreed, and appointed a special master to ensure ADOC followed his orders to resolve the dangerously unconstitutional conditions nearly 50 years ago. ADOC remained under federal supervision for 13 years. The Court enjoined ADOC from accepting any new prisoners, except escapees, into four prisons until the population was reduced. In July 1988 ADOC was forced to release 222 incarcerated people early. State prisons had many of the same problems then as today; they were overcrowded and violent, the buildings were dilapidated and unsanitary. “Reading the DOJ report and findings, if you close your eyes, it could have been Frank Johnson writing them,” Sarat said. 

Sarat described Johnson’s remedial decree as “extraordinarily detailed and quite controversial.” 

“At the time that he made the decision, he was among the first judges to say that prisoners retain all rights, except those necessarily lost as an incident of confinement,” Sarat said. 

Lost in the emphasis on prison construction as a remedy to the current crisis is the fact that Alabama embarked on a prison building spree in the 1980s to make things right. It was not a long-term solution.

A warning from California and a lesson from Texas

California Institution for Men from Brown vs. Plata

What could Alabamians expect to come out of the federal government’s lawsuit over Alabama’s broken prisons? One might look at a similar case in California that resulted in a court order to reduce the state’s prison population by more than 30,000 people within two years. 

“The situation had gotten so bad, reading the Plata decision, I realized that we were really heading down the exact same road,” said then-Sen. Cam Ward, as chair of the Legislature’s Prison Oversight Committee eight years ago. 

The U.S. Supreme Court in the 2011 Brown v. Plata case ordered California to remedy unconstitutional conditions that deprived incarcerated people of adequate medical and mental health care. For starters, the State had to find a way to reduce its prisons to 137% of designed capacity from about 200%.  One tactic, called “realignment” required county systems to house all non-violent and non-sex offenders upon conviction to free up prison space for everyone else. Implementation was not easy, however, given that most county jails lacked unused space as well as sufficient treatment and programming to provide rehabilitation. 

It’s important for Alabama officials to recognize the Plata Court’s emphasis on violence and death. The Court noted that in 2006 “a preventable or possibly preventable death occurred” somewhere in California’s prison system “once every five to six days.” 

Alabama is worse. Our prisons have thousands fewer people than California’s, but more deaths. In Alabama prisons so far this year, someone has died every other day. Of the 36 deaths in Alabama prisons Appleseed has confirmed so far this year, 32 were preventable. 

If Alabama’s conservative “tough on crime” lawmakers might wince at the notion of looking at California for answers to Alabama’s problems, perhaps they should look at Texas.

Texas was on track to need 17,000 new prison beds by 2012, at a cost of approximately $2 billion, but instead, lawmakers appropriated $241 million for drug treatment programs in and outside of prisons, and created specialty courts to handle those struggling with drugs, and veterans in need of special care. 

“According to Texas Department of Public Safety statistics, from 2007 to 2008 Texas saw a 5 percent decline in murders, a 4.3 percent decline in robberies, and a 6.8 percent drop in rapes,” according to the Daily Beast. “ In those same years, Right on Crime, a conservative think tank devoted to criminal justice reform, reports the number of parolees convicted of a new crime fell 7.6 percent; the number of incarcerations dropped 4.5 percent.”

Texas lawmakers in 2011 closed the state’s second-oldest prison, and within another two years shuttered two more prisons. 

“You want to talk about real conservative governance?” then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry asked the audience at the 2014 Conservative Political Action Conference. “Shut prisons down. Save that money.” 

Alabama’s Billion Dollar Solution

Thus far, the Alabama Solution does not involve saving money.

The DOJ in the 2019 report wrote that while new buildings may solve some of the problems it identified “new facilities alone will not resolve the contributing factors to the overall unconstitutional conditions.”

Even so, dating back to Ivey’s predecessor, Gov. Robert Bentley, the plan for many years has been to build new prisons, with the promise that doing so will solve the crisis. 

Ivey’s previous plan, which called for new prisons to be built by the private prison company CoreCivic and leased to the state at a cost of $3.6 billion, fell through when CoreCivic was unable to secure financing for the deal, following much pressure against financial firms from investing in prisons.

Alabama lawmakers in 2022 approved $1.3 billion to build two 4,000-bed prisons for men, agreeing to direct $400 million in federal COVID aid toward the projects. That budget includes a $785 million bond issue and $135 million from the state’s General Fund. The state in April 2022 signed a $623 million contract with Caddell Construction to build a 4,000-bed prison for men in Elmore County. 

Last month, the cost of one prison jumped to $1 billion and the expected completion date was extended several months. At this rate, it will not be open until about 2 years after the 2024 trial. A second prison, promised for Escambia County, is without a contractor and seemingly without most of the funding needed to build it, unless state leaders have a surprise funding stream. Gov. Ivey has requested $100 million from the Education Trust Fund budget to go into prison construction, but that still would not come close to bridging the funding gap created by the Billion Dollar Prison.    

It’s unclear how the state will pay for the second planned new 4,000-bed prison in Escambia County. The new construction will not add space, but will only replace dilapidated prisons.

“Alabama is not the only state, but it turns out that it seems that prison construction is one place where budget constraints, at the end of the day, often don’t matter,” Sarat told Appleseed. “They matter in public education. They matter in health care. They matter in infrastructure, but it doesn’t seem to matter all that much when it comes to how much we’re going to spend on the prison system.”

“This is abnormal and so wrong.” Views from the inside

Family members at the Vigil for Victim’s on March 7, 2023. Photo by Lee Hedgepeth

Beyond the back-and-forth between state leaders and the federal government attempting to hold them accountable are the voices of people barely surviving in the prisons they were supposedly sent for rehabilitation.

The sister of a man serving at Bullock prison described to Appleseed two separate attacks that nearly cost her brother his life.  “My brother was assaulted on March 6th and 21st 2021 at Bullock Correctional Facility. He almost lost his life on the 21st; he had to be airlifted, placed on life support and was left with a collapsed lung, [and] they returned him from the hospital within 3 DAYS!!!! They put him back in population, with stitches, staples, a tube and he had to sleep on the floor!!!!!! He was stabbed over 30 times,” the sister wrote. 

A man who served several years at Fountain Correctional Facility told Appleseed that when he first entered the prison he had no idea what he was in for.  “Over the 2 years I was there I saw more stabbings than I could count and was beaten several times myself,” the man wrote. “I woke up one night tied to my bunk and was beaten and sexually assaulted for what seemed an eternity. I continued to be sexually assaulted multiple times and never reported it for fear of being killed if I did.” 

“I was forced to do things that I never dreamed of doing in order to survive,” he said in the letter. “I tried reporting one incident when I was almost stabbed by someone who was trying to rape me and wasn’t taken seriously by officers, even humiliated and made fun of.”

An elderly man serving a sentence of life without parole at Donaldson Correctional Facility wrote to Appleseed about his concerns over understaffing, poor living conditions and the rash of overdoses. 

“At night time [there is] only one officer to watch 650 prisoners,” he wrote. “We have prisoners here who are ‘homeless.’ Prisoners who are afraid to to go into an assigned cell b/c of being raped, set up to be robbed, beat up, and etc. These prisoners sleep in the open day room, some sleep under the stairs, some sleep in the old–not used–showers.” 

Donaldson prison’s infirmary sees two to three overdoses daily. “We have had as much as 5 in one day. The Infirmary does not keep a count on overdoses…90% of the contraband coming into prison is coming in by officers; and these officers are being aided with the help of other officers.”  

Four years ago, the DOJ began its report, with a description of a scene from Bibb County Correctional Facility: “At the back of the dormitory and not visible from the front door, two prisoners started stabbing their intended victim. The victim screamed for help. Another prisoner tried to intervene and he, too, was stabbed. The initial victim dragged himself to the front doors of the dormitory. Prisoners banged on the locked doors to get the attention of security staff. …The prisoner eventually bled to death. One resident told us he could still hear the victim’s screams in his sleep.”

The State of Alabama still houses tens of thousands of people in these conditions. Four years after a blistering warning from the U.S. Department of Justice, nothing has changed.

In July, Antonio Wallace wrote to Appleseed from Bibb. Wallace had survived in Alabama’s prisons since age 17. He had served 35 years for his role in a murder at age 16 when he was homeless and using drugs. Wallace was hoping to finally be granted parole. “I’m ready to come back [into] society and live the life of which I know what I suppose to do, be the father to my daughter and a grand dad to my grand baby girls,” Wallace wrote. “So I ask again: please don’t let me die in here.”

Just three months after sending this letter, Wallace was found unresponsive and pronounced dead, the result of a suspected overdose, according to sources inside Bibb prison. He was 51 years old. 

“Yes I was a juvenile when I got off into this mess and from there my life hasn’t been much of anything and it’s sad when I look back at my situation and see nothing from there,” Wallace wrote. “I know I have good in me. I know I can function, if and when [given] a chance back into society. …I came in as a juvenile and I had to grow up in a place such as this which is abnormal and so wrong.” 

Appleseed Legal Assistant Libby Rau contributed to this report.

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