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Mass Incarceration and Unconstitutional Prisons

Alabama’s entire state prison system for men has been declared unconstitutional by the United States Department of Justice. In 2020, the federal government sued the State of Alabama for violating the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights of incarcerated people by “failing to prevent prisoner-on-prisoner violence and sexual abuse, failing to protect prisoners from the use of excessive force by security staff, and failing to provide safe conditions of confinement.” In 2014, the state’s women’s prison, Tutwiler, was also found unconstitutional, largely due to sexual abuse of incarcerated women by prison staff.

Alabama’s prison system is broken. Our state has invested in punishment – extreme sentences, brutal conditions of confinement, and institutional violence. But we have failed to invest in robust rehabilitation, drug treatment, re-entry services, and the kinds of crime prevention and community support that would keep all Alabamians safer.

These failures are costly.

They cost valuable tax dollars. From 2010 to 2020, the Department of Corrections’ budget nearly doubled. For fiscal year 2026, it is $826 million, a quarter of the State General Fund.  In addition, the State is spending $1.3 billion to build a 4,000-bed megaprison, the most expensive prison ever built in the U.S.

These failures also cost lives. The mortality rate in Alabama prisons is five times the national average, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Since 2019, more than 105 people have died from homicide in Alabama prisons, and at least 49 people have died from suicide. The senseless deaths persist with:

  • A record 334 deaths in 2023
  • 277 deaths in 2024
  • At least 1,350 deaths since the U.S. Department of Justice report was filed.

Clearly, the spending spree has not addressed the violence and dysfunction, nor the harm to Alabama families and communities of a bloated system that lacks basic safety.

As our state’s only research and policy advocacy organization devoted to criminal justice reform in Alabama, Appleseed is confronting Alabama’s catastrophic over reliance on prisons and punishment with smart bi-partisan solutions.

And when necessary, we fight over-incarceration one client at a time, through legal representation of individuals sentenced under Alabama’s draconian habitual offender law.  Since 2019, we have won release for 23 people once sentenced to die in prison. We represent scores of Alabamians serving extreme sentences who have overcome past mistakes and embraced rehabilitation.

Alabama has the worst prisons in the country. Building more of them won’t fix that.

OUTCOMES

No One Should Die in Prison for a $50 Robbery

At 22, Alvin Kennard was sentenced to die in prison for a $50 robbery in Bessemer. His Life Without Parole sentence was mandated under Alabama’s Habitual Felony Offender Law, one of the nation’s harshest “three-strikes” laws, because he had three minor property offenses at age 18. But Alvin did not give up, nor did his family. He had spent 36 years in prison when a compassionate judge noticed his excessive sentence and appointed an Appleseed attorney to take on the case.

Alvin was released on August 28, 2019 before a courtroom filled with supporters. At 58, he started life outside of the prison walls. Amazingly, less than two months after being released from a death-in-prison sentence, Alvin secured a full-time job working in an auto body shop and has since been promoted. He enjoys large family events and shares his faith in God everywhere he goes. Alabama gave up on Alvin Kennard, but he did not give up on himself.

  • A Sentencing Crisis

    Excessive sentences for thousands of Alabamians are a result of policy decisions made by our elected leaders. These extreme punishments do not reflect evidence-based solutions or best practices for public safety but are driven by failed “tough-on-crime” politics. 

    • Alabama has the fourth highest number of life-sentenced prisoners in the U.S., meaning people remain incarcerated long after they have demonstrated rehabilitation and aged out of criminal behavior.
    • Under Alabama’s “three-strikes” law, the Habitual Felony Offender Act (HFOA), 350 people are sentenced to die in prison for non-homicide crimes.
    • Long sentences mean prisons house about 6,680 people over age 50, past the age when most crime occurs.
    • More than 5,000 people are serving sentences of life or life without parole. That’s as many people as were incarcerated in the entire state prison system 40 years ago.

  • A Drug Treatment Crisis

    Alabama’s failure to expand Medicaid limits public funding of drug treatment and rehabilitation. Options are patchy and underfunded, leading to over reliance on prisons for people who need medical treatment, not punishment.

    • Drug offenses account for more felony convictions and new prison admissions than any other offense. Felony convictions – which lead to jail and joblessness – for drug possession alone rose 25% from 2017 to 2019, according to the Alabama Sentencing Commission.
    • 15% of Alabama’s prison population is nonviolent drug offenders, people like Leon Hotchkiss, who is serving 40 years for growing marijuana on his property.
    • There has been a 70% decline in incarcerated people receiving drug treatment since 2015, according to ADOC statistics.

  • A Racial Justice Crisis

    Racial bias courses through Alabama’s criminal justice system, dating from the era of racial terror lynching to the convict leasing system which helped build Jefferson County’s steel industry. The resulting over incarceration of Black Alabamians in the state’s unconstitutionally violent prisons has proven deadly.

    • 56% of people in Alabama prisons are Black (27% of people in Alabama are Black)
    • Black men are 3 times  more likely to be killed in prison than white men. 
    • At least 40 Black men have been killed by homicide while in the state’s custody since 2014.
    • 75% of people serving life without parole sentences under Alabama’s “three strikes” law are Black.

Our research shows that recent reductions in the number of incarcerated Alabamians coincided with a reduction in crime.That’s right – Alabama sent fewer people to prison and crime dropped. Specifically, a series of sentencing reforms passed since 2006 resulted in the number of people ages 15-30 in state prisons being cut in half. During that same period (2005-2019) Alabama’s overall crime rate declined by 17%. Robbery, the most common violent crime sunk by 48%.

UNCONSTITUTIONAL PRISONS

Alabama has repeatedly been condemned by the federal courts and the United States Department of Justice for violating the United States Constitution in how it treats incarcerated Alabamians. Most recently, despite being put on notice four years ago that the U.S. Department of Justice was investigating the entire prison system for men, conditions only deteriorated, abysmally low staffing levels stagnated, violence escalated, and overcrowding persisted. The DOJ was forced to sue the state, making Alabama the only state in the nation that faced two systemwide lawsuits from the federal government over unconstitutional prison conditions.

MORE PRISONS ARE NOT ENOUGH

A Pattern of Excessive Force

Alabama Department of Corrections officers and supervisors are routinely arrested and charged in excessive force and assault cases against incarcerated people. According to the DOJ lawsuit, the Alabama Department of Corrections has “repeatedly failed to take reasonable measures to prevent security staff from inflicting serious harm on prisoners…” 

Just since 2020, the following criminal cases against ADOC employees have emerged from Alabama’s prisons:

  • July 2020: A federal grand jury indicted Sgt. Keith Finch and Officers Jordan Thomas and Kevin Blaylock at Bibb County Correctional Facility for deprivation of rights under color of law for the 2018 beating of an incarcerated person. The officers kicked the victim while he was on the floor and hit him with their batons. Thomas and another sergeant were charged with obstruction of justice after submitting a false report stating that the use of force stopped once the victim was on the ground.
  • March 2021:  A grand jury returned a 5-count indictment charging Sgt. Devlon Williams and Officer Larry Managan Jr. with assaulting an incarcerated person at Staton Correctional Facility and submitting a false report. The officers assaulted the victim by striking him with their feet and batons; Managan was specifically noted for walking on the individual.
  • June 2021: Officer Akeem Edmonds was charged with second-degree assault for beating an incarcerated person with a belt at Bibb County Correctional Facility. Prosecutors moved to dismiss the case based on the State’s lack of sufficient evidence, and a judge dismissed the case in November. However, there is a civil case against Edmonds stemming from a 2018 beating at Bibb that resulted in the incarcerated person suffering a broken hip.
  • March 2022:  Lt. Mohammed Jenkins was charged with assault for the beating, Victor Russo, a 60-year-old man incarcerated at Donaldson prison. Jenkins sprayed Russo with a chemical agent while Russo was on the floor, proceeded to beat Russo on the head, and continued to spray him, according to the indictment. At one point, Russo was cuffed to a bench, and Jenkins continued the assault—even putting the nozzle of the chemical agent can in Russo’s mouth and pulling the trigger. Russo died three days later. The day before he was found unresponsive in his cell, Russo recounted the horrific assault in a letter that was sent to the prison’s warden.
  • April 2022: Sgt. Lorenzo Mills was indicted by a federal grand jury on three charges of assault and obstruction of justice at Draper prison, while it was being used to house COVID patients. He struck three incarcerated persons with a wooden baton, causing bodily harm; none of the men were resisting. Mills also submitted a false report.
  •  April 2022: Sgt. Ulysses Oliver Jr. was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for the 2019 assault of two incarcerated persons at Elmore Correctional Facility. Both men were handcuffed behind their backs and did not resist. 

Alabama Appleseed is proud of our role in the grassroots effort to thwart the state’s plan to build three private mega-prisons in rural Alabama. This plan was the worst of all worlds: it would have resulted in three costly new prisons that would not be owned by the state but would be operated by the same Department of Corrections whose decades of mismanagement and malfeasance have gotten us where we are. 

While we stopped giant companies like CoreCivic that were seeking to profit from Alabama’s reliance on mass incarceration, the Alabama Legislature forged ahead on another prison construction plan by voting to divert $400 million in federal COVID-relief dollars to prisons, part of a $1.3 billion prison construction plan approved by the Legislature in October, 2021. Now, the State plans to build two, 4,000-bed prisons in rural communities in Elmore and Escambia counties, although the Elmore prison alone will cost more than $1 billion. Legislative leadership has acknowledged the new prisons would not relieve overcrowding, they would only replace old facilities that state leaders failed to maintain over the last four decades.

Appleseed, along with the statewide Communities Not Prisons coalition, has fought this wasteful, expensive construction plan. 

Appleseed Executive Director Carla Crowder testified before the House Ways and Means General Fund Committee explaining our opposition:  

“Appleseed’s concern with this bill is not about fighting new prison construction. It’s because this bill promises an Elmore facility with enhanced medical and mental health care, education and rehabilitation services, humane treatment for elderly people. But it provides no funding for these things.

Our concern with this bill is that Alabama has never built 4,000 bed prisons. We can’t staff 1,000 bed prisons. This bill does nothing to address the staffing crisis that has been unmet even with a federal court order in the Braggs mental health case.”

Opponents have cast our work to stop prison construction as irresponsible, claiming that opposing $1.3 billion for sprawling new buildings means endorsing the consignment of tens of thousands of incarcerated Alabamians to decrepit facilities.

The choice has never been between building prisons and letting our neighbors rot in deadly ones.

Alabama can change our laws, our policies, and our practices. Repeating the mistakes of the past by caging people in abusive conditions then releasing them with no support has not made our communities safer. People who harm others should face consequences for their actions, but those consequences should be proportional. That means:

  • Second Look laws to create limited opportunities for release for people serving extreme sentences
  • Re-examining the use of prison to house elderly people, including expanded clemency and compassionate release
  • Expanded use of parole coupled with meaningful re-entry support
  • Greater investment in mental health care 
  • Accessible diversion programs that allow low-level offenders a second chance
  • Smarter drug policy to provide more treatment outside of prison
  • Decriminalization of marijuana and expanded expungement opportunities for people with old marijuana convictions

How much could Alabama accomplish by investing billions of dollars into our people and communities, in public safety and crime prevention, rather than using that money to repeat the mistakes that landed us here?