Alabama Needs DOJ To Follow-Up On Prison System

In April 2019, DOJ issued the results of their investigation into the conditions inside Alabama prisons. Sadly, nothing has been done. Governor Kay Ivey says "The Alabama Solution" is to build more mega-prisons, so she took funds from education and COVID relief to build new billion dollar prisons. That fixes nothing!

Election time is coming up, and we have a chance for new leaders to take the helm. As citizens, we have to get organized and demand a change. But in the interim, we need the DOJ to actually follow through on their investigation. During the Trump administration, that may not be realistic, so it may be up to us to force a change in the system. ✊

Their investigation reported that our entire prison system is broken. They wrote:

“There is reasonable cause to believe that the Alabama Department of Corrections(“ADOC”) has violated and is continuing to violate the Eighth Amendment rights of prisoners housed in men’s prisons by failing to protect them from prisoner-on-prisoner violence, prisoner-on-prisoner sexual abuse, and by failing to provide safe conditions, and that such violations are pursuant to a pattern or practice of resistance to the full enjoyment of rights secured by the Eighth Amendment. The violations are severe, systemic, and exacerbated by serious deficiencies in staffing and supervision; overcrowding; ineffective housing and classification protocols; inadequate incident reporting; inability to control the flow of contraband into and within the prisons, including illegal drugs and weapons; ineffective prison management and training; insufficient maintenance and cleaning of facilities; the use of segregation and solitary confinement to both punish and protect victims of violence and/or sexual abuse; and a high level of violence that is too common, cruel, of an unusual nature, and pervasive.”

Here is the full report:
https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/5793211-DOJ-Report-on-Alabama-Prisons/