By Eddie Burkhalter, Appleseed Researcher

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It was five years ago today that the U.S. Department of Justice released a report detailing violations of the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment for incarcerated men in Alabama prisons, and since then more than 1,000 people have died in state prison custody. 

The Alabama Legislature’s Joint Prison Oversight Committee meets today and is tasked with providing critical oversight of a department that for decades has been steeped in mismanagement, chaos, corruption, and violence. 

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 DOJ sued the state and the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC). The trial, which will be closely watched across the nation, is set for November, but could be pushed back.

Throughout the last five years, state officials have provided major pay increases to prison guards, increased the ADOC’s budget by 48%, and signed a medical care contract for $1 billion. ADOC officers confiscate hundreds of weapons, even guns, along with enormous amounts of drugs on a regular basis. But nothing seems to stop the carnage. Alabama prisons have a death rate five times the national average, and 2023 saw record loss of life, with 325 incarcerated people dying in state prisons.   

Low prison staffing levels were flagged in that first DOJ report as being a catalyst of the violence, yet from December 2017 until Sept. 30, 2020, the state showed an increase of just 25 officers over nearly two years, which was less than 1.5 percent of a judge’s order to add 2,000 correctional officers by February 2022, and the staffing problem has only worsened. ADOC’s quarterly reports show total security staffing fell from 2,102 in December 2021 to 1,763 by September 2023, even after massive recruiting efforts, pay raises and incentives.

And many officers are part of the problem. Between 2018 and the end of 2023, ADOC fired 366 Corrections staff, and more quit before being terminated. During those years 134 ADOC officers and staff were charged with work-related crimes, Appleseed discovered through a records request, with charges ranging from promoting prison contraband to murder. 

In a recent case, ADOC Sgt. Demarcus Sanders in July 2023 was charged with murder in the death of Rubyn James Murray, 38, beaten to death at the hands of two other incarcerated men, directed to do so by Sanders, court records allege. Those two incarcerated men are also charged with murder. “The defendant confessed to the offense,” an ADOC investigator wrote of Sanders in a deposition. 

One of the last men to die in Alabama prisons was 39-year-old Samuel Ward, who was stabbed to death on March 27 by another incarcerated man at Limestone Correctional Facility. It was the fifth homicide at that prison since May 2021, and the second during the month of March. 

Gov Kay Ivey and supporters of her plan to build new prisons have said those buildings are the answer to Alabama’s deadly prison crisis, and while lawmakers have secured the money to build the first $1.08 billion prison – in part with $400 in federal COVID-relief funds, and potentially $100 million from state education funds, money for a second planned prison hasn’t been found. 

Immediately, after the 2019 report was released, Ivey began promising an “Alabama solution” to the problem. “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,” Ivey said at the time.

Asked what the most significant accomplishments to address the prison crisis to date have been, and about the lack of funding for the second planned prison, Gov. Kay Ivey’s office declined to provide a response, and instead sent portions of Ivey’s most recent state of the state speech. 

“The Alabama Department of Corrections certainly remains a key focus of our state’s public safety efforts. I will be frank: Running a corrections system is a hard job, and I know everyone has an opinion on how they can do it better. There is no one more capable to lead that effort here in Alabama than Commissioner John Hamm,” Ivey said in her February speech. 

“Prisons around the country and on every level – federal, state and local – are experiencing challenges. But we remain committed to doing everything in our power to make improvements where we can in our state system.

“We are moving forward in our mission to build two new facilities. At the same time, we are working to stop contraband coming into our existing facilities, and we are doubling down on our staff recruitment efforts and seeing record graduating classes of officers because of it,” Ivey’s speech reads. 

New buildings alone won’t solve the culture of violence and death inside Alabama’s prisons, which is exactly what the Department of Justice told the state in the 2019 report: “While new facilities might cure some of these physical plant issues, it is important to note that new facilities alone will not resolve the contributing factors to the overall unconstitutional condition of ADOC prisons, such as understaffing, culture, management deficiencies, corruption, policies, training, non-existent investigations, violence, illicit drugs, and sexual abuse.”

While no ADOC official attended the Legislature’s Joint Prison Oversight Committee meeting in December, family members of those who’ve died in state custody did, and spoke of the brutal ways in which their loved ones’ lives ended. 

“When you see your dad for the first time in 10 years and half of his face is almost gone because he was beaten, it does something to you,”17-year-old MaKayla Mount told lawmakers at that December meeting carrying her father’s urn with her in the State House that day. Christopher Mount was beaten and strangled to death inside a protective custody cell at Easterling Correctional Facility on Mother Day 2023. 

“My son was raped in February of this year and it took them over a month to get him moved,” one mother told the lawmakers at that meeting. 

Appleseed’s Executive Director, Carla Crowder, described for lawmakers at that December meeting how ADOC repeatedly failed to hold accountable the 38-year-old suspect in the kidnapping, rape and torture of 22-year-old Daniel Williams, who died at a hospital on Nov. 9. The suspect was involved in nine instances of sex assault, rape, and stabbing since 2017 in ADOC while incarcerated, yet there is no documentation that the department disciplined the man or placed him in segregation. 

“His classification summary showed a five-year clear record of institutional violence, which resulted in a perfect score of zero in risk assessment conducted in October, and a total score low enough for him to be placed in medium security in an open bay dorm. The psych associates signed off on this and the warden signed off on this,” Crowder said at the meeting. 

These kinds of attacks are precisely what DOJ identified five years ago: “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. Prisoner-on-prisoner homicide and sexual abuse are common. Prisoners who are seriously injured or stabbed must find their way to security staff elsewhere in the facility or bang on the door of the dormitory to gain the attention of correctional officers. Prisoners have been tied up for days by other prisoners while unnoticed by security staff.” 

The report was signed by since-retired U.S. Attorneys Louis Franklin Sr., Jay Town and Richard Moore, all Trump appointees. 

Alabama prisons in January were at 168 percent capacity, and held 20,469 people in combined prisons designed for 12,115. In the five years since, the state’s prison population has remained the same. At the time of the release of the DOJ’s 2019 report, Alabama prisons held just one less incarcerated person than were being housed in January, 2024.

By Eddie Burkhalter, Appleseed Researcher

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Alabama’s prison staffing crisis has an outsized role in the violence and record number of deaths seen across the state’s prisons, most everyone agrees. New data obtained by Appleseed shows yet another reason prison staffing remains dangerously low: the large number of terminated prison employees – 366 Department of Corrections staff fired from January 2018 to November 2023.

The list includes only people fired from the department, not retirements or resignations, and was provided following a records request by Appleseed. Among the 366, at least 19 had been charged with work-related crimes, including contraband and assaulting incarcerated people with batons, for striking an incarcerated man “in the facial area with an open hand and push[ing] the inmate into a wall,” and for hitting another incarcerated man on the jaw with a closed fist “requiring surgery for his injury,” according to court records. 

Still another former prison worker was charged with assault for causing injury to an incarcerated man by “kicking and/or punching him” and two officers were arrested in May 2022 and charged with criminally negligent homicide in the death of 27-year-old Jason Kirkland, who was found dead after he became stuck inside his cell’s small metal door used to pass food through and asphyxiated. 

An officer was arrested in May 2022 and charged with multiple crimes in connection with allegedly attempting to smuggle marijuana inside a frozen Poweraid bottle into Fountain Correctional Facility. Another officer was arrested in February 2020 after attempting to bring seven ounces of marijuana, three ounces of meth, two knives and other contraband into Fountain prison. That officer was convicted in federal court and was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison. 

But those 19 former ADOC employees charged with work-related crimes don’t come close to painting the entire picture of corruption and violence at the hands of ADOC employees; many former ADOC officers and staff quit before they’re fired, as Appleseed’s review of court records showed. Records for a former officer charged with assault for allegedly beating a man with a baton at Donaldson Correctional Facility in 2021 showed that two other former officers were also charged with assault in that incident, but those two officers weren’t listed by ADOC as having been fired during that time. Additionally, challenges with securing evidence and witnesses for incidents that occur in a correctional setting result in corrupt staff getting quietly pushed out the door rather than criminally prosecuted.

Equal Justice Initiative notes that, “since 2019, EJI has identified at least 89 ADOC employees who have been criminally charged or administratively sanctioned for misconduct within Alabama prisons. In 30 of these cases, the offending officers were supervisors.”

In one case, a lieutenant with 20 years experience attacked Victor Russo, a 60-year-old incarcerated man, who later died.  Mohammad Jenkins, who was a shift commander at Donaldson Correctional Facility, pleaded guilty to using excessive force on Russo, then lying afterwards to cover up his abuse, according to the United States Department of Justice. “Specifically, on Feb. 16, 2022, Jenkins willfully deprived inmate V.R. of his right to be free from excessive force by kicking him, hitting him, spraying him with chemical spray, striking him with a can of chemical spray and striking him with a shoe, while V.R. was restrained inside of a holding cell and not posing a threat,” the DOJ stated. 

ADOC’s staffing problems, which have been a driver of the violence and death inside Alabama’s prisons, have plagued ADOC for decades, and recent court orders to improve have gone unanswered. From December 2017 until Sept. 30, 2020, the state showed an increase of just 25 officers over nearly two years, which was less than 1.5 percent of a judge’s order to add 2,000 correctional officers by February 2022, and the staffing problem has only worsened. ADOC’s quarterly reports show total security staffing fell from 2,102 in December 2021 to 1,763 by September 2023, even after massive recruiting efforts, pay raises and incentives. 

Violence could lead to early releases

Despite such a significant number of terminations, the assaultive and criminal behavior by ADOC officers keeps occurring. Now, violence against incarcerated people in Alabama is leading lawyers to request early release based on the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) inability to keep people in its custody safe.

This month, a grand jury indicted Limestone Correctional officers Samuel Dial and Jesse Cobb with felony assault for what court records allege is the beating of a 74-year-old incarcerated man in the head with a “broom handle.” Less than two weeks later, the man’s attorney on Feb. 21 filed a motion asking the court to reconsider releasing his client early because of the assault. Hospital records attached to the filing show the man suffered an intracranial hemorrhage and an abrasion to his left arm. 

The two officers remained employed by ADOC as of Friday were working at “non-contact posts” pending the outcome of ADOC’s criminal investigation, the department told Appleseed.

Despite signs of repeated, unlawful behavior by one man long before this episode, he remained a law enforcement officer at the ADOC. That officer,  Jesse Cobb, has been arrested four times since 2013, charged twice with driving under the influence, once for leaving the scene of an accident and twice for public intoxication. 

The earliest of Cobb’s DUI charges was dismissed for reasons court records do not make clear. Cobb in August 2014 pleaded guilty to a separate DUI charge in which court records state he was driving his motorcycle drunk and told the arresting officer “I work for the department of corrections.” The arresting officer in his notes said that Cobb was “using his job to establish dominance.” Cobb received a 180 day suspended jail sentence and was ordered to attend DUI school. The 2014 was later appealed and the charge dropped by the City of Athens, court records show. 

Cobb in July 2018 pleaded guilty to public intoxication and received a $50 fine plus court costs, and he was again arrested in January 2022 and charged with leaving the scene of an accident, public intoxication and failure to report an accident. Court records state he crashed into a guardrail, left the scene and the next day met with a state trooper and said he left the scene “because he was drunk.” Cobb pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and to public intoxication and received a one year suspended jail sentence and two years unsupervised probation. 

“You’re just making your problem bigger, in a new building.”

Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas, told Appleseed that the staffing problem itself can result in officers breaking the law. 

“In a low staffed environment, officers are more likely to want to make deals with incarcerated people to try to keep the peace there. So it’s like, Oh, I’ll bring you in some contraband,” Deitch said. “And then there’s also the fact that low staffing allows more bad things to happen inside: Not enough people to notice that staff are bringing in contraband.” 

Appleseed regularly receives videos from inside prisons showing open drug use, assaults, injured and dying people and with no officers in sight. 

ADOC did raise pay for correctional officers and trainees last year, but Deitch said it’s a mistake to think that it’s solely a salary issue. “Counterintuitively it’s better to raise the standards for what it takes to be an officer, raise the educational level, raise the age, raise what kind of things you’re looking for,” Deitch said. “Because then it makes the job more appealing to the kind of people you actually would want to have working there.”

The most important change ADOC could make to improve hiring, she said, is to improve prison conditions, and proponents of Alabama’s new under-construction $1.08 billion prison say that’s what’s needed to fix the state’s deadly prison crisis, but Deitch cautioned about placing all bets on that new prison building. 

“Building a new building doesn’t do anything about the culture. This is a system that has a very dysfunctional culture. It’s a culture that supports violence. It’s a culture that supports the bringing in of contraband. Breaking of rules. All sorts of violations, and unless you change that culture, the new building isn’t going to do anything,” Deitch said. “You’re just making your problem bigger, in a new building.”

by Eddie Burkhalter, Researcher

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Alabama prisons in 2023 saw record high deaths for a second straight year, a grim reminder that the Alabama Department of Corrections is incapable of protecting incarcerated people from drugs, violence and death.

Last year, 325 people died in Alabama prisons, the Alabama Department of Corrections confirmed for Appleseed. 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.

ADOC doesn’t release timely data on prison deaths, and names aren’t released in department reports, leaving it up to journalists and others to gather those names and seek confirmation. The department’s quarterly reports publish data that reflects what was happening in prisons three months prior, so it’s difficult to gauge the current state of violence and death inside Alabama prisons. Appleseed obtained the names and dates of deaths last year through a records request.

It can take many weeks and even months for ADOC to close out an investigation into an in-custody death, due in part to the time it takes the state’s lab to complete toxicology reports, but in ADOC’s quarterly reports the department notes that 127 death investigations had been completed for deaths that occurred in 2023. Among those, 47 were determined to be caused by “accidental/overdose,” four were homicides, five were suicides, 72 were “natural” deaths and two were “undetermined’ leaving 198 yet to have an official cause of death.

Families of victims of custodial violence and abuse increasingly are speaking up. Last month, dozens of grieving family members attended the Joint Prison Oversight Committee at the Alabama Statehouse. Other families have emailed lawmakers with chilling photos and videos of the chaotic, degrading, and deadly conditions across the prison system. The 2024 legislative session is less than two weeks away and the desperation of these families promises to push Alabama’s prison crisis into the spotlight yet again.

Hundreds of deaths, little communication with grieving loved ones

ADOC also 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.

For example, the death certificate for Christopher Latham, 40, who died on Oct. 10 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.” 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.

Appleseed on Thursday contacted the office of the physician who certified Latham’s death at Southeast Health Medical Center in Dothan to question how injuries from a prison fight could result in the death certificate listing the manner of death as “Accidental” instead of a homicide. The physician’s nurse confirmed that Latham had been seen by the doctor, but the physician did not return Appleseed’s message as of Monday morning.

Among the names of those who died last year are 39-year-old Rubyn Murray, who was set to be released in 2025. Former ADOC sergeant D’Marcus Sanders was charged with murder in connection with the July 2023 beating death of Mr. Murray at Elmore Correctional Facility. Mr. Murray had served 19 years of a 20 year sentence for a 2004 robbery. The Alabama Board of Pardons and Parole denied parole for Mr. Murray in February of 2021. His conviction stemmed from a robbery of a Montgomery convenience store in which $125 was stolen; no one was injured, according to court records.

Mr. Murray was involved in an altercation with another officer earlier on July 26, which resulted in minor injuries on both the officer and Mr. Murray, according to an ADOC statement. Murray was then taken to a “back gate holding area” and was to be taken to Staton Correctional Facility for medical assessment and treatment.

“Before the transport could occur and in violation of ADOC policy, two other inmates gained access to the holding area,” the statement reads. “Inmate Murray was found unresponsive and was transported to SHCU and then to an area hospital for emergency treatment. Medical staff was unable to resuscitate inmate Murray and he was pronounced deceased by the attending physician.”

Sgt. Sanders and two incarcerated men, Fredrick Gooden and Stefranio Hampton, were charged with Murder. According to court records, Sgt. Sanders unlocked Mr. Murray’s cell door and allowed those two other incarcerated men to enter and beat Mr. Murray, causing serious injuries that later resulted in his death. An Elmore County District judge has approved an affidavit of hardship filed on behalf of Sgt. Sanders and declared him indigent, meaning Alabama taxpayers will pay the cost to defend him against the murder charge.

Brian Rigsby, 46, died on Oct. 4, 2023, at the Staton Correctional Facility infirmary after being beaten by other incarcerated men in August 2023 at Bullock Correctional Facility, causing numerous stab wounds, fractured ribs, a facial fracture and two small skull fractures. Mr. Rigbsy also had end-stage liver failure in the days leading up to his death, his mother, Pamela Moser, told Appleseed.

Mr. Rigsby had been turned down for parole by the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles in July 2023. Ms. Moser was one of the families who pleaded with legislators to address the inhumanity in the prisons at the oversight committee meeting. “When one breaks the law, they lose their freedom, not their rights as a human being. The way my son’s end of life was handled was not humane, kind, or caring. For him and

his family, I can only hope and pray for change,” she told the six lawmakers in attendance.

Another 2023 victim was Christopher Mount, 44. He was beaten and strangled to death on Mother’s Day 2023 after being placed

in a suicide cell with another man at Easterling Correctional Facility.

Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) investigators believe the other man, William Smith, killed Mr. Mount in that cell. Mr. Smith, 48, was incarcerated after being convicted of choking his girlfriend to death in 2017. Mr. Mount was choked to death as well, according to his death certificate, which lists his cause of death as asphyxiation. “My daughter has nightmares and wakes up screaming and crying because all she sees is her dad being beaten and strangled and screaming for help,” Christy Martin, mother to Mr. Mount’s 17-year-old daughter, MaKayla, told Appleseed. “We were supposed to have him home in our arms and not in an urn.”

Easterling prison was at 188 percent capacity the month that Mr. Mount was killed.

Alabama’s prison mortality rate is five times the national average

The November 2023 death of 22-year-old Daniel Williams following what other incarcerated men say was two to three days of beatings and sexual assaults received international news coverage. Mr. Williams was serving a 12-month sentence and was weeks away from his release when he died.

The suspect in Mr. Williams’ death had a decade-long history of assaulting and raping other incarcerated men in several prisons, Appleseed’s review of court records revealed.

Those documents show nine reports of the suspect in Mr. Williams’ death sexually assaulting or harassing other incarcerated men over the last five years, and those records also show that ADOC didn’t take disciplinary measures against the man that could have increased his classification status and removed him from areas inside prisons in which he could further harm others.

In October 2023, ADOC gave the suspect a perfect scores in the category of “History of Institutional Violence” despite clear records of the previous assaults and rapes. As of Jan. 9 the suspect had not been charged in connection with Mr. Williams’ death, according to court records.

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.” That lawsuit is scheduled for trial in November, 2024.

The death rate in Alabama prisons has climbed to five times the national average. Alabama’s prisoner mortality rate is 1,370 deaths per 100,000 people, compared with a national average of 330 deaths per 100,000, according to the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The Ivey Administration’s response has been to begin construction of a $1.08 billion prison expected to house 4,000 people when it opens in 2026. ADOC officials cite perennially low staff and inability to retain and recruit officers as the cause of much of the violence, but have not released a realistic plan as to how they plan to staff the largest prison ever built in Alabama.

The following is the document provided by the Alabama Department of Corrections listing deaths in 2023:

Speakers ranged from a teenager whose father was brutally killed to a retired lawyer whose father tried to reform Alabama’s prisons 40 years ago.

By Eddie Burkhalter, Appleseed Researcher

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For just over three minutes, 17-year-old MaKayla Mount stood before members of the Legislative Joint Prison Oversight Committee and told the story of her father’s brutal beating and strangulation death inside a protective custody cell at Easterling Correctional Facility on Mother Day 2023. She arrived in Montgomery carrying her father’s remains in an urn.

“When you see your dad for the first time in 10 years and half of his face is almost gone because he was beaten, it does something to you,” Ms. Mount said during Wednesday’s public hearing of the Prison Oversight Committee. She was among fourteen Alabama families  and advocates who spoke to lawmakers about Alabama’s broken prison system, many telling stories of their loved ones dying behind bars, being beaten and family members extorted, and of the indifference of wardens and officers hired to keep their loved ones alive. 

MaKayla was not permitted to carry the urn to the podium as she, a teenager barely five feet tall, addressed elected officials about the hardest challenge in her young life. “My dad will never get to see me graduate. Never get to see me get married. Never get to see me graduate college. Have kids. That was taken from me,” Ms. Mount said. Correctional officers are supposed to be watching those suicide cells, but none were when her father was attacked and killed, she said. 

William Smith beat and then strangled to death Christopher Mount, who was 44, in that cell, according to ADOC. Mr. Mount’s death certificate lists his cause of death as asphyxiation. Smith, 48, was incarcerated after being convicted of choking his girlfriend to death in 2017.  Smith is believed to have killed himself 20 days after Mr. Mount’s death. Mr. Mount had served almost 17 years of a 30-year sentence after pleading guilty to a string of crimes in 2005 and 2006, all motivated by substance use. 

“My son was raped in February of this year and it took them over a month to get him moved,” one mother told the lawmakers. About three weeks after being moved from Donaldson Correctional Facility to Bullock, some of the men who raped her son at Donaldson arrived at Bullock, she said. “He has spent a lot of time fighting and defending himself, but he’s only going to get written up for defending himself, and then that will have an effect on him when he comes up for parole again,” she said. Appleseed is protecting her identity because of threats to her son’s life and ADOC’s inability to keep him safe. Her son is incarcerated because of an offense that occurred when he was 17 years old.

Her son “has had everything happen to him but be killed” and she had to close her business because of threats she received from other incarcerated men “because they know I make cash money and they know where I live because it’s just that small and people talk.” 

No Alabama Department of Corrections staff appeared to be in attendance at Wednesday’s meeting, one speaker noted, even though it was a statutorily mandated public hearing. 

When it was Pam Moser’s turn to speak, the Birmingham nurse detailed the injuries her son, Brian Rigsby, sustained after an attack at Bullock Correctional Facility. Mr. Rigsby died on Oct. 4, before Ms. Moser’s application for medical furlough for her son, who was also suffering from liver failure, could be processed. He was 46. 

As a child, Brian Rigsby was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Substance abuse plagued his adult life, resulting in a life sentence after pleading guilty in 2007 to robbery in which no one was physically harmed. A string of prior non-violent convictions were linked to his addiction and resulted in the life sentence. 

Ms. Moser and her son’s father, Mitchell Rigsby, visited their son at Bullock in August, as they did each month, she told committee members. “Brian had called a few days earlier and said he’d been hurt. The left side of Brian’s face was swollen and discolored. He had an open stab wound on his left calf which was red and swollen. I counted five lacerations on his head,” Ms. Moser said. “Four days later, long enough for sepsis to set in, Brian was finally hospitalized with a skull fracture, a facial fracture, rib fracture, a stab wound and teeth knocked out.”

The warden told Ms. Moser that no report on Brian’s attack had been filed and told Ms. Moser “I don’t know how we let Brian get by us.” Yet, over and over again at the hearing, families told of severely injured and dying loved ones who were ignored or mistreated by high-level officials in the ADOC, the state’s largest law enforcement agency.

Brian was released but was hospitalized again on Sept. 13, Ms. Moser said, and she got a call from a hospital physician ten days later requesting the family visit with Brian because his condition was deteriorating. The family did visit with Brian in the hospital, but soon after the warden stopped those visits and Rigsby was taken to Staton Correctional Facility, where a warden told her: “Brian is doing better and he was placed on comfort care.” Ms. Moser, who has worked as a hospice nurse, explained to the warden that the change in care meant that her son was dying. 

“Warden Babers said ‘We’re all dying,’” Ms. Moser told the committee. “We were not allowed to see Brian the last seven days of his life. We called daily to tell him we loved him and were trying to get a visit. We don’t know if he got any of those messages, and if he did, was there any response.” 

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.” That lawsuit is scheduled for trial in November, 2024. 

Another speaker, Birmingham lawyer Edward Friend, shared grim historical context. In the 1970s, U.S. District Court Judge Frank Johnson placed the Alabama prison system under federal oversight for 13 years and issued what, at the time, was the most detailed and sweeping remedial order to correct blatant constitutional violations. Judge Johnson appointed an oversight committee to monitor the State’s implementation of his order.

“My father was a member of that 1976 committee. A toughened veteran of World War II who witnessed unspeakable horror and participated in the Normandy landing, he was shocked to the core with the persuasive cruelty and violence (in Alabama prisons),” Mr. Friend told the legislative committee. “Let’s fast forward 48 years. I feel like it’s 1976 again. This son of that military veteran, his friends and neighbors, all are shocked to the core by the local and national newspaper headlines that scream about our prison atrocities, the excessive force by guards as well as inmate on on inmate assaults up 41% in 2023; shocked that we have more inmate murders in the country by a factor of five, shocked that the Department of Justice based on a mountain of evidence declares ADOC is “deliberately  indifferent” to violence that permeates our prisons.”

While the crisis in Alabama’s overpopulated, understaffed prisons continues to grow, the number of people being incarcerated in the state is as well. 

Alabama had the 12th highest rate of increase in the number of people incarcerated in state prisons between 2021 and 2022, with a nearly six percent increase in that time, according to a November report by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics. 

Only 10 states had a higher rate of imprisonment than Alabama in 2021, and only eight had higher rates in 2022, according to the federal data. 

Deaths in Alabama prisons are expected to reach a record high for a second straight year in 2023. Alabama prisons saw a 34 percent increase in deaths between 2021 and 2022, according to the federal data, although the U.S. Department of Justice’s 252 deaths in 2022 is less than what Appleseed and The Montgomery Advertiser confirmed through the Alabama Department of Corrections to be 270 deaths that year, which would put the increase at 43 percent. 

Exacerbating the crisis, parole rates have also plummeted in recent years, others spoke to the committee about, as reported by Alabama Daily News. Paroles in Alabama dropped from more than 50 percent in 2018 to less than 8 percent this year.