DOJ Says Cruel And Unusual Punishment Is Alive And Well In Alabama Prisons
from the criminals-supervising-criminals dept
The DOJ's Civil Rights Division has wrapped up an Obama-era probe into the Alabama prison system. Initiated in 2016, the investigation covers 13 prisons in the state, containing nearly 17,000 prisoners. What the DOJ found was widespread deployment of excessive force and a resolute lack of concern for inmates' well-being. (via Huffington Post)
The report [PDF] notes that the Constitution (indirectly) gives inmates the right to be free from violence from other prisoners. The correctional facilities investigated here did almost nothing to prevent inmate-on-inmate violence.
After carefully reviewing the evidence, the Department concluded that there was reasonable cause to believe that conditions at Alabama’s prisons violate the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution and that these violations are pursuant to a pattern or practice of resistance to the full enjoyment of rights protected by the Eighth Amendment. In particular, the Department informed Alabama that it had reasonable cause to believe that Alabama routinely violates the constitutional rights of prisoners housed in Alabama’s prisons by failing to protect them from prisoner-on-prisoner violence and prisoner-on-prisoner sexual abuse, and by failing to provide safe and sanitary conditions. The serious deficiencies in staffing and supervision, and overcrowding, contribute to and exacerbate these constitutional violations.
Inmates also have the right to be free from excessive force. The pattern of excessive force deployment in Alabama correctional facilities continued right up to the DOJ's closing of its investigation.
In October 2019, correctional officers at Donaldson used force against a prisoner, resulting in his death. As part of the autopsy, an ADOC investigator informed a coroner that, after an officer opened his cell, the prisoner rushed toward another prisoner carrying two prison-made weapons. [...] The prisoner eventually went to the ground face down and officers reported that the prisoner concealed a knife between his upper torso and the floor. Numerous prisoner-witnesses, however, reported that correctional officers continued to strike the prisoner after he dropped any weapons and posed no threat. The prisoner was airlifted to a hospital due to the extent of his injuries. [...] The level of force used caused the prisoner to sustain multiple fractures to his skull, including near his nose, both eye sockets, left ear, left cheekbone, and the base of his skull, many of which caused extensive bleeding in multiple parts of his brain. The autopsy listed 16 separate and distinct injuries to the prisoner’s head and neck, in addition to multiple fractured ribs and bleeding around a kidney.
Two months later, in December 2019, a prisoner at Ventress died after the use of force by staff. The autopsy revealed that the prisoner died from blunt force trauma to the head. He sustained multiple areas of intracranial bleeding, fractures of his nose and left eye socket, and had at least six teeth knocked out. ADOC personnel informed hospital medical personnel that the injuries occurred after the prisoner fell from a bunk bed. Two correctional officers were placed on mandatory leave while ADOC investigated the circumstances surrounding the death.
The DOJ says Alabama's Department of Corrections documented 1,800 uses of force in 2017 alone. Hardly any of those were investigated. Those that did result in investigations almost never resulted in corrective action or further institutional review. Half of the prisons reviewed either referred one or zero uses of force for further investigation. And despite the fact that one prison (Bullock) had more than half the referrals (55%) despite making up only 6% of the total referred, no further investigation of the prison itself was ever initiated.
There's a distressingly long section in the report that lists documented uses of excessive force by correctional officers. Here's some brief lowlights from the DOJ's investigation:
In September 2019, a lieutenant at Ventress lifted a handcuffed prisoner up off the ground and slammed him on a concrete floor several times, knocking him unconscious. The prisoner was unable to breathe on his own, was intubated, and taken to an outside hospital, where medical personnel administered CPR several times to keep the prisoner alive.
[...]
In December 2018, a correctional officer brutally hit, kicked, and struck a handcuffed prisoner with an expandable baton in the Ventress medical unit. Two nurses saw the officer beat the prisoner, and two other nurses could hear the beating from adjacent rooms. The prisoner did not antagonize the officer before the beating and his hands were handcuffed behind his back. During the beating, all four of the nurses heard the officer yell something to the effect of, “I am the reaper of death, now say my name!” and the prisoner begged the officer to kill him. At one point, a nurse observed the officer place his palms against the wall and his right foot on the side of the prisoner’s face to grind the prisoner’s head into the floor...
[...]
The prisoner was then taken into the medical unit where he continued to thrash and gyrate his hips. The nurse believed the prisoner was unable to control his actions because he was under the influence of an illicit substance. The prisoner then fell from the examination table to the floor as the nurse tried to obtain his vital signs. The first sergeant threatened to kill the prisoner if he did not control his movements. While thrashing, the prisoner struck the sergeant’s boot. In response, the sergeant kicked the prisoner several times in the stomach and chest. Another sergeant then took a shoe and hit the prisoner multiple times in the genitals.
This goes on for nearly five pages. The DOJ points out the prisons are doing nothing to control this excessive force deployment and appear to be wholly uninterested in any form of accountability. This impression holds up under scrutiny. The DOJ investigators were stonewalled by uncooperative Departments of Corrections officials and officers nearly every step of the way.
For the June 2017 through April 2018 period, ADOC refused to produce any attachments to the incident reports, even though the attachments include critical information, including the initial, institution-level use of force investigations completed by captains or wardens, photographs documenting the aftermath of uses of force, and witness statements. ADOC also produced only I&I investigative files for closed investigations. Throughout the investigation, ADOC also prohibited us from interviewing non-supervisory correctional officers and severely restricted our access to individuals working in prison health care units.
The list of corrective actions recommended is almost longer than the list of atrocities carried out by corrections officers. The DOJ says immediate change is needed, starting with the installation of cameras anywhere corrections officers might interact with inmates, strict controls over access to this recorded footage, an influx of internal investigators, and extensive documentation for every deployment of force. Without this in place, any long-term fixes will be impossible. But given the state's corrections department's unwillingness to cooperate with this investigation, it seems unlikely a bunch of strong words from the federal government will result in immediate -- or lasting -- change.
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Filed Under: alabama prison system, civil rights division, cruel and unusual, doj
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Wow, keeping it violent just for all of the new prisoners
That is really nice of Alabama. They are refusing to change their prison system just so the people currently running that same system will be able to enjoy the same treatment once the people rise up and toss the creators of this problem in to be dealt with as they have dealt with everyone under them. Grind the face of the leaders into the jail cell as they get raped every hour by the prisoners that they refused to treat correctly. Every single person documented in this travesty should serve the rest of their lives in this hell until they can escape to the real one.
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I really love it when a blog post grabs you with the very first sentence?
The DOJ has a Civil Rights Division??? Where have they been since 2016??? Oh, that's right, doing a study of Alabama prisons.
Man, they must really be understaffed...
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Re:
I heard the CRD were stuck so far up Bill Barr's ass, that that's where the sun goes to die.
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No justice
Sounds like a training ground for police officers who would like to use excessive force. It boogers my brain that prisons and police forces are allowed to do their own internal reviews of excessive force. It's an uphill battle and we see the results in the streets these days.
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Does the DOJ have any actual authority outside of pretty please show me the paperwork??
If the do then why the hell haven't they dragged any of the uncooperative assholes off to a federal prison in Alaska for holding until such time as they cooperated?
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Alabama's Department of Corrections is on brand
I suspect much of the rest of the US prison systems are also cruel and abusive. California's is notoriously so, at least here in California.
Prisons have a long history of being the hole we dump people to forget because we're too squeamish to end their misery outright.
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Re: Alabama's Department of Corrections is on brand
FTFY.
The whole point of the US prison system isn't to reform, but to torture. To enact vengeance and wrap it up in a nice legal format. "See? We don't let the victims enact vengeance, we the government do it for them. Aren't we so civil? smirk"
If you think anyone in a US prison is in any better condition than a Soviet Gulag, or a North Korea detainment facility, you're an idiot. At best they are a warden's signature away from even worse conditions.
This is also re-enforced upon an inmate's release. (Assuming they get released.) Where many states require disclosure of convictions on job and rental applications. Some states refuse to reinstate their rights but still require them to pay taxes. (Taxation without representation.) Other states deny their access to social programs. Finally all states gleefully assume them responsible if someone even so much as sneezes within a 4 mile radius of them, so eager to throw them right back into the prison system for another round of torture.
The US citizenry isn't much better. Many of them have a Zero-Tolerance policy mindset on offenders. With such phrases like "They deserve it.", and "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time (torture)" being common. Many of the "upstanding members" of US society view former inmates as an eyesore to be gotten rid of, rather than as fellow citizens. Outright stating that an inmate's sentence is never fully served until death. I.e. That no reformation or rejoining of society is ever possible for a former inmate. They are forever branded as a permanent underclass.
Do I expect this report to change anything? Nope. The US as a whole is far too vindictive of a society to actually change for the better, and no-one else should expect otherwise without major personnel changes at practically all levels of US government.
TL;DR: The US prison system is garbage. As is it's corrupt justice system and citizenry which uphold it.
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Re: Re: Alabama's Department of Corrections is on brand
Slavery did not go away, it morphed.
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Re: Alabama's Department of Corrections is on brand
"because we're too squeamish to end their misery outright."
Could end the misery of unjustified incarceration by letting those innocent prisoners out of jail. Yes, I realize that everyone in prison claims to be innocent, however - many of them are correct, they just did not have the resources required to adequately defend themselves in a court of law.
The intentionally underfunded public defenders office is not capable of putting up a defense of any kind and forces the defendant into a plea bargain rather than a real defense.
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Let's start using those laws.
Nathanial Woods is on death row in Alabama because he 'was there' when 3 cops were killed. He did nothing, but under the Tison standard in Alabama, it just needs a reckless indifference to human life.
So whoever the corrections officer was in Donaldson back in October, that's homicide (Alabama Criminal Code § 13A-6-2). Charge him. He did it under color of law, so that should be automatic death penalty (aren't we told it's a deterrent? If it's not going to 'deter' the 'good guys in law enforcement', then it's not going to deter anyone is it?). It won't be, but carrying a badge should be the HARSHEST penalty available, not the weakest and certainly not a lesser charge.
Ok, here's the bit they're REALLY not going to like.
Alabama has an accomplice law, Code § 13A-2-23
So, all the officers around him are accountable for that officers actions, because they didn't make an effort to stop him.
Now, the report also says the investigation was stymied by the ADOC. You knwo what that sounds like? That sounds like conspiracy to conceal the homicides by acting in a way to further the actions of the killer by protecting them from investigation.
Is there a law on that in Alabama?
Why yes there is. Criminal Code § 13A-4-3
And the penalties?
So, since we have a Person (man/woman) who likes to say to a camera for TV that they're all about the 'law and order', then let's start charging these people.
Or are these accomplice laws only for people who happen to be 'there' when something happens, and not for officials who go out of their way to hide crimes through concerted efforts?
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Re: Let's start using those laws.
In AL they murder you:
Chris Massey
, former Deathrow/Segregation Sergeant at Alabama Department of Corrections (2000-2007)
Answered September 16, 2018
· Author has 199 answers and 1.8M answer views
Alabama was the last state that used the punishment of handcuffing you to a bar and making you stand there all day until you either agreed to go and work, or your shift was over.
However, there are actually two types of work.
Every Inmate is assigned a job. It could be on any shift as prisons run 24/7.If you refuse to do thus job you may end up in Admin Segregation (solitary confinement) until you choose to work.
The force continuum for this situation could include and must progress up the scale. An Officer can use one step above what the Inmate uses in the continuum. If the Officer gives the direct order to mop a floor and the Inmate verbally refuses, the Officer can use his hands. If the Inmate fights back or even touches the Officer, the Officer can use his Baton. If the Inmate picks up a weapon the Officer can then use Chemical and even lethal force if his life is in danger.
Force continuum:
Hands Baton Chemical/Electric Lethal Forcehttps://www.quora.com/What-happens-if-you-refuse-to-work-in-prison
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Re: Let's start using those laws.
It's run by the blu klux klan. They will go after the prosecutor's family if it came to that their bodies would hit the swamp in pieces.
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OK, so there's a report...
...but I'm still confused. Is the DoJ scolding or praising Alabamas penal system?
Because a "Civil Rights Division" under Bill Barr's DoJ reads like a complete oxymoron.
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Aaah, solitary confinement?
This happens all over the US. Its torture. Talk to any clinical psychologist.
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