Prison crisis continues, but Alabama Legislature largely avoids topic

An inmate in the custody of the Department of Corrections. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector)

Violence in Alabama’s state prisons remains a persistent problem, but legislators in the 2024 session proposed little in the way of addressing it.

Lawmakers passed a single bill late in the session, SB 322, which aims to make the Alabama Department of Corrections more responsive to the families and loved ones of those who are incarcerated at one of the state’s prisons.

“It was just telling to me that we are having communications problems,” said Sen. Clyde Chambliss, R-Prattville, the sponsor of the bill and chair of the Joint Legislative Prison Oversight Committee. “We have other problems as well. This is the first step to try and make things better for those who are incarcerated.”

Passage of that legislation would prove to be one of the few accomplishments for criminal justice reform advocates in what otherwise was a tough session.

“For the most part, it was nonexistent,” said Jerome Dees, Alabama policy director for the Southern Poverty Law Center. “There weren’t as many all-out bad bills as we saw last session, such as good time and all of that. It was more of a death by a thousand cuts approach.”

Lawmakers created new crimes and enhanced punishments for existing ones, while efforts to reform the parole system and sentences largely failed as few of those bills gained any traction.

Collectively, it amounted to a difficult session for criminal justice reform advocates who supported bills they believed could reduce overcrowding and the problem of violence for those who remain incarcerated.

“The data is pretty clear if you look at incidents of violence over the last decade or so that have increased dramatically,” said Carla Crowder, executive director of Alabama Appleseed, a nonprofit that focuses on criminal justice reform.

An ongoing crisis

According to figures collected by Alabama Appleseed, the number of inmates reporting assaults doubled between 2013 and 2023, going from slightly less than 1,000 to almost 2,000 people.

Assaults on staff also increased, going from 363 in 2013 to almost 500 in 2023. Homicides went up from three to 13 over that same time.

Alabama’s prison population, which stood at just over 25,000 in March 2013, was about 20,000 last March .

Alabama’s prisons are some of the most violent in the nation. The mortality rate for Alabama’s prisons is five times the rate of the United States as a whole, at 1,370 per 100,000 people and 330 per 100,000 people respectively, according to the fact sheet from Appleseed.

The issue is a problem that extends past Alabama’s borders. According to a fact sheet listed on the website for the Prison Policy Initiative for 2021 , suicides and homicides in state prisons across the country have increased.

“In 2018, state prisons reported 4,135 deaths (not including the 25 people executed in state prisons); this is the highest number on record since BJS began collecting mortality data in 2001,” the report states.

Those who examine this issue have pointed to several distinct causes that lead to increased violence for those held in custody.

“There are certainly lots of examples of violent prisons, but not all prisons are violent,” said Jody Sundt, associate dean for academics at the College of Health and Public Service at the University of North Texas. “Certainly, we find a lot of violent individuals incarcerated within our prisons but there is tremendous variation in the level of violence seen in prisons. Some prisons are fairly safe and secure and there won’t be more violence there than in the community.”

Researchers focus on three broad causes, according to Sundt: the composition of the individuals incarcerated; staff culture, and management and leadership.

“All states have very violent offenders incarcerated in their prison facilities, so that is usually not a critical factor in explaining variation in why you see breakdowns in the functioning of the prison system,” Sundt said.

A prison culture

That leaves the culture, management and the behavior of the correctional staff and wardens.

“The primary one, I think comes from, sadly, staff,” said Danielle Rudes, a professor of criminal justice & criminology at Sam Houston State University.

Rudes, who has interviewed incarcerated people and conducted a national research project on prison conditions, said that many who acted out said they were responding to behavior from prison staff.

“The staff are abusive, they are discriminatory,” she said. “Sometimes they are racist or their innuendoes are sexist, ageist or ableist. They usually have problems with staff, the way they are being treated by staff. It doesn’t necessarily mean it is the staff’s fault. A lot of times it is systemic.”

In many instances, the system is structured to make it more difficult for corrections officers to do their jobs.

“It is partly a recruiting problem because people don’t generally want to work in Corrections,” Rudes said. “I have never met a corrections officer who told me, ‘This was my goal when I was six.’ It is pretty rare that this is someone’s lifelong dream.”

Working as a corrections officer often requires enduring difficult and dangerous conditions that provide little flexibility and comfort during the job.

People forgo the profession after experiencing the life of a corrections officer, opting to transfer to service sector jobs in the same pay scale. The net effect is a volume problem; there simply are not enough people working in those positions to safely manage the population.

Legislators have done what they could to address the shortage of corrections officers in the state. They have allocated millions of dollars to increase salaries and provide bonuses for those who decide to work in the state’s prisons.

Despite that, the recruitment numbers continue to lag. According to a presentation that DOC Commissioner John Hamm gave to the Joint Prison Oversight Commission in April , of the 2,445 total budget corrections officer positions, 365 remain vacant.

Some also see a lack of training as an issue. Rudes said that many hold training academies that last only a few days or a couple of weeks to up to 12 weeks.

“There are some trainings on interpersonal communications or managing people but, maybe I am a cynic, if you are a person like me, you are not going to make someone a better communicator in a two-hours PowerPoint lecture,” Rudes said. “The entire system is designed to fail.”

Then there are issues with the environment.

“Both staff and residents want dignity,” said Rudes.

Corrections staff want the ability to work in a safe environment with respect for their authority. Those in custody want to be treated like human beings.

“They are willing to say that they understand that they are being punished,” she said. “What they don’t want is for the prison itself to further punish them. Being in prison is the punishment.”

Overcrowding and violence

Many of the anecdotal findings from the researchers are supported in a study by Trenten Gibson in 2019. Gibson collected data from corrections systems in the United States, England and Canada and surveyed some jail supervisors.

The responses from the surveys indicated several factors. One is that overcrowding contributed to increased violence.

“As the number of inmates increases, the ability for correctional officers to monitor inmates decreases,” Gibson wrote. “Housing two inmates in a cell originally designed for one person may contribute to violence.”

The presence of gangs in a facility is a risk factor for violence, as is drug use among those who are incarcerated. Mental illness plays a role as does the culture of the facility and the staff.

“There are factors not often brought to light when it comes to correctional officer misconduct, abuse, or alleged misconduct,” the report states. “Many of these factors are well beyond the practical or realistic controls of the officers and lay somewhere between upper management decision making and the ability to provide the proper resources and necessary staff to do the job.”

SB 322 allows the department to hire administrative personnel at the main office and at the different facilities to field questions from the public about the status of people who are incarcerated.

Criminal justice reform advocates praised Chambliss’ bill.

“That is a fantastic and very timely response to these families who were suffering and upset about the lack of communication and the lack of care for their incarcerated loved ones,” Crowder said.

Absent that, however, little has been done to curb the violence. There have been attempts to reduce the prison population by reforming parole, but those efforts have been rebuffed by members of the legislature.

HB 299 , sponsored by Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, would have allowed parole applicants the chance to appeal the decision of the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles should they be denied parole.

HB 29 , also sponsored by England, would have offered some currently serving longer sentences the chance to have their case heard once again.

Both of those bills failed.

Alternatives

Other alternatives have been explored. The Vera Institute of Justice established a program, Restoring Promise, that created a different culture within some prisons.

It works with corrections officers and those who are incarcerated to change the culture of the facility and provide programming that offers human dignity. They provide consulting and resources, but it is the people at the facility who implement the policies and interventions that comprise the program.

“We were able to find that changing prison culture and creating more dignity in prison actually leads to an increase in safety for both incarcerated people and young adults in the units,” said Chloe Aquart, deputy initiative director of the Restoring Promise Initiative.

The program operates a social support group that allows people who are incarcerated to discuss their situations and their emotions both in the mornings and in the evenings.

“It is a really good way to measure people’s baselines and how they are feeling for that day,” Aquart said. “If you are at a morning circle, and you are asking how they are, and someone is at a 3, it is easier to pull that person aside and see how their night went and what is going on with them, and how you can help them in order to proactively stem any incidents that could occur.”

Interventions include mentors who work with young adults who are going through a difficult time and suggests different programs. This could be connecting with family, speaking with a physician, or even just mentoring to deal with a negative emotion caused by another person who is incarcerated.

Some of the programs include drug treatment and rehabilitation, anger management workshops or financial management classes.

“You might find a Spanish class,” Aquart said. “You might find a class on Native American history. You might find parenting classes. It depends on what is needed there. All those things are coming from the mentors and mentees in the unit.”

In a randomized control trial of an incarceration facility in South Carolina , Restoring Promise reduced the chances of young adults in the unit experiencing a stay in solitary confinement by 83%. It also reduced young adults’ odds of receiving a violent infraction by 73%.

The program is based on how countries in Europe handle their prison populations.

In one facility based in Belgium, Rudes said. People designed the environment to mimic a school instead of a prison. Everyone remained in cells, but the cell doors remained open. They had refrigerators and computers. People could enroll in any class they wanted on their computers.

There were gardens they tended to, and they grew their own fruits and vegetables.

“I think you get what you give,” Rudes said. “We treat our incarcerated individuals like animals, and they act like animals sometimes. Yes, some of them have severe mental health or sever issues that would need different kinds of care. I am not saying this is right for everyone. But I don’t believe, by any stretch, that people in Belgium are somehow different from the U.S. I think we just treat them poorly, and then they act poorly in response.”

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