‘He didn’t make it:’ Family, friends tell lawmakers of loved ones’ deaths in Alabama’s prisons

A gate opens at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama on October 22, 2019. (File)

Tim Mathis had two conversations with his son Chase, incarcerated at Elmore Correctional Facility, on June 4. The last one ended around 8:30 p.m. that evening.

“Last thing he told me was he was going to bed,” Tim Mathis said. “He was going to get on his bunk, he loved me, and he would call me in the morning.”

At 10 p.m., Tim Mathis said, the prison warden called him.

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“When I answered the phone, she asked if she was speaking with Mr. Mathis, and I said yes,” he said. “She told me she had some bad news and she wanted me to answer some questions.”

The warden asked Mathis to confirm his son’s inmate number. He demanded the Warden recite it, which she did.

“As soon as I confirmed the number was correct, she basically told me my son was dead,” Tim Mathis said. “I know I went off on her. She wouldn’t tell me where his body was. She wasn’t going to tell me where his body was going to be sent. Basically, all she told me was to contact her tomorrow at 8 a.m. in her office.”

Alabama lawmakers on the state’s Joint Prison Oversight Committee Wednesday heard stories from Mathis and over a dozen family and friends of those incarcerated in state prisons, describing the violence their loved ones faced.

In a hearing that lasted over an hour, up to 20 people told the Joint Prison Oversight Committee Wednesday about brutality their family members faced from corrections officers and other inmates, including homicide and sexual assault, as well as suicides within the prisons.

Others demanded accountability from members of the committee and demanded action.

325 people died while in custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections in 2023, according to Alabama Appleseed, a nonprofit that focuses on justice issues in the state. Of the deaths whose cases have been closed, 13 were suicides and 10 were homicides. Another 89 were attributed to overdoses. The remainder are classified as accidental deaths, natural deaths or unknown.

The violence in men’s prisons led the U.S. Department of Justice in 2020 to sue the state, alleging that conditions in the Alabama Department of Corrections violated inmates’ Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

“Generally, Alabama’s prisons are in chaos,” said Eddie Burkhalter, a researcher with Alabama Appleseed. “It has been that way for decades. Folks in prison can’t find solace. They are in danger. Oftentimes, that danger is known to them. They ask for help, they can’t get it.”

Representatives from the ADOC who attended the meeting declined to comment on Wednesday. Commissioner John Hamm did not attend, and the representatives present sat stoically in their seats with a couple of individuals writing in notepads they had while listening to people’s testimony.

‘He was brain dead’

Speakers, called individually to the microphone, each described violence their children, siblings and nephews experienced.

Kevin Hyatt said it took five days for DOC to inform his family that his nephew, Christopher Latham, had been beaten at Staton Correctional Facility in Elmore in September of last year. Latham had completed 18 years of a 20-year sentence.

“He was getting ready to come out,” Hyatt said. “He was going to come live with us. He didn’t make it, and when we finally got to see him in the hospital, he was brain dead.”

The family gave their approval to terminate life support. Latham passed away a day and a half later.

Lauren Faraino, director of The Woods Foundation, an organization that supports criminal justice reforms, criticized Hamm; Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall and members of the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles for not attending the meeting.

“The parole board needs to be here because they are absolutely part of the problem,” she said.

The Alabama Attorney General’s Office had a representative at the meeting who attended in place of Marshall. Sen. Clyde Chambliss, R-Prattville, the chair of the committee, said that members of the parole board were invited to attend.

“It may have been a little late,” Chambliss said. “It was about 30 days ago when I invited them, and I understand now they probably already had everything scheduled, so that is on me. I will get them an invitation earlier next time.”

Chambliss then stopped Faraino from continuing to call out other officials, saying she was out of order.

Burkhalter estimates from records requests that 161 people died in DOC custody from January to June of this year.

“Our overdose mortality rate in prisons last year, 435 per 100,000 people, was 20 times the national rate across state prisons,” Burkhalter said.

Burkhalter said a lack of corrections officers and misclassification of offenders is adding to the dangers for people behind bars.

“The small number of folks who are causing much of the chaos in prison are misclassified, and they are allowed to roam freely in dorms with other folks who are much lower classified,” he said. “And so you have folks who are essentially preying on other folks freely, and there aren’t officers in the dorms to protect the ones who are preyed upon.”

Staffing shortages

The Department of Corrections face court orders to boost staffing levels. Legislators have dramatically increased the amount of money allocated to the department to help address the issue of violence. Lawmakers provided Corrections with $737 million for the 2025 fiscal year, an increase of about 11% from the previous year.

Since 2002, spending on Corrections has gone up 274%, with much of that increase to pay for corrections officers. Despite that, ADOC administrators have had problems recruiting and retaining people to work in its facilities.

Hamm told members of the committee in April that 31 officers graduated from the ADOC Training Academy in March.

However, Burkhalter said there is a 61% vacancy rate at major facilities.

Capacity is another issue. According to DOC, closed security facilities such as Donaldson Correctional Facility in Jefferson County are at 147% capacity while medium security sites such as Bibb Correctional Facility in Brent, Alabama have nearly double, 191%, of people in prison that they should.

“Some prisons are much higher than individual prisons,” Burkhalter said. “They are not designed to keep this many people. Designs are there for a reason, they are for safety. We have  created a system where it is just chaotic.”

Criminal justice reform advocates have blamed the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles low parole grants for exacerbating the problem.

The Legislature changed the leadership of the board in 2019, which led to a sharp decline in parole grants. The board granted 31% of parole applications in 2019. That number fell to 20% in 2020 and 15% in 2021. The ACLU said last year that the rate had fallen to 7%. Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, said during the meeting that the parole rate had increased to 20% this year.

Chambliss at the meeting Wednesday noted  the Legislature last spring passed SB 322 , which Chambliss sponsored.  The legislation directs DOC to hire staff to provide families and loved ones of those incarcerated with information about their loved ones in DOC custody.

“It gives the commissioner of Corrections a lot more flexibility and accountability in his management team,” Chambliss said during the meeting. “That is a good thing.”

That, however, was the only bill that lawmakers passed to address the problems with Corrections.

“I am going to continue sponsoring bills that I always sponsor to continue the conversation,” England said in an interview after the meeting. “Hopefully, we come to an accord on a couple of them, maybe get a couple of them passed.”

Other legislators on the committee defended their role in addressing the problems with Corrections.

“We have allocated money to build a new prison, we need more, there is no question that is accurate,” said Rep. Jim Hill, R-Odenville, chair of the House Judiciary Committee. “We have allocated money for facilities like Perry County, Shelby County, that prepare people for release. It allows people for sanctions instead of putting people back in prison, to sanction them for short periods of time in those facilities.”

England said he will move forward with other reforms he wants even though most of the criminal justice reform bills he sponsored have either stalled or failed.

“Jails, criminal justice reform, is not a politically popular issue,” he said. “It is just not. Every time we get into these conversations, I am just trying to let everyone out of prison, which, once you capture it that way, it is over. The conversation ends. That is not politically popular. That will not get you reelected.”

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