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THE US Justice Department has decried “failed negotiations” with the state of Alabama over rampant prison violence it says violates the constitution.
In an update to a lawsuit launched last December, the department says that Alabama will not voluntarily bring its prisons into compliance and that federal intervention is needed.
The case accuses Alabama of violating the constitutional rights of prisoners, including the ban on cruel and unusual punishment, by failing to prevent excessive levels of prisoner-on-prisoner violence and sexual abuse and failing to protect prisoners from the use of excessive force by security staff.
The homicide rate in Alabama’s jails is seven times the national average, it says, with at least 16 prisoners killed in the 2020 fiscal year.
Officials also accuse Alabama of reporting deaths inaccurately. In one cited example, an inmate at Kilby Correctional Facility died in 2017 from multiple stab wounds to his head, abdomen, back and arm, but the state recorded his death as natural.
