Resisting oversight
AL refuses to work with the DOJ after it finds 'pervasive' inmate beatings by guards violate constitutional rights
Prison laborers at Alabama’s Parchman in 1911.
On July 23, the Department of Justice released a second damning report of civil rights violations in Alabama prisons by correctional guards on inmates. This report comes more than a year after the DOJ released a 2019 report which found violence in AL prisons was 'Common, Cruel, Pervasive' even separate of guard abuse.
The most recent report focuses specifically on guard on inmate abuse where the first focused on how AL prison conditions created violence between inmates. The DOJ found pervasive use of excessive force in 12 of 13 prisons - which makes you wonder what AL was doing right in the 13th. “We have reasonable cause to believe that the uses of excessive force occurring within Alabama’s prisons give rise to systemic unconstitutional conditions,” the DOJ reported.
But, the same overcrowding - 6,000 inmates over capacity at the start of the 2020 - that creates violence between inmates also causes guards to use excessive force, according to the report.
The DOJ released what is called a “notice letter”. It is not legally binding, but it lays out the findings in an effort to bring the state or department of corrections in this case, to the table to figure out a way to fix the problem.
But AL isn’t super in to fixing the problem, or it doesn’t seem to be.
The DOJ doesn’t immediately sue states or DOC’s it finds to be violating citizens constitutional rights. So for over the last year, the ADOC and the DOJ have not come to a CONSENT decree - these agreements were used in places like Ferguson and many other cities with police brutality issues to legally FORCE departments to get in line. A year of debating an agreement seems like a longtime, and the only proposed solution in AL has been to build more prisons to reduce overcrowding.
The state has refused to enter into a consent decree to the puzzlement of many, but they may be counting on a change in procedure.
Jeff Sessions severely limited the use of these legally binding consent decrees on his last day in the Trump administration in 2018.
And guess what? In response to the July DOJ report, AL’s attorney general responded with surprise, though he has known of this investigation, and directly referenced Sessions.
“I have made it absolutely clear from the beginning that the State will not, under any circumstances, enter into a consent decree with the federal government to avoid a lawsuit. […] Attorney General Jeff Sessions addressed the use of civil consent decrees in a DOJ memorandum, acknowledging the sovereignty of state governments and urging special caution before using this bludgeon to settle litigation against the states,” the AG wrote, continuing to call the DOJ a “hall monitor” for wanting to supervise the prison reform.
The AG made it clear in his press release that the state will never enter a consent decree. “In short, a consent decree is unacceptable and nonnegotiable,” the AG said.
SO, that leaves us at the only outcome possible: the DOJ will take them to court where a judge could rule to force AL to follow the DOJ’s suggestions anyways.
And in this case, the evidence against the ADOC is, well, overwhelming. Two inmates in 2019 were bludgeoned to death by guards after already being subdued, there are reports of already restrained inmates being beaten for retaliation and little investigative effort by the ADOC into these violent beatings.
But a lawsuit to force the ADOC to follow their constitutional obligations to state citizens takes longer, which means thousands of men are struggling to survive in some of the deadliest prisons in America.
There’s a lot to unpack in this report: flip to p.10 for the evidence. News story here.
News
Locked up: Violating parole by not completing online homework, one girl found herself back in detention. [Propublica]
Rejected: Supreme court overturns order granting COVID-19 relief to elderly prisoners. [Prison Legal News]
Federal force: Trump is sending in unmarked federal forces to more cities than just Portland. [POLITICO]
N. American history: The use of militarized police can be traced back to the Oka Crisis standoff between indigenous people and the Canadian government - the government sent in troops to squash the resistance. [High Country News]
More deaths: Accused of not contact tracing, Egypt is reportedly experiencing COVID-19 outbreaks in its prisons. [Human Rights Watch]
‘Sleeping in a ball of sweat’: Only 18 of 50 Florida prisons have air conditioning. In the best of times, the heat creates violence and health issues. In a pandemic, it makes wearing a mask almost unbearable. [Miami Herald]
Not getting out: White people were 2.6 times more likely than Black people to be granted parole in Alabama in June - the parole board only granted 88 releases out of over 400 cases. [SPLC]
Surprising abolitionists: Survivors of domestic abuse have been searching for alternatives to police. Law enforcement often ignore or escalates violent situations. [Bustle]
Back again: COVID-19 cases in California Institution for Women, where pregnant inmates are housed, increased from five to 117 in two weeks. In England, an ex-prison official warned of the dangers of the virus and pregnant inmates - months later a baby was still born. [Champion Newspapers]
Listen: Bryan Stevenson on how America can heal - a conversation about truth and reconciliation in the US. [Vox]
We have committed ourselves in this country to silence about our history, to ignorance about our history, to denying our history. And that’s the first part of this relationship that has to be repaired. We’ve got to be willing now to talk honestly about who we are and how we got here.
Long read: This story submerges you in the pain of justice and the journey to seek it. [The Marshall Project]
On Sept. 12, 2018, the five adult children of Debbie Liles waited in the prosecutor’s office in Jacksonville, Florida, to meet the man who one year earlier had bludgeoned their mother to death with a golf club.
Michelle, 38, had brought what she called her “madwoman” binder of colorfully highlighted police reports about the murder. Have you seen the crime-scene photos of our mom’s brain leaking onto her kitchen floor? she wanted to ask. Because we have. So you should too.
Sitting on a windowsill, Dana, 42, clutched a framed poster of a space shuttle that she planned to show the man. On the back, Debbie, a grandmother of eight, had written a note to one of Dana’s sons, who struggled with loneliness as a boy. “This picture makes me think of you so much,” she wrote, “a rocket shooting up to God.”
[…]
The defendant had agreed to tell Mike and his family everything about the murder and to plead guilty. In return, he would be spared the death penalty and instead spend his life in prison—but only if the Lileses felt satisfied that he had told the truth. This arrangement, brokered by Jacksonville’s newly elected state attorney, was essentially unprecedented in the history of homicide prosecutions in the United States.
Educate yourself: In June, Prison Policy Initiative and the ACLU released a report evaluating state responses to COVID-19 behind bars. Everyone is failing.
The results are clear: despite all of the information, voices calling for action, and the obvious need, state responses ranged from disorganized or ineffective, at best, to callously nonexistent at worst. Even using data from criminal justice system agencies — that is, even using states’ own versions of this story — it is clear that no state has done enough and that all states failed to implement a cohesive, system-wide response. [Prison Policy Initiative]
In honor of John Lewis - a giant who walked humbly. May we all find good trouble.
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The Des drops into your inbox with a collection of small and digestible snippets concerning the criminal justice system. It promises to be humanizing, spunky, and educational. Our name: The Des is short for Desmoterion or “place of chains”, used to describe prisons in ancient Athens. We like the idea of the chains because incarceration expands far beyond bars, connecting all of parts of this country. We are here to cover it all.