Alabama prison horrors show need for federal interventions to safeguard inmates

The U.S. Department of Justice has released the results of an extraordinary investigation into deadly brutality in the  Alabama men’s prisons and has put state officials on notice that they must address the flagrant "disregard" for inmates’ safety and constitutional rights.

The next step must be for state and federal officials to reach a legally enforceable agreement that will put an end to this systemic abuse and guarantee that people in Alabama’s prisons are treated humanely.

The DOJ’s report is agonizing to read, but it is not surprising. In 2016, we helped launch the investigation. That year, one of us headed the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. The other was the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. We worked with the other two Alabama U.S. attorneys' offices. 

Widespread overcrowding and understaffing means prisoners face the threat of violence and sexual assault at all hours of the day and night. Among the stories documented by investigators are of an inmate who was tied up and tortured for two days, and one whose mother was blackmailed by text messages threatening that her son would be raped and mutilated if she didn’t come up with money for his tormenter. The DOJ said some officials were "deliberately indifferent" to violence faced by prisoners.

The FBI should be investigating possible criminal liability. This atmosphere of systemwide brutality contributes to an appalling number of suicides among prisoners.

The report demonstrates the essential role that Justice plays in protecting civil and constitutional rights when local officials fail to do so. It also demonstrates the essential work of professional career employees at the Justice Department who protect people and communities and should be allowed to do so no matter which party is in the White House. DOJ investigators interviewed about 55 staff members and communicated with hundreds of prisoners and family members.

The inhumane conditions in Alabama’s prisons call out for a comprehensive consent decree, a court-approved and court-enforced plan negotiated between state or local officials and the Justice Department. Consent decrees have played a significant role in addressing systemic problems in local law enforcement agencies.

In this case — involving 13 prisons incarcerating 16,000 men — the problems are so pervasive and long-standing that nothing short of a consent decree will guarantee that necessary action is taken.

Shamefully, on his way out the door in late 2018, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions instituted a new policy that dramatically restricts the use of consent decrees, which he portrayed as a threat to state sovereignty.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has echoed Sessions’ states’ rights concerns in her response to the report. She has proposed increased funding and staffing for prisons, and has pledged to work with the Justice Department. But she also said she was committed to “making certain that this Alabama problem has an Alabama solution.”

We’ve heard language like that before. In litigation brought by the Equal Justice Initiative and the Southern Poverty Law Center — which have spent years calling attention to the failures that have made Alabama’s prisons the country’s deadliest — Alabama promised to comply with court orders to provide adequate medical and mental health care and to stop discriminating against prisoners with disabilities. The state has failed to make real progress.

The long-term solution is not just to build new prisons and hire more guards. States like Georgia and South Carolina have demonstrated that criminal justice reform can reduce prison populations safely. But Alabama urgently needs to make immediate changes to protect the people in its prisons.

We urge Attorney General William Barr to negotiate a comprehensive consent decree so federal prosecutors, including those in Alabama, can hold state officials accountable for addressing the needs identified by Justice Department investigators. And we urge him to withdraw Sessions’ parting memo, which makes it harder for the department’s attorneys to do their jobs.

Consent decrees are a necessary, calibrated, judiciously used tool to remedy patterns and practices of unconstitutional conduct. These agreements are used only when there is clear and overwhelming evidence they are needed. They bring judicial oversight to hold public officials accountable.

The indefensible horrors in Alabama’s prisons demand the kind of solution that consent decrees can efficiently bring.

Vanita Gupta is president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and was the head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division under President Barack Obama.

Joyce White Vance is a professor at the University of Alabama School of Law, and served as the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2009 to 2017.