Alabama prisons are currently sitting at about double the capacity they were designed for, and that’s caused a huge amount of problems. An SPLC report titled “Cruel Confinement: Abuse, Discrimination and Death Within Alabama’s Prisons” detailed many of the abuses and unconstitutional practices of the Alabama prison system. Some of the examples of the ?horrible conditions that prisoners have to endure include having toes, feet, and portions of legs amputated due to poor diabetes care, having their psychiatric medicine changed without their permission and in the case of wheelchair-bound individuals, not having access to areas of facilities.
Despite the total prison population of Alabama being comparable to the city of Homewood, there were only a total of 15.2 doctors and 12.4 dentists. Many prisons only have doctors who work part time. This leaves doctors with an average caseload of 1,648 patients and dentists with an average caseload of more than 2,000 patients. Predictably, this leads to delays, failures to treat and diagnose problems and errors in treating ill patients. This includes individuals complaining of symptoms for months only to be finally diagnosed with advanced stages of cancers.
That’s to say nothing about the United States Department of Justice investigation into Alabama’s Tutwiler Prison for Women. According to that report, one-third of the staff had sex with the inmates there, one of the officers fathered a child with an inmate, the women were forced to trade sexual favors for necessities and those who have reported sexual misconduct have been threatened or punished. Also, the prison officials had known about the sexual misconduct since 1995.
Those unconstitutional practices are only for those who have been convicted of a crime. The conditions in the jails in Alabama are not acceptable in many cases as well. Jefferson County has just recently had a jail overcrowding lawsuit settlement approved by a United States Magistrate Judge. Additionally, many Alabama sheriffs get to pocket the money that they don’t spend on food in local prisons, so they are incentivized to not feed the inmates much.
If Alabama wants to avoid having prisoners released in the numbers that they were in California and continue to have control over their prison system, they need to make some serious reforms. Having doctors and dentists care for over 1500 patients each is unacceptable in the United States. These individuals might have been arrested or convicted of a crime, but that does not entitle us to treat them any less like human beings.
Matthew Bailey is a second-year law student. His column runs biweekly.
