I don't think he'll make it out alive

The cruel reality of having a son in Alabama's prison system

(A photo of Aaron Phelps taken recently in prison. Someone concerned for his safety sent it to his mother.)

Janet Allen is matter-of-fact about her worst fear, that her 38-year-old son Aaron Phelps will die in prison before he reaches the end of his 16-year sentence.

“Every text message that comes to my phone, I cringe,” she told me. “I know it’s just a matter of time. I don’t think he’ll make it out alive.”

It’s not that Janet doesn’t agonize about the danger her son faces, that she doesn’t live in constant fear and anxiety, that she doesn’t jump each time her phone pings. It’s that she’s endured it for over 12 years now and she’s tired. That’s why she recently posted a haunting photo of Aaron on Facebook, in which his face appears battered and bruised. She didn’t know what else to do and she wanted there to be a record that she tried.

“When someone sent me that picture, I literally broke down,” she said. "He looks horrible. He’s skin and bones.” She was so upset that she left work for the day, but later posted the photo alongside his prison mugshot, to show how much he’s changed since he’s been in the custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC).

“If the drugs don’t kill him the CO’s will,” she wrote. “This is what they did to his face.”

Janet didn’t know many details about this latest violence inflicted on her son, except that he told her an officer and another incarcerated man were involved at Donaldson Correctional Facility, the state’s most violent prison.

Janet said during his 12-years of incarceration, Aaron has been raped, beaten and extorted. He’s become addicted to hard drugs in prison, and she says those in power at Donaldson, both incarcerated people and prison staff, are depriving him of food.

Janet estimates she’s paid over $15,000 to people who have threatened to kill her son over prison drug debts. She’s sent money via Cash App and drained her bank accounts. She now works three different jobs—full time as a dental technician, but also part-time cleaning office buildings and managing a leather shop, trying to dig her family’s finances out of the hole.

“I know there’s such a thing as tough love, but if I do tough love and then he turns around and dies, then what do I do?” Janet asked. “Plus, if they were to call and say he’s passed away, I have no means to bury him.”

Photos of Aaron Phelps from high school, shared by Janet Allen.

When Aaron was arrested in 2008, he’d never been in trouble before. He graduated with honors from a Christian high school and was working as a welder, helping to raise his young son. His little boy was 3-years old when Aaron was sent away, today he’s 15. They haven’t seen each other in years after the family decided they didn’t want to subject Aaron’s son to the invasive security pat downs required during prison visitation. “They don’t think about the ramifications on the kids,” Janet said.

The criminal charges against Aaron came after he went with some friends to collect a debt and a fight broke out. In 2010, he pleaded guilty to first degree burglary and was sentenced to 16 years. Janet was so distraught when he was sent to prison on Mother’s Day, she fell into a terrible depression and attempted suicide.

“We had a normal family and a one-night mistake just blew it,” she said. “They had me on pills to get up in the morning, pills to stay awake during the day and pills to go to sleep at night. I felt like the weight of the world was on me.”

Janet told me Aaron has been “tossed around” from prison to prison, but things got markedly worse when ADOC transferred him to Donaldson sometime in the last two years. He’s told his mother he wants to stop using drugs, but they are all around him. He’s afraid to go to sleep at night and his belongings have been ransacked, photos of his son have been stolen. Janet has repeatedly called the prison and ADOC’s central office, to no avail. She’s even told ADOC investigators that her son’s life is in danger, but nothing has changed.

“They’ll tell me, ‘we can assure you there’s no drugs in the prison,’” Janet said. “They must think I’m stupid. The men are dropping like flies in there.”

Drug-related deaths and overdoses are at an all-time high in ADOC, right under the nose of the U.S. Department of Justice, which sued the state in 2020 after finding the prisons amount to cruel and unusual punishment. Earlier this week I reported two more suspected overdose deaths at Bullock Correctional Facility. Overall deaths inside Alabama prisons have doubled in the last three years.

Aaron has been considered for parole three times, but the board denied him each time, mostly recently in 2021. That means he’ll serve every single day of his 16 years and will likely need intense drug treatment and counseling if he can make it to his release in May of 2026.

Aaron declined to speak to me directly, but in searching through court records, I found a handwritten request he sent to his judge in 2015, asking for help. He sent copies of certificates he’d earned in classes he took before Donaldson—in substance abuse prevention, parenting, small engine repair.

“Petitioner realizes he had a major addiction problem,” he wrote, “but during his incarceration he has had an opportunity to get and maintain a clear head. Petitioner asks this Honorable Court for resentencing to community corrections or in-patient rehab.”

The judge denied his request.