The death march inside Alabama prisons has continued hard and fast this weekend. In fact, as I type these words, I’m hearing about more people who have overdosed and died. As soon as I know next of kin is notified, I will report on these deaths, just like all the others.
No one likes bad news at the start of a weekend, but I had to report more deaths Friday night. Four suspected overdose deaths, to be specific, in the last week. This nonstop death train has been running through the prisons across the state for years, but the recent spike in fatal overdoses has been astonishing, horrific and relentless.
By my count, 19 men have died in 2022 from overdose or other drug-related causes, but that number only represents the deaths that I’ve heard about and confirmed, and it’s constantly growing. I am hearing about 2 more overdose deaths in the last 48 hours, both at Donaldson CF, so by tomorrow the number will likely be 21. The drugs causing the deaths, I’m told, are fentanyl, meth and a nasty synthetic known as “flakka.”
My reporting shows the number of total deaths due to drugs, violence or suicide in 2022 is at 29 people with 19 attributed to drugs, 9 homicides and one suicide. This is an outrageously high number, given that 2021 was the deadliest year in ADOC since I started tracking this terrible data in 2018. I reported previously that at least 37 people died from such causes in 2021, but by early January my 2021 total increased to 44 people. Like I said, my reporting only represents the tip of the iceberg.
None of this is a secret. The U.S. Department of Justice has cited record deaths inside Alabama prisons as one of the main reasons the agency is violating the Constitution. Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office is aware of dozens of lawsuits filed against ADOC by incarcerated people and/or family members who want to hold the system accountable. In fact, his office is fighting them. ADOC settles many of these cases, sometimes for a few thousand dollars.
The prison system is now required to inform lawmakers and the public about new lawsuits as a result of a 2021 law requiring more transparency. You can read the latest ADOC quarterly report here, which also includes more information on confiscated drugs and weapons, death investigations (information the agency was FORCED by law to release publicly) and abysmal numbers on rehabilitative programs.
The power establishment knows buildings are not killing people. And yet Gov. Kay Ivey with Alabama’s GOP in lockstep are marching ahead with their “Alabama solution,” to build new mega-prisons, in part using $400 million from COVID relief money. Nothing has been said publicly about how these mega-prisons will address the rampant corruption and crisis of competence inside ADOC that has allowed the current drug trade to flourish behind the walls. But don’t just take my word for it. Here’s what the DOJ wrote about the link between drugs and violence in ADOC:
There is a dogmatic unwillingness to honestly examine—or even admit— the reasons behind the prison crisis, especially from Republicans.
Exhibit A, an Alabama-based conservative radio host who at times seems strangely fixated on discouraging my reporting, although I do appreciate him citing my “venerable talents.”
The reason people incarcerated in these hellholes don’t support building new mega-prisons is because they know the same problems will be transferred into the new facilities if the same staff stays on board. How else could drugs get inside locked-down facilities during a pandemic? Sure, there’s been a few arrests of officers toting drugs in, but where is the head of the snake? Who all inside ADOC is allowing drug trafficking to continue? And how much is the agency really investigating any of this?
New mega-prisons also wont fix our addiction to incarceration. Consider this insanity: we punish people for substance use or addiction by sending them into prisons, which are so eaten up with drugs they function like state-funded crack houses. Case in point: John David Rakestraw, who died last month inside Staton Prison. Rakestraw’s entire criminal history was drug-related, but instead of getting him treatment, we sent him into a fatal drug den with a 10-year sentence and he died.
The system is so overwhelmed, I often receive conflicting details from government agencies about deaths, like in the case of Maxamillion Ward, who also died last month at Donaldson CF. The first confirmation of his death came from the Jefferson County medical examiner, whose report said Ward was admitted to UAB hospital for a possible drug overdose and died 5 days later.
But ADOC’s public information office responded to my request for details by email stating Ward “experienced complications due to a wound” and was transported to UAB for treatment. When I sent them the information from Jeffco’s medical examiner about the possible drug overdose and asked for clarification, I got a one sentence response: I cannot confirm that information.
Navigating this morass and trying to get to the truth is incredibly challenging for me, an experienced journalist and well-sourced prison reporter. Imagine what it’s like for the families of the dead. I am told over and over again stories of hostile treatment by prison staff, little to no information about what happened and a system that provides zero acknowledgement of the loss, and accepts no responsibility in the security failures that contribute to these deaths.
Publishing details of deaths inside the prisons, along with photos of the dead, creates a public record, an accounting of the losses. And speaking to the grieving families, mostly mothers, has driven my commitment to this reporting perhaps more than anything else. I wrote about some of them in an essay published in 2020 titled “Why I care about prisons and why you should too.”
The idea for this essay came from answering the question often posed to me— “Why do you care?” It comes from well-meaning people, all white by the way, I don’t recall a Black person EVER asking me that question. I was talking to my podcast colleague Maura about this question and what it means, and she pointed out that maybe what they’re really asking is “Why do you care about this when you don’t have to?”
Of course, that’s not how I feel. I absolutely have to care, I must, there is no getting around caring with the decade of reporting and level of contact I have with people in the system. But people on the outside of my work want a direct connection. Is your brother in prison? Your cousin? This lady must have some skin in the game. I think this need to connect dots that make sense comes from fear. Maybe deep down they think, if she cares simply because it’s the right thing to do, then why don’t I care too?
And getting people to care is clearly a challenge. If Gov. Ivey cared or AG Steve Marshall or any number of lawmakers with power, this crisis would be intolerable. They would have to get creative and bold, but they would be doing more, something, anything, other than just building more of what we already have and ignoring the rest. They would examine the root causes of this crisis, especially corruption among their own state employees, and unleash every resource available to fix it.
One of my incarcerated sources boiled the essence of the crisis down to two words: NO HOPE. And that’s a hell of a thing to metastasize in a so-called Christian state like Alabama. That’s not a brick and mortar problem, that’s a mindset problem. What we have is a problem with what’s in people’s hearts and minds and the love, mercy, and empathy that’s missing. An indifference to suffering and with some, a political advantage in causing it.
As long as this crisis of compassion persists, I’ll keep saying it as loud as I can: NEW MEGA-PRISONS WON’T FIX THIS.
I’m glad you care. Truly care. I wish more did and I agree. Why isn’t anyone looking into finding the head of the snake. Just saying, it must be a pretty high up individual. Hhhmmm