VOICE FROM THE INSIDE

ALABAMA PRISONS ARE THE NEW MAD MAX

Image from Mad Max 2: Road Warrior, 1981

This is a guest column written by a man incarcerated in one of Alabama’s maximum-security prisons. He asked to remain anonymous.

When I was a kid there was a movie call Mad Max. I remember the first one I saw was titled “Road Warrior.” I thought it was the craziest thing that I’d ever seen. Law and order trying to control a world of chaos and lawlessness. But now, in prison, this has become the new Mad Max.

All the things I've seen, all the things that are going in here are absolute madness. For example, inmates carrying the keys to the doors because there's not enough police (guards) to man the many posts. Drugs are rampant throughout the system. Men walk around with knives and clubs like it's the old west and no one will tell them they can't do it.

Murder, drug overdoses, and suicides cause ambulances and the coroner's office to make daily trips to the many facilities in the state. The shortage of officers has created an environment of lawlessness and violence, hopelessness and despair. And all of this has been known on the public stage with calls for change. The federal government has ordered the state to make changes in how inmates are treated and to boost staffing in their lawsuit, to create sentencing reform, to relieve the overcrowding and volatile living conditions, and to develop rehabilitation services to prevent recidivism.

And yet the only plan the state of Alabama has managed to come up with is to add three more prisons to the already overcrowded, understaffed system they currently can’t control.

No matter how much opposition, or lack of funding. Forget that they are still unable to hire the staff they need to run the current prisons. They are so adamant about building these prisons that they are willing to take money that was allocated by the federal government for our overtaxed medical facilities. What I can't understand is why no one is publicly asking WHY! What can we gain from more of the same?

Why is it that in the state of Alabama, the Humane Society is the only place something caged gets treated humanely?

What ever happened to CORRECTIONS? Where men and women who made bad choices came to pay their debt to society, and learn how to become productive citizens, so they can get reintroduced back into the community to become a healthy member of that society. Now, you're lucky if you can even get out alive. And with the current denials from the parole board, people in here feel helpless. I wish someone would look at the number of suicides by men after being turned down for parole.

When Gov. Ivey first took office, she wasn’t pushing Bentley’s previous plan to build new prisons, which failed to pass in the legislature two years in a row. In 2018, Ivey advocated modest changes to improve the existing system for $30 million, like hiring more correctional officers and improving prison mental healthcare. She was initially against new construction, but someone got to her because now her “Alabama solution” only includes building more. Think about all that money—an estimated $1.3 billion, and how it could be used to improve public schools. A better education is something that would likely keep thousands of people out of prison.

I wish she would listen to us. We’d tell her all that’s been created here is an environment of hopelessness and despair. This system is generating men and women so psychologically damaged that they may never resemble normal human beings again, and sadly they entered in better shape than they could ever possibly leave.

If you want to see the current condition of Alabama's prison system, watch Mad Max Beyond Thunder Dome. It’s depicts a character trying to survive in post-apocalypse world, his entire existence is to stay alive with danger surrounding him. That’s what it’s like in here, and your political leaders want more of the same.