"We are humans"

Alabama's institutional indifference to suffering

If you’ve been paying attention, you know a strike inside Alabama prisons has garnered lots of media attention, but I’ve been particularly interested in the rotten reactions from leaders, brazen with indifference and contempt. The statements, utterly devoid of creativity or empathy, simply reify the same tired narratives that keep Alabama prisons full and the state a global leader in mass incarceration.

Before I unpack the mental diarrhea released by Governor Kay Ivey and others, I wanted to first amplify the statement released Saturday night by an incarcerated man who goes by “Swift Justice.” He ends the thoughtful statement with an expression of longing to be seen and heard that underpins the deep desire of every person in prison.

“Regardless of where we are, we are humans and most importantly we are Alabama citizens and must be heard by those who claim to represent us.”

Swift Justice clarifies what many media outlets have gotten wrong, that the plight of incarcerated people in Alabama and their allies is not about improving prison building conditions. “Those on the inside have never once seen a building kill a comrade,” he wrote. He and others in the prisons know Alabama has responded to unconstitutional abuse and neglect time and again by constructing more of the same.

The list of demands for change include abolishment of the state’s merciless habitual offender law, making the presumptive sentencing guidelines retroactive and improving the state’s parole guidelines, which are flagrantly ignored by the current parole board, thus denying release to 90 percent of eligible people even as the guidelines have recommended parole in over 80 percent of cases.

These are not unreasonable demands, especially when you consider the Department of Justice sued the state because the prisons are so overcrowded, understaffed, violent and corrupt that they violate the U.S. Constitution. But that’s how Gov. Ivey characterized them, along with calling them “unwelcome in Alabama.” So reforming draconian sentencing laws and instituting fair paroles are unwelcome, but crowded, inhumane, bloody, drug-infested prisons are fine?

Then there’s former U.S. Attorney Jay Town, who was in charge of the investigation into the prisons before he abruptly resigned from his appointed position to take a job at a Huntsville cyber security firm. He calls the demands “absurd” and claims they will do little to change prison conditions. He argues that parole is a privilege “to exit a lawful sentence early,” but that’s not exactly true.

People who are paroled exit the prison, but their sentence does not end. Parole just means the conditions of confinement change and in an overstuffed, deadly prison system, a fair parole process would be one way to lessen the burden on an out-of-control system in crisis. Town also pooh-poohs the value in extinguishing the habitual offender law, repeating the falsehood that the “sentencing guidelines have all but eliminated” use of HFOA (habitual felony offender law).

Tell that to the people serving enhanced sentences under HFOA, who make up almost one quarter of ADOC’s population. Or tell it to the 1,740 men and women serving life or life without parole under HFOA who likely wouldn’t get that sentence today. You know what? Tell that to Jim George, who’s been locked up over 42 years for a string of petty burglaries from the early 1980’s, or Willie Simmons who’s served over 40 years for a single mugging and property crimes.

Jim is 72, in a wheelchair and lives in the honor dorm at Donaldson prison, but can’t get relief from his death-in-prison sentence because of this mentality that people cannot change and are not worth saving. The only way you can move through the world justifying these types of punishments is to see those on the receiving end as less than human. It’s also why there’s no urgency to fix the prison crisis and why incarcerated people have to issue statements stating the obvious—that they are indeed alive and have rights and need help.

I’ve lived in Alabama for 35 of my 47 years, but I have often felt out of place. Out of step with the prevailing mindset, the judgement, narrow-mindedness, and especially the hypocritical apathy and callousness to the least of these.

I have seen Alabama in the face of disaster and I saw neighbors helping neighbors. After the tornados of 2011 that killed 253 people, the state came together and lines blurred, divisions fell away and for a minute, it felt like a real sense of community emerged for everyone, not just certain types. Surely not everyone who was helped had perfect records, but in the face of destruction, that didn’t matter.

Alabama’s prison crisis is also a disaster, a perpetual storm that booms all day and night for the 26,000 citizens confined inside the walls where we keep them hidden away. How do leaders respond? By shrugging their shoulders, calling the pleas for help “unreasonable” and “unwelcome” and going on with their comfortable lives. By cutting prison meals down to two meager trays of inedible food a day, by turning away from the disaster that’s right in front of them.

Not everyone in this pollen covered state is cold and indifferent. Some of us care deeply about the lives of people who never had a leg up, who made mistakes, who exist in cages that powerful people constructed. We’ll continue to push back against the narratives that buttress the punishment industry and benefit only prison profiteers and not the actual people who are sentenced to prison, who may or may not survive.