While you were sleeping
Video shows drug use inside Alabama prisons while officers sleep
If you haven’t seen the video captured and produced inside Alabama prisons showing men using drugs in an open dorm, you need to click on the link above and carve out 20 minutes to watch it on Youtube. A warning: the video is disturbing to watch, but it’s what the men and women locked up inside the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) witness on a daily, even hourly, basis.
I’ve been reporting on the spike in overdose deaths inside the prisons (now estimated at 22 for 2022, at least) and ADOC’s own required reporting shows officers confiscated over 55 pounds of controlled substances inside the prisons during the first three months of this year.
“Every day inmates are dying, either being murdered by officers, or inmates on inmates or drug overdoses or giving up on themselves,” the narrator and whistleblower video producer states. “The Alabama Department of Corrections has got to be the most corrupt system in the nation.”
The whistleblower traverses several different parts of the prison—a day room in a housing area, a gym, a law library, all while capturing video using a contraband cell phone with no officers in sight. The video shows at least nine different men apparently smoking, snorting and injecting drugs in plain sight.
“Day in, day out. Night and day. This is all we do,” the narrator says. “That’s all they know. Get high, escape their misery, living on this plantation. I don’t know who would think someone could just stand up under this, seeing this all day every day, and not go insane. Every day I’ve got to come and witness this bullshit.”
The creator of the video also captures three officers who appear to be sleeping on the job. The video is shot through a window into a security area, known as a cubicle, where the officers are seated and motionless.
“The officers don’t give a damn. Look at this man in the cube, asleep,” the narrator says. The first officer shown in the video is leaned back against a wall with his eyes closed.
“He’s got his feet kicked up like that’s a normal, everyday thing,” he says. “He ain’t thinking about us in here. This shit (is) what’s going on at all the prisons. Every prison I’ve been at, no officers, and some reason officers feel like they can not give a damn about what’s going on in here. They just don’t give a damn. I’m trying to figure out how we’re supposed to feel like we’re supposed to give a damn. If the officers don’t give a damn, how are the inmates supposed to give a damn?”
The narrator also talks about being falsely blamed for a murder inside the prison system and the recent downslide in parole grants. In the last year, Alabama’s parole board has voted to deny parole in at least 89 percent of eligible cases.
“The way the parole board is going now, I have no hope to make it. I can’t do nothing but walk around here and witness this madness,” he says.
“I guess that’s how it’s going to be now,” he continues, while the video shows a man placing a needle in another man’s arm. “Get old, get on dope, give up on myself. I’m talking about some hopeless people. And these people talking about building new cages with the same officers working, the same people going to run the new prisons. If that’s the case, you’re going to have the same results. It’s going to be a new drug house.”
“Inmates need hope. We need incentive for good behavior, but then they take everything from us. I don’t understand that. An inmate with no hope is a dead man.”
The video concludes with a series of shots showing the whistleblower sitting in his cell, standing outside a door and sitting in the prison law library, stating his objective for going public with the video, despite the risk to himself.
“I keep my back on the wall at all times, keep myself in the position where I can watch everything around me. I don’t never have my head down, because one slip might be your last one in this world,” he says. “I’m here to let them know they can’t do this on my watch. Know this: I’m not sitting back waiting to die in here. I’m trying to figure out how to wake my people up.”
There is no incentive for them not to do drugs. Currently, you could be a model prisoner with zero negative reports on you, and you are going to be denied parole. The parole board is useless currently, its a waste of time and money and it is a shame that the board members continue to be allowed to do what they are doing. They are making the conditions worse in the prisons because the prisoners know they are going to be denied parole regardless so they dont care what they do or how they act. Prisons suppose to try and rehabilitate criminals, Alabama doesnt even make any attempt to anymore.
I saw that posted on Twitter. I don't understand why these guys were fine with being filmed. Is there never any consequences to getting caught doing drugs?
And if the prison administration is not corrupt those officers who are sleeping on duty need to be reprimanded. But I guess we know how that will turn out.