USA: America is finally being exposed to the devastating reality of prison violence

In some US prisons, inmates are subjected to violence and inhumane conditions on a daily basis. This week, a new report and a lawsuit brought renewed attention to that fact.

On Wednesday, the Department of Justice released a damning report on prisons in Alabama, showing that a combination of understaffing, overcrowding, and poor management led to the state’s prison system having the highest number of homicides in the country. The conditions are so severe that they effectively deny Alabama inmates their constitutional rights to be protected from “cruel and unusual punishment,” the report says.

Vox’s German Lopez laid out some of the report’s details:
The problems, the investigators said, are tied to a severe lack of staffing and resources. There simply aren’t enough guards in a system where major prisons are, on average, at 182 percent capacity and staffing levels can fall below 20 percent of authorized positions. And the prison infrastructure itself is often outdated and in deteriorating condition: Doors often can’t lock, making it impossible to control violent situations, and investigators found open sewage running through prisons.
The results are horrifying. As Katie Benner and Shaila Dewan reported for the New York Times, “One prisoner had been dead for so long that when he was discovered lying face down, his face was flattened. Another was tied up and tortured for two days while no one noticed. Bloody inmates screamed for help from cells whose doors did not lock.”

Alabama prisons are plagued by “a high level of violence that is too common, cruel, of an unusual nature, and pervasive” the Justice Department concluded. The department noted that it could sue the state in 49 days if it does not address the concerns in the report.

While the report has called considerable attention to Alabama, it’s far from the only state with systemic problems of this kind.

Also on Wednesday, two men previously incarcerated at the maximum-security Southern Ohio Correctional Facility filed a lawsuit alleging that guards there failed to take action when they were repeatedly stabbed by another inmate in a bloody 2017 incident that was captured on video. The lawsuit, which argues that the men’s constitutional rights were violated when the officers failed to protect them from violence in the prison, also claims that guards failed to provide first aid for 10 minutes after the incident, and that the men were beaten by guards on other occasions.

Taken together, the Alabama report and the Ohio case indicate that violence in some US prisons is a systemic issue — a fact that impacts thousands of people incarcerated at these facilities every day.

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