via Wikimedia
Alabama’s prisons are a living HELL. People are being tortured inside. An investigation that started under the Obama Administration has just concluded in a report detailing sexual violence, murder, and systematic neglect.
The New York Times reports: “Prisoners in the Alabama system endured some of the highest rates of homicide and rape in the country, the Justice Department found, and officials showed a ‘flagrant disregard’ for their right to be free from excessive and cruel punishment.”
Committing a crime doesn’t mean someone deserves to be tortured for years, but Alabama’s prisons seem to think so. The major prisons in the state are at almost 200% capacity. With prisoners constantly on top of each other, you already know it’s a NIGHTMARE!
Black people are overrepresented in Alabama prisons. We make up more of the population inside prison than we do outside - maybe that’s why prisoners being killed, abused, and left for dead isn’t a big deal. That’s not right at all.
Alabama is supposedly rushing to build new prisons and make budget reforms now that they’ve been called out, but will they reform the mindset that allowed this to happen in the first place? Death, torture, and anti-Blackness can happen in new prisons too!