MONTGOMERY, Ala. — According to a new report, documented instances of assaults within Alabama prisons saw a spike of 9.8% in May when compared to the previous month, but still down overall from last year.
While a nearly 10% increase over the 163 assaults reported during April, which itself saw a 7% increase in assaults over March, assaults year-to-date as of May were still down by 9.7% when compared to the same time in 2023.
Alabama Department of Corrections’ monthly report showed that there were 179 documented assaults throughout the month of May among inmates and those under the jurisdiction of ADOC, such as those on work release.
Since last October, the start of the current fiscal year, there were 1,207 reported assaults within Alabama prisons, down from the 1,337 reported as of May of 2023.
For the month of May, 86 assaults were reported in Alabama’s medium security prisons, 20 of which were at Ventress Correctional Facility in Clayton, which was designed to house 650 inmates but currently holds 1,160.
Bullock Correctional Facility, designed for 919 inmates but currently housing 1,519, saw 19 assaults in May, and Easterling and Elmore prisons, designed to hold 652 and 600 inmates but currently housing 1,276 and 1,167, respectively, both saw 13 assaults.
Alabama’s high-security prisons also saw 86 assaults in May, 27 of which were at Limestone Correctional Facility, which was designed to hold 1,628 inmates but currently houses 2,417.
Only four assaults were reported at Alabama’s minimum security prisons, and just three among inmates on work release.
Alabama’s prisons remain among the most violent in the nation, and have continued to worsen in recent years. In 2016, Alabama’s prison homicide rate was 13 per 100,000, but by 2019, had increased to 85 per 100,000, more than seven times the national rate.
The rising violence, which in 2020 sparked a lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Justice, has generally been attributed to prison crowding and understaffing.
The department has been about 2,000 correctional officers short since 2017. While the shortage persists, the agency had recently bumped correctional officer wages substantially, potentially leading to an improvement on staffing in the near future.
While state lawmakers allocated $1.25 billion toward the construction of two new 4,000-bed prisons, the price tag of just one of the two – a prison currently under construction in Elmore County – has already reached $1.08 billion.
Even upon the completion of the two new prisons, the ADOC’s inmate capacity will not actually increase as the agency has to close older prisons with roughly the same amount of beds, per the 2021 prison funding legislation.
Another component of Alabama’s overcrowded prisons often pointed to by critics is the state Board of Pardons and Paroles, which saw its rate of releasing inmates plummet from 53% in 2018 to just 8% in 2023.
However, amid increased scrutiny and public and legal pressure on the parole board, its rate of releasing inmates has increased dramatically in recent months, and is now, two-thirds into the fiscal year, on track to be above 20%, the highest such rate since 2019.