In a new report yesterday on Alabama’s prison crisis, AL.com gave voice to the often-ignored perspectives of families who have lost loved ones to Alabama’s violent and dangerous prisons and asked what many Alabamians are wondering—-why has not much changed?

Reporter Ivana Hrynkiw obtained letters that family members wrote to Alabama’s Joint Prison Oversight Committee to plead for help and information about what happened to their loved ones as a result of Alabama’s prison crisis.

“All share stories of loved ones dying in Alabama’s prison system,” she wrote, “and all come from families demanding help and change.”

Through the lens of personal stories from Alabamians whose loved ones have died in our state prisons, the report traces the problems in Alabama’s prisons and the State’s failure to make even the “easy fixes.”

“The state prisons are overcrowded and understaffed, while some of the buildings are falling apart. Too many inmates are raped and killed, drugs are readily available, and life expectancy falls at the entrance,” AL.com reported. “And the federal government, under multiple presidents, said all of this makes Alabama prisons unconstitutional in their cruelty.”

Following its extensive investigation into Alabama’s prisons for men, the U.S. Justice Department in 2019 and 2020 made recommendations to improve conditions, including a number of doable, affordable solutions that could have been implemented immediately—things like fixing broken locks.

But federal prosecutors reported at the end of 2020 that Alabama “has not made this easy fix,” leading the Justice Department to file a lawsuit that is set for trial next spring.

“There’s a Cancer in the System”

Instead of implementing solutions to these problems, Alabama has committed more than $1 billion to build just one new prison, AL.com reported.

But federal prosecutors have made clear that “new facilities alone will not resolve the contributing factors to the overall unconstitutional condition of ADOC prisons, such as understaffing, culture, management deficiencies, corruption, policies, training, non-existent investigations, violence, illicit drugs, and sexual abuse.”

Read the full article about Alabama’s prison crisis at Equal Justice Initiative.