The Alabama prison system is already fighting a years-long SPLC lawsuit over the neglect of prisoners with medical and mental health needs. Now, the U.S. Justice Department is threatening to sue the state because its prisons are beset by “rampant violence,” “unchecked extortion,” and “severe and widespread sexual abuse.”
Rodney Lofton had never cast a ballot before a felony conviction stripped him of his voting rights in 2015.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey announced today that her administration will seek bids for building three regional prisons for men, at an estimated cost of nearly $1 billion – part of a larger effort to address the state’s dangerous and overcrowded prison system.
In another stunning rebuke of Alabama’s prison system, a federal judge ruled today that the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) violated the Eighth Amendment and that it was “deliberately indifferent” in its failure to adequately monitor the mental health of incarcerated people in solitary confinement.
Following another suicide of a person under the care of the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) this week, victims’ families, their attorney, and representatives from the SPLC met on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol today, urging state officials to address the need for comprehensive criminal justice reform.
Striking a blow to the defenders of the “Lost Cause,” a judge has struck down an Alabama law that prevented the removal of Confederate symbols from public land.
Alabama unlawfully suspended the driver’s licenses of thousands of people unable to pay traffic tickets. The SPLC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the state from suspending licenses without considering a person’s ability to pay and finding that the person willfully failed to pay. It also sought...
Marijuana prohibition costs the state and its municipalities an estimated $22 million a year, creates a dangerous backlog at the agency that tests forensic evidence in violent crimes, and needlessly ensnares thousands of people – disproportionately African Americans – in the criminal justice system.
The state has not yet come up with an acceptable remedy to address the “horrendously inadequate” and unconstitutional mental health care and staffing needs of the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC), the SPLC will argue today in closing arguments at a federal trial to correct the problems.
Courts in 14 Alabama counties awarded $2.2 million to law enforcement agencies through civil asset forfeiture actions filed in 2015 – and in a quarter of the 1,100 cases, law enforcement sought to keep property seized from people who were never even charged with a crime, according to a report released today by the SPLC and the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice.
