Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

Prisons

Incarcerated man dead at Elmore Correctional Facility

The incarcerated man is the second to die in the Elmore facility in as many months.

Elmore Correctional Facility Google Earth

Another incarcerated man has been found dead in an Alabama prison, a spokesperson for the Alabama Department of Corrections confirmed Friday.

Lamarcus Demond Philpot, 41, was found unresponsive on his bunk in the Elmore Correctional Facility on Wednesday of last week, according to the ADOC. Philpot was serving a 35-year year sentence for a rape committed in Lee County.

Philpot was taken to the health care unit within the correctional facility, where he was later pronounced dead.

The ADOC Law Enforcement services Division is investigating the causes of Philpto’s death, according to the ADOC, with the results of a full autopsy pending.

Philpot is the second incarcerated man to die in the Elmore facility since June.

Earlier in June, Charlene Winningham, 53, an incarcerated man, died in the Elmore facility. Winningham was found unresponsive and later pronounced dead June 6.

Fatal and near-fatal Drug overdoses in Alabama prisons are common and a result of understaffed correctional facilities’ inability to curb the flow of dangerous narcotics into Alabama prisons, according to an ongoing federal lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

Overpopulation in Alabama prisons is also leading to an increase in violence and death due to inmate-on-inmate assaults and attacks throughout the corrections system.

According to the latest statical report from the ADOC, Elmore Correctional Facility is at 194.3 percent over capacity as of April with a month-end population of 1,166 incarcerated individuals in a facility only meant to house 600 individuals.

In April, state officials signed a $623 million contract with the Montgomery-based Waddell Construction company to build a new 4,000-bed correctional facility in Elmore county.

The funds and approval for the construction originate from a $1.3 billion prison construction package approved by the state legislature in October of last year, with $400 million of those funds controversially coming from Alabama’s take of the federal American Rescue Plan act’s monies.

John is a reporter at the Alabama Political Reporter. You can contact him at jglenn@alreporter.com or via Twitter.

More from APR

Public safety

This cohort included 51 individuals who completed a range of reentry programs, including mental health and substance use counseling.

News

The program is aimed at increasing the number of Alabama Department of Corrections correctional officers.

Prisons

Parole continues to be a rare privilege granted to exceedingly few incarcerated people.

Featured Opinion

The sticker price for Alabama's mega-prison is a shocking $1.2 billion. Maybe that's how much it costs to address decades of inflicting human suffering.