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.
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.
