The U.S. Department of Justice will no longer oversee Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women after a federal judge approved an agreement ending a 2015 lawsuit against Alabama.
The Justice Department had substantially reduced its oversight in September 2024 by terminating 38 of 44 provisions in a consent decree. The provisions included requirements for staff training on preventing and responding to the sexual abuse of incarcerated women, the use of prison cameras to document potential violations and other measures.
“Over the past decade, the Alabama Department of Corrections has made real, measurable progress in strengthening oversight and safety at Tutwiler, and this judgment reflects that work,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement.
The lawsuit stemmed from a Justice Department investigation that found women incarcerated at Tutwiler faced sexual abuse and other harm.
“Women prisoners at Tutwiler suffer serious harm from sexual abuse and sexual harassment by staff, including rape, fondling, voyeurism, and sexually explicit verbal abuse,” the department wrote in its complaint.
The complaint said the prison lacked an adequate system for addressing reports of sexual abuse and that officers often retaliated against women who reported abuse.
“Women who report sexual abuse at Tutwiler are routinely placed in segregation by the warden,” the document states. “While in segregation, these women are treated no differently from women held there for punitive reasons: they are deprived of telephone, mail, and visit privileges and have no access to recreation, programs, or work assignments.”
Alabama entered into the consent decree with the Justice Department to resolve the lawsuit. Governor Kay Ivey said the department’s decision to terminate the remaining provisions reflected the state’s progress since she took office.
“When I took office in 2017, our challenged prisons needed our immediate attention, and we were facing various DOJ lawsuits and investigations. Despite the can being kicked down the road for too long, I made it a priority to improve our correctional system, and we have made significant progress since then,” Ivey said in a statement. “In addition to moving forward with the construction of two new men’s prisons, hitting historic recruitment levels for correctional officers, enforcing a zero-tolerance policy for bad behavior by both inmates and staff, enhancing the Department and making various sensible sentencing reforms, today, I am proud that the DOJ case against Julia Tutwiler Prison has concluded. This is the result of our work over these two-plus terms, and our efforts will continue.”
