When Alabama locks a man inside a prison, it takes more than his freedom. It takes away much of his ability to protect himself.
He cannot walk away from an extortionist, leave a dormitory controlled by a gang or call the police when someone comes for him in the night. The state has confined him, and with that power comes an inescapable duty to provide reasonable protection for his life.
A prison sentence lawfully takes away freedom. It does not erase humanity, suspend the Constitution or add rape, stabbing, abandonment and beatings by officers to the punishment imposed by a court.
On September 2, the Justice Department asked U.S. District Judge Harold D. Mooty III to grant summary judgment against Alabama on four Eighth Amendment claims. The government contends that the state failed to protect incarcerated men from violence and sexual abuse, permitted excessive force by correctional officers and confined people in unsafe conditions.
The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Inside a prison, it requires humane conditions and reasonable protection against known risks of serious harm, and it prohibits officers from using force maliciously and sadistically to cause harm. The Justice Department argues that Alabama knew those dangers existed and responded with deliberate indifference.
The 260-page motion for summary judgment is not a ruling. It asks Mooty to conclude that the material facts are not genuinely disputed and that the federal government is entitled to judgment without waiting for the scheduled November trial.
Much of the public filing is redacted, but the visible evidence describes killings, sexual assaults, extortion, excessive force and physical decay. Beneath those horrors is a broader failure: ADOC leaders knew the system was dangerously broken but did not bring it under control.
I have visited many of the prisons involved in this case, and Alabama Political Reporter has documented the violence, abuse and official neglect inside them for years. Prisoners and their families did not need another federal filing to tell them these institutions were dangerous. The violence is not the new revelation. The sworn testimony attributed to ADOC’s leadership helps explain why it continued.
The consequences are measured in bodies
According to Alabama’s own records, the motion says prisoners killed other prisoners at an average rate of approximately one per month from 2019 through 2024. That rate did not materially decline after the Justice Department formally warned the state that violence inside its prisons had reached unconstitutional levels.
Since mid-2022, ADOC has documented an average of more than 30 prisoner-on-prisoner sexual assault reports each month. The government argues that the actual number is higher because victims fear retaliation, assaults are misclassified and much of what occurs inside unsupervised dormitories is never seen or reported.
One man testified that it took him a week to report a sexual assault because other prisoners would not allow him to leave the dormitory. Another was reportedly beaten around 9 p.m. and left on the floor in his own blood until the shift changed at approximately 6:30 the next morning.
The filing describes sexual abuse behind sheets hung from bunks while no officer is present and men exchanging sexual acts for protection, drugs or relief from debts. Those debts can be collected through beatings, rape and threats against family members outside the prison.
One incarcerated man summarized the reality in language no government statistic can improve upon: “If inmates don’t stop it, it don’t get stopped.”
Severe understaffing feeds that loss of control. For 2023, ADOC reported 17.4 prisoners for every correctional officer when the authorized ratio was 5.2 to one. It reported 67.8 prisoners for every supervisor, almost twice the authorized ratio of 34.8 to one. At one prison, a warden approved giving incarcerated men a radio so they could call for help because an officer often was not present.
Understaffing explains part of the danger, but it does not excuse leadership. A shortage of officers increases the need to know which posts are uncovered, where violence is rising and whether emergency measures work. It does not make management optional.
The record involving correctional officers is no less disturbing. According to the motion, at least 12 ADOC officers and supervisors were criminally convicted between 2019 and January 2025 on charges related to assaults against incarcerated people. At least five more were charged.
The filing also recounts the death of Steven Davis after officers used force against him at Donaldson. ADOC later paid $250,000 to settle the lawsuit filed by his mother. A settlement is not an admission of liability, but neither can a man’s death in state custody be dismissed as an abstraction.
These are not isolated breakdowns within an otherwise functioning system. Every statistic represents someone Alabama locked behind a door and undertook to protect.
Seven years of unmistakable notice
The Justice Department opened its investigation in October 2016. In April 2019, it notified Alabama that conditions inside the men’s prisons violated the Constitution because the state failed to protect people from violence and sexual abuse and confined them in unsafe conditions. A July 2020 letter addressed excessive force, and the government sued that December after negotiations failed.
The state did not deny in 2019 that the problems were serious. Governor Kay Ivey said her administration would work closely with the Justice Department and promised that an “Alabama problem” would have an “Alabama solution.” Then-Commissioner Jeff Dunn said ADOC’s objective was to provide a “humane, secure, and safe environment.” Those commitments remain preserved in the governor’s official response to the 2019 findings.
Commissioners changed, but the state’s responsibility did not. A new name on the commissioner’s door did not erase the federal findings, the lawsuit, the deaths, the criminal convictions, the complaints from families or years of reporting about conditions inside the prisons.
John Hamm inherited a crisis when he became commissioner in 2022. Greg Lovelace inherited it when he succeeded Hamm this year. Leadership is measured by how officials confront the problems placed in their hands, not merely by whether they created them.
John Hamm pushed responsibility downward
Hamm was responsible for the entire department. Yet the Justice Department’s account of his deposition is a catalog of dangers he did not measure, reports he did not regularly receive and questions he could not answer.
According to the motion, Hamm said wardens were responsible for operating prisons and filling critical security posts, which he believed overtime covered. But he did not know how many overdose deaths were occurring, did not receive regular reports about them and did not visit every prison annually.
The filing says Hamm did not track whether contraband, fights, assaults, sexual assaults or overdoses increased or decreased during his tenure. He did not regularly examine investigative reports about sexual assault and had not discussed sexual violence with wardens.
His testimony concerning force describes the same absence of oversight. According to the government, Hamm had no correctional use-of-force training, did not know whether ADOC centrally tracked force or whether its use was rising and could not remember when he last reviewed a force investigation.
These are not minor operational details. Violence, sexual assault, overdose deaths and force by officers are among the largest responsibilities carried by the person commanding a prison system. A commissioner may delegate daily operations, but he cannot delegate his obligation to determine whether the people carrying them out are protecting the lives in the state’s custody.
Hamm’s treatment of unauthorized prisoner movement is particularly revealing. ADOC has struggled to keep incarcerated men in their assigned dormitories and beds, allowing stronger men to displace weaker prisoners and predators to reach potential victims.
Hamm compared such movement to the way “you go visit other people at their house.”
A prison dormitory filled with weapons, drugs, debts, gangs and vulnerable men is not someone’s house. An unauthorized prisoner may be entering to collect a debt, seize a bed, carry out an assault or reach a sexual abuse victim. Maintaining custody and control is not peripheral to the commissioner’s job. It is the job.
Greg Lovelace supervised a system he was not measuring
Lovelace was chief deputy commissioner when he was deposed and became commissioner May 1 after Hamm retired. ADOC’s official description of his former responsibilities says he oversaw departmental operations, administrative divisions and statewide prison functions.
The Justice Department’s motion says Lovelace described himself as the “number two” official and said he supervised the entire system for the commissioner. Yet the government also says he testified that he spent most of his time working on the new prison project and had not seen reports showing the extent of violence, contraband or sexual assault across the system.
The public motion summarizes rather than reproduces the complete exchange, and Alabama may dispute that characterization. But if accurate, it exposes the central failure in ADOC’s management.
Without information about violence, contraband and sexual assault, the official supervising the prison system could not reliably determine whether conditions were improving, where intervention was needed or whether wardens were performing their duties.
Lovelace’s focus on the new prison illustrates how construction became a substitute for management. New facilities may be safer, but concrete cannot supervise a dormitory, steel cannot investigate a rape and a new cell cannot remove a corrupt officer or make a warden enforce policy.
Alabama’s existing prisons may be overcrowded, deplorable and old, but human beings remain confined inside them today. Dangerous buildings require more vigilant leadership, not less.
Failure throughout the chain of command
The failures did not end with Hamm and Lovelace. The motion describes a warden who could not say how many dormitories were in the prison, whether its population was below 10,000—it was approximately 1,200—or how many homicides had occurred during the warden’s tenure.
The same warden reportedly did not know the number of critical staffing posts or how often security inspections should occur and could not adequately explain the Prison Rape Elimination Act. Asked what one thing should be changed about the institution, the warden identified its location because of the commute. That answer would be merely embarrassing if the responsibilities were not matters of life and death.
The filing describes regional officials unfamiliar with regulations they enforced. ADOC stopped regular meetings about prison violence and did not reliably determine whether wardens implemented measures recommended when those meetings occurred.
Force investigations frequently omitted witness interviews, available video, photographs and medical records. One investigator reportedly did not recall an investigative manual, determine whether force was justified or receive training on completing audit forms.
The prisons reflect the same neglect: broken plumbing, damaged security glass, holes in walls, uncontrolled temperatures, insects, rodents and filth. Yet not every major men’s prison had a maintenance employee, officials could not identify preventive maintenance plans and the department conducted no scheduled audits.
Old buildings deteriorate. That is unavoidable. Failing to inspect, maintain and repair them is a management decision.
Not knowing is not a defense to refusing to know
The Justice Department must prove more than neglect, incompetence or terrible outcomes. It must establish that incarcerated men faced a substantial risk of serious harm, that Alabama knew its actions or failures exposed them to that risk and that the state did not respond reasonably.
In Farmer v. Brennan, the U.S. Supreme Court held that prison officials violate the Eighth Amendment when they know incarcerated people face a substantial risk of serious harm and disregard that danger. Knowledge may be inferred when a danger is obvious, and officials cannot necessarily escape responsibility by refusing to verify facts or confirm risks they strongly suspect exist. The Supreme Court described deliberate indifference as requiring awareness and disregard of a substantial risk, rather than mere negligence.
The state cannot treat a lack of reports at the top as exculpatory when the same leaders were responsible for ensuring that essential information was collected and reviewed. Not every failure to collect data establishes deliberate indifference, and Alabama remains entitled to show that its leaders lacked the required knowledge or responded reasonably. But after formal federal findings, continuing homicides, sexual assaults, criminal convictions of officers and years of litigation, ignorance becomes a difficult defense.
In the separate Braggs prison litigation, the 11th Circuit has considered systemic constitutional claims involving Alabama’s prison system. Courts are not super-wardens, but they cannot allow constitutional violations to continue simply because remedies reach into prison administration.
Alabama must answer with results
Alabama’s summary judgment motion points to higher officer pay, recruiting initiatives, rewritten policies, disciplinary actions, the Office of Inspector General, use-of-force reviews and billions committed to new construction.
Those measures matter because the Constitution requires a reasonable response to known danger, not a perfect prison system. But a reasonable response must be demonstrated through implementation and results. Announcing a policy is not the same as enforcing it, and building a prison for the future does not protect the people confined in existing prisons tonight.
Between August 2024 and January 2025, ADOC’s Use of Force Review Board examined at least 58 incidents and found that 26 involved unjustified or unnecessary force. Alabama can argue that those findings demonstrate its oversight system identifies misconduct. The Justice Department can argue that finding improper force in nearly half the cases reviewed reveals a serious and continuing problem.
What matters is what happened after those findings: whether officers and supervisors were held accountable and the reviews prevented the next beating. A finding filed away at headquarters protects no one.
Mooty must determine whether genuine disputes remain over facts material to the government’s constitutional claims. If he denies summary judgment, that will not mean Alabama’s prisons are constitutional; it will mean the disputed evidence must be resolved at trial. If the government prevails, the court will still need further proceedings to determine an appropriate remedy.
Alabama locked the doors
People convicted of crimes should be held accountable. Prison can lawfully impose confinement, discipline and the loss of many freedoms. It cannot lawfully include rape, extortion, abandonment, untreated injury or a beating by the officers entrusted with custody.
Those are not additions to a criminal sentence. They are failures of the state.
The killings and assaults are not disconnected tragedies. They are the human cost of a commissioner who did not know whether violence and overdoses were increasing, a chief deputy supervising the statewide system without seeing reports measuring violence, wardens unfamiliar with the prisons they commanded and investigators lacking adequate guidance.
Alabama’s prison crisis is not merely the product of overcrowding, decaying buildings or a difficult hiring environment. It is a failure of command measured in lost lives, broken bodies and human beings left to suffer behind walls the public rarely sees.
When the state takes custody, it takes responsibility. Alabama locked the doors. Its leaders were still required to do their jobs.
