But the state has one of the highest incarceration rates in the country, and its prisons are antiquated and short-staffed, creating danger for employees and inmates alike. In a bluntly critical report last year, the federal agency accused the state of “deliberate indifference” by failing to address problems that jeopardize inmate safety, including overcrowding, understaffing, the smuggling of contraband and extortion.Īlabama is not alone in having troubled, violent prisons, or in struggling to stop the illegal use of cellphones. “That’s just how the Alabama prison system works.” If the loved ones of an inmate targeted for extortion will not pay, then that prisoner is “going to get stabbed up,” Mr. Monaghan, 55, and others described a nerve-jangling dystopia behind bars, in which street gangs - sometimes in tandem with corrupt officers - controlled the sale of smuggled contraband, including drugs and phones. Clair prison in Springville before his assault conviction was vacated in 2018. That call went out whenever corrections officers conducted their sweeps, according to Bobby Monaghan, who spent a decade at the St. “Go ahead and put your cellphones up, so’s we don’t have to go and take ’em.” “They can literally take a picture of a loved one beaten up and say: ‘This happened today. “With no cellphones, there would be no extortion,” he said. Davis, questioned how cellphones could be so common in prison. The authorities blamed the delay on a long wait for forensics results. Wood was killed in a closely monitored cellblock, yet it was more than two years before another inmate was charged with his murder. “And so these types of things, we freely admit, go on.” “It makes it exceptionally difficult for our correctional officers to be everywhere all the time,” Mr. But he said their proliferation reflected an “unfortunate nexus” of factors: not enough corrections officers guarding too many inmates in old facilities with too many blind spots. Jeff Dunn, the state corrections commissioner, said in an interview this year that he was frustrated by the continuing problem of illicit cellphones in Alabama prisons. He repeatedly told prison officials about the lax security in the unit where he was housed, and eventually murdered.Īngela Wood’s son was killed in prison after his family stopped paying extortion money. Wood would “frantically beg” his mother to send the funds, the lawsuit says. Wood said her son would call from the prison 200 miles away to say he was being threatened with assault “if he did not pay the inmates certain sums of money.” In a lawsuit filed against corrections officials last summer, Ms. Their boldness seems boundless: Even the chairman of the State Senate’s judiciary committee has received threatening calls and text messages from Alabama inmates. Inmates have used contraband phones to issue threats, demand money and transmit photographic evidence of what happens when payment is not made.
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But his case reflects how the longtime indifference of the Alabama Department of Corrections - including its failure for many years to crack down on cellphones, which seem almost as easy to obtain behind bars as at a Best Buy - had terrifying consequences for those beyond the prison walls. The authorities have not established a connection between the killing of Mr.
“I was worried people were going to start blaming me,” Mr. “I just screamed and screamed,” his mother, Angela Wood, recalled. Soon after, the family received another call, this time from the prison chaplain. One night in July 2017, after two pleading calls from his imprisoned cousin, Mr. “He might get beat up, but they will stop when they know they can’t get any more money.” “I told everybody to stop sending money,” a cousin, Steven Davis, recalled.
A relative finally ended what was clearly extortion.
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