A video posted on YouTube this week alleges that Alabama Department of Corrections (DOC) employees recently beat a mentally ill inmate at St. Clair Correctional Facility in Springville.
In an email sent to Yellowhammer News Tuesday, a DOC spokesperson said, “The ADOC is investigating the alleged incident.”
Watch: (Warning – some viewers may find the video disturbing)
The alleged incident occurred on January 21 according to the publisher of the video, an organization that aims to amplify the voices of incarcerated prisoners. This group frequently posts content featuring “Swift Justice,” a pseudonym for a man who claims to still be incarcerated in the Alabama prison system after serving 28 years.
Swift Justice also publishes blog posts for the organization, with one lengthy piece posted Tuesday advocating for significant changes in DOC policies, management and structure. The post also opposes building new prisons in the state, as well as any hypothetical plans to even partly privatize the system.
State Rep. Chris England (D-Tuscaloosa), himself a vocal opponent of prison privatization, has retweeted the video and interacted with the organization’s Twitter account several times in recent days.
One of the individuals striking the inmate in the video was alleged to be a DOC Correctional Emergency Response Team (CERT) member. A blurb posted with the video purported that the inmate was “beaten after he request[ed] to see mental health staff, and state[d] he’s gonna kill himself. Inmate attempt[ed] [suicide] by attempting to set himself on fire.”
The ADOC has not confirmed the authenticity of the video or the written content posted with it.
The incident was alleged to have occurred just two days before an inmate serving a life sentence for human trafficking escaped from St. Clair Correctional Facility. He was captured on Saturday in Kentucky.
This came after an inmate was stabbed to death at the same prison on December 29. The facility has been plagued by violence for years, from a highly-publicized riot to a high number of murders and dangerous inmate brawls.
A federal lawsuit filed in 2014 by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) claimed that St. Clair Correctional Facility was engaging in cruel and unusual punishment amidst overall unsafe conditions for inmates. The suit was settled in 2017.
At the time of the settlement, EJI Director Bryan Stevenson said, “ADOC has agreed to make substantial changes, repairs and reforms that we believe will dramatically reduce the level of violence that exists and ameliorate the deplorable conditions at St. Clair. We are pleased that [ADOC] Commissioner Dunn has made a strong commitment and appointed key administrators to move the reforms forward quickly.”
Sean Ross is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn
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