The two year investigation also found an «excessive amount of violence, sexual abuse and prisoner deaths»
Birmingham, Ala. — Officials in Alabama have until next week to make changes to the state’s troubled prison system. A Justice Department investigation found conditions in Alabama’s prisons violate the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which protects against cruel and unusual punishment.
Some of the 2,600 photographs taken inside Alabama’s prisons show horrid conditions. Betty Head’s 31-year-old son died after trying to hang himself in a decrepit cell block.
«The Alabama prison system killed my only son,» Head said.
Her son, Billy Thornton, was just months away from finishing a six-year sentence for statutory rape. He was mentally ill, and inmates told Head he would cry for help, but routinely be ignored.
Alabama prisons have the highest suicide rate in the country, three times the national average.
