Alabama lawmakers question efforts to end prison violence and rape: ‘Something isn’t working’

A member of the Legislature's Contract Review Committee on Thursday asked an attorney for the Alabama Department of Corrections to respond to what he said was an extortion threat made to a constituent whose child is in prison.

Republican Rep. Chris Pringle of Mobile told Mandy Speirs, deputy general counsel for the Alabama Department of Corrections, that the constituent received a video alleging that someone close to him had been sexually assaulted and threatened further violence if he did not receive money.

Pringle spoke as the committee was considering a contract with Washington, D.C.-based Moss Group Inc. According to the contract description, the contract will provide “strategic support, sexual safety consulting services, operational practices, staff training, PREA (Prison Rape Elimination Act) compliance, and maintaining continuity of efforts toward the Male Inmate Risk Reduction Pilot Plan.”

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The contract pays the company $378,000 between October of this year and September 2025, with an option to extend, bringing the total to nearly $1.9 million.

“This poor woman, her son is constantly being beaten,” Pringle said. “I couldn't tell because the video is bad, but he gets up off the floor and pulls up his pants.”

During a Contract Review Committee meeting in June, Pringle told DOC staff that he had received calls from constituents who said their family members had been attacked in prison.

Speirs said she was “sorry to hear that.”

“If you believe that, imagine how his mother felt when that video was sent to her,” Pringle replied.

Spiers then told committee members that the Department of Corrections has been working to resolve this issue for several years.

“As I say every month when I come here, we are making great progress in this area,” she said. “I would love to talk to you offline, invite you to come and talk to one of us, visit one of our facilities and look at the things we have been trying to turn around over the last few years.”

Some committee members were not convinced by this.

“Something is not working,” said Rep. Chris England (D-Tuscaloosa). “Something is not working. And I think some of the other contracts on the agenda today reflect the same issues, the same problems: costs are going up, we're spending more money but we're getting less in return.”

These requests came after the committee approved two legal contracts totaling $400,000 for the Birmingham law firm of Wallace, Jordan, Ratliff & Brandt, LLC, to defend correctional officers and administrators in two ongoing lawsuits alleging civil rights violations.

The committee members unanimously approved both contracts.

Alabama's prisons remain among the most violent in the country, and Thursday's conversation is just the latest in a series of meetings in which the public and lawmakers alike echoed their comments.

Many of the same concerns and issues were brought to the attention of lawmakers during the Joint Prison Oversight Committee meeting in July. The U.S. Department of Justice sued the state in 2020 over rampant violence in state prisons, claiming the conditions violated inmates' Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

During Thursday's meeting, the Alabama Attorney General's Office presented to the Contract Review Committee, approved by members, a new legal contract totaling $200,000 to go to Terri Tompkins, Esq. of the Tuscaloosa-based law firm Rosen Harwood PA, to represent correctional facility staff in another case.

Members of the Contract Review Committee also approved four additional contracts. Two of the contracts were new but would not cost the state any money. The first contract is to Union Supply Group, Inc., based in Dallas, Texas, and will include the sale, provision and delivery of shoes and reward packages to individuals in DOC custody who are eligible for such items.

The second contract, which is also free of charge to the state, goes to Securus Technologies, LLC, based in Plano, Texas, and concerns the provision of a communications system.

A third approved contract was awarded to Brentwood, Tennessee-based YesCare to provide medical care to people in DOC custody. With the awarded contract, the company is expected to receive an additional $2 million from the state, in addition to the more than $1 billion Corrections has awarded the company in early 2023.