{"id":44428,"date":"2025-01-24T05:41:54","date_gmt":"2025-01-24T05:41:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/alabama\/alabama-prisoners-dying-at-a-rate-four-times-the-national-average\/"},"modified":"2025-01-24T05:41:54","modified_gmt":"2025-01-24T05:41:54","slug":"alabama-prisoners-dying-at-a-rate-four-times-the-national-average","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=44428","title":{"rendered":"Alabama prisoners dying at a rate four times the national average"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The Alabama Department of Corrections saw 277 incarcerated individuals die within prison walls in 2024, a rate four times the national average.<\/p>\n<p>Eddie Burkhalter, a researcher for the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, obtained the number through a records request as the nonprofit works toward building a database of Alabama prison deaths stretching back a decade.<\/p>\n<p>The number of deaths is a drop from a record high of 325 deaths last year, which put the state at five times the national mortality rate for prison deaths.<\/p>\n<p>Alabama\u2019s prisoner mortality rate is 1,358 deaths per 100,000 people, compared with a national average across state prisons of 330 deaths per 100,000, according to the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a\u00a0large number, but what\u2019s even more telling is a record request response I got recently from the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs, which collects in-custody data for the federal government,\u201d Burkhalter said. \u201cI asked for deaths from 2019 to now; in 2021, 118 people died in Alabama prisons. From 2021 to 2024, that\u2019s a 134 percent increase in deaths.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The manners of death are not yet available for 2024, as Burkhalter said that information takes longer to pull together, but Appleseed has documented the manner of death for most of the 2023 cases.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0t<\/span>rends we\u2019re seeing are more overdose deaths, which are becoming more and more common a huge problem,\u201d Burkhalter said. \u201cThere are a lot of natural deaths as well. Talking with other researchers, I\u2019m learning that many times some of these natural deaths could actually be medical neglect cases where the person did not get the care they needed in a timely fashion and passed away. There are homicides and suicides as well, all preventable deaths. Those are all preventable deaths where people should be able to serve out their sentence.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"code-block code-block-6\" style=\"margin: 8px auto; text-align: center; display: block; clear: both;\">\n<div class=\"zox-post-ad-wrap\"><span class=\"zox-ad-label\">Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Burkhalter said each deceased individual\u2019s data on length of sentencing may or may not end up being part of the database, but said the deaths include people sentenced to serve as little as one year in the prison system.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter how long you\u2019ve been sentenced, any sentence could be a death sentence because ADOC is just not in control fully of these facilities,\u201d Burkhalter said.<\/p>\n<p>The Alabama Legislature and ADOC have taken some steps to try to address the lack of guards that has played a critical role in these issues, Burkhalter said, but have been unable to meet the target number of officers required under a federal lawsuit from the Department of Justice.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c(ADOC) is\u00a0not going to meet the court order; they keep pushing back the deadline because they just can\u2019t meet it,\u201d Burkhalter said. \u201cI mean, they\u2019ve taken steps, ADOC and the Legislature, good steps to try to increase hiring\u2014but it\u2019s just not working. We\u2019re losing officers; some of them are being arrested for crimes that are work-related. A lot of (contraband) is coming in through officers. To ADOC\u2019s credit they\u2019re catching some; but it\u2019s not apparent whether those arrests are resulting in convictions. That\u2019s something else we\u2019re looking at, but it\u2019s a really complicated problem.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Burkhalter said there are some obvious actions that could help to reduce the number of deaths inside the prison system.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe think ADOC should be ramping up security checkpoints. We\u2019ve had attorneys and staff who have witnessed employees coming in not being checked at checkpoints,\u201d Burkhalter said. \u201cIf you want people to stop dying from fentanyl in a max security prison, you stop people from bringing it in. Make the check-in look like a TSA checkpoint. Drug contraband is a huge business in Alabama prisons. People get killed over contraband. Weapons are brought in and sold. Increased security at those facilities would be a first good step and it\u2019s something they could do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Prisoner classification is also a system that Burkhalter said needs fixing, as some of the individuals who could be a danger to others appear to be allowed back to mix with others who they could put in danger.<\/p>\n<div class=\"code-block code-block-6\" style=\"margin: 8px auto; text-align: center; display: block; clear: both;\">\n<div class=\"zox-post-ad-wrap\"><span class=\"zox-ad-label\">Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- CONTENT END 1 -->\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Alabama Department of Corrections saw 277 incarcerated individuals die within prison walls in 2024, a rate four times the national average. Eddie Burkhalter, a researcher for the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, obtained the number through a records request as the nonprofit works toward building a database of Alabama prison deaths stretching [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44429,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11763],"tags":[27333,12750,27334,27335,10903,6519,27336,27337,5306,27338,27339,24248,16237,1485,4319],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-44428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alabama","tag-adoc","tag-alabama","tag-alabama-appleseed","tag-alabama-department-of-corrections","tag-average","tag-dying","tag-eddie-burkhalter","tag-mortality-rate","tag-national","tag-overcrowded","tag-prison-deaths","tag-prisoners","tag-prisons","tag-rate","tag-times"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Alabama prisoners dying at a rate four times the national average - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=44428\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Alabama prisoners dying at a rate four times the national average - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Alabama Department of Corrections saw 277 incarcerated individuals die within prison walls in 2024, a rate four times the national average. 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