Alabama Lawmakers Question Efforts to End Prison Violence, 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 to a constituent whose son is in prison.

Rep. Chris Pringle, R-Mobile, told Mandy Speirs, assistant general counsel for the Alabama Department of Corrections, that the voter received a video alleging that his loved one had been sexually assaulted, with a threat of further violence if he did not receive money.

Pringle spoke as the committee considered a contract from Washington, D.C.-based The Moss Group Inc. According to the contract description, the purpose is to provide “strategic support, sexual safety consulting services, operational practice, staff training, PREA (Prison Rape Elimination Act) compliance, and to maintain continuity of efforts related to the Male Inmate Pilot Risk Reduction 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. That brings the total award to nearly $1.9 million.

“This poor lady, her son, is constantly getting hit so badly,” Pringle said. “I couldn’t tell because the video is bad, but he’s getting up off the floor and pulling his pants up.”

Pringle told DOC staff during a Contract Review Committee meeting in June that he had received calls from constituents saying their family members had been victims of assault at the jail.

Speirs said he was “sorry to hear that.”

“You think so, imagine how his mother felt when she got that video,” Pringle said in response.

Spiers then told committee members that the Department of Corrections has been working to address the problem for the past few years.

“As I say when I come here every month, we are making great strides in this area,” she said. “I would love to talk to you offline, invite you to come and talk to any of us, come to any of our facilities and see the things we have tried to change over the last few years.”

Some committee members were unmoved.

“Something’s not working,” said Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa. “Something’s not working. And I think some of the other contracts that are on the agenda today also reflect some of the same issues, the same problems, costs going up, giving more money but getting less in return.”

The appeals came as the committee approved two legal contracts totaling $400,000 for the Birmingham law firm Wallace, Jordan, Ratliff & Brandt, LLC, to defend corrections officers and administrators in two ongoing cases alleging civil rights violations.

Committee members unanimously approved both contracts.

Alabama prisons remain some of the most violent in the country, and Thursday’s conversation is just the latest in a series of meetings in which the public, along with lawmakers, have echoed his comments.

Many of the same concerns and issues were brought to lawmakers’ attention 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, alleging that the conditions violated inmates’ Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

During Thursday’s meeting, the Alabama Attorney General’s Office presented a new legal contract to the Contract Review Committee that members approved totaling $200,000 to Terri Tompkins, Esq. of Rosen Harwood PA, a Tuscaloosa-based law firm, to represent Corrections 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 with Union Supply Group, Inc., based in Dallas, Texas, to sell, supply, and deliver footwear and incentive packages to individuals in DOC custody who are eligible to receive such items.

The second contract, also at no cost to the state, is with Plano, Texas-based Securus Technologies, LLC, to provide a communications system.

A third contract that was approved was awarded to Brentwood, Tennessee-based YesCare to provide health care to those in DOC custody. With the contract awarded, the company is set to receive an additional $2 million from the state, on top of the more than $1 billion Corrections awarded the company earlier in 2023.