Little Dickies,
This is not a think piece. This is a charge sheet.
Alabama’s prison system is not “under strain.” It is under indictment. What unfolds behind razor wire is not mismanagement but a sustained practice of cruelty protected by paperwork, delay, and a shared institutional shrug. Men are warehoused, sick men are ignored, violence is normalized, and death is treated as an administrative inconvenience. If this sounds familiar, it’s because the warnings have been issued for years. The bodies followed anyway.
Below is this casefile rebuilt for impact: the words lead, the visuals testify.
SECTION I: A SYSTEM DESIGNED TO HARM
Alabama’s prisons are catastrophically overcrowded. Facilities built for far fewer people now hold bodies shoulder-to-shoulder with despair. Men sleep inches from toilets. Medical care is rationed. Mental illness is punished. Violence isn’t an anomaly; it’s the daily weather.
State officials call this a “staffing crisis.” That explanation collapses under scrutiny. Understaffing does not explain untreated infections, coerced labor, or guards accused of orchestrating violence. Understaffing does not explain why deaths are followed by silence and paperwork instead of answers.
This is not a broken system. It is a working one that produces suffering with alarming efficiency.
SECTION II: POWER WITHOUT CONSEQUENCE
Alabama’s executive leadership has been told, repeatedly, that the prison system violates basic human rights. Federal findings confirm patterns of excessive force, sexual abuse, medical neglect, and failure to protect incarcerated people from violence.
And still, the response has been deflection.
The state’s top officials speak in euphemisms about “reform efforts” while people die. Investigations stall. Timelines stretch. Accountability evaporates.
This is where leadership becomes culpability.
SECTION III: THE STATE’S DOJ AND THE ART OF DOING NOTHING
The Alabama Department of Justice has proximity, authority, and responsibility. It knows the death counts. It knows the lawsuits. It knows the federal findings.
What it has mastered instead is delay.
Statements replace subpoenas. Reviews replace action. Political alliances are protected while incarcerated people are treated as expendable units. Justice here is not blind. It is carefully averted.
When accountability inches forward, it does so slowly enough to ensure the next death arrives first.
SECTION IV: FEDERAL OVERSIGHT WITHOUT TEETH
The U.S. Department of Justice has known for years that Alabama’s prisons violate constitutional protections. Federal investigations confirmed it. Letters were sent. Negotiations followed.
And then… patience.
Consent decrees with generous timelines. Negotiations that prioritize cooperation over consequence. A posture that says “we tried” while men bleed.
Federal authority is not optional when a state refuses to correct a humanitarian crisis. The Constitution does not allow for cruelty when it’s politically inconvenient to stop it. Incrementalism, in the face of ongoing death, is not moderation. It is complicity.
SECTION V: PEOPLE, NOT INVENTORY
The men inside Alabama prisons are routinely misrepresented as irredeemable, as if conviction erases humanity. It does not. Even the guilty retain the right to live. Even the convicted retain bodies that fail without care and minds that fracture without treatment.
Many are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses. Many serve sentences wildly disproportionate to their crimes. Many are mentally ill or addicted, dumped into punishment where treatment should be.
When they speak up, phones are confiscated. Grievances vanish. Retaliation follows. Silence is enforced because silence keeps the system intact.
SECTION VI: ONE NAME, ONE LIFE
Statistics numb. Names do not.
Steven Davis entered Alabama custody alive. He did not leave that way. His death is not an outlier. It is a consequence of neglect layered upon neglect, followed by a bureaucratic hush.
Families are left with fragments. Phone calls that came too late. Reports that say too little. Grief that receives no answers.
This is what accountability looks like when it never arrives.
SECTION VII: FORCED LABOR AND THE OLD GHOST
Alabama still profits from prison labor. Incarcerated people cook, clean, build, and maintain for pennies or nothing. Refusal is punished. Compliance is coerced.
Call it what it is.
This is forced labor with modern paperwork. A descendant of convict leasing dressed in neutral language and defended by the same old logic.
When critics name it, the state argues branding instead of facts.
SECTION VIII: WHAT REAL INTERVENTION WOULD LOOK LIKE
Immediate population reduction through parole reform. Independent medical oversight with emergency authority. Criminal prosecution for abuse and cover-ups. Federal receivership if the state refuses to comply.
Anything less is theater.
And theater does not save lives.
CLOSING
This is not a partisan issue. It is a human one.
Every day Alabama’s prisons remain as they are, the state sends a message that some lives are disposable. The Alabama DOJ hears it and delays. The federal DOJ hears it and negotiates.
We hear it too.
And we are not done listening.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT IS ON US
This is the moment where outrage either evaporates or becomes action.
If Alabama cannot protect the basic human rights of the people it incarcerates, then federal intervention is not optional it is required. Silence helps no one. Patience protects the abuser. And delay costs lives.
Do not scroll past this.
Talk about Alabama’s prisons. Share this investigation. Name the agencies responsible. Demand that the U.S. Department of Justice stop negotiating and start intervening. Demand independent oversight. Demand population reduction. Demand consequences.
Pressure works when it is loud, sustained, and impossible to ignore.
The men inside these prisons do not have platforms. They do not have microphones. They do not have the luxury of waiting.
We do.
Use it.
Because justice does not happen on its own it happens when enough people refuse to look away.
Thanks for Dicking around with Richie.
Comments
Post a Comment