findings and legal conclusions binding on, or admissible in, any court, and nothing in this Notice Letter (“Notice”) should be construed as such. Accordingly, this Notice is not intended to be admissible evidence and does not create any legal rights or obligations. Consistent with the statutory requirements of CRIPA, we write this Notice to notify Alabama of the Department’s conclusions with respect to numerous constitutional violations, the facts supporting those conclusions, and the minimum remedial measures necessary to address the identified deficiencies.2 There is reasonable cause to believe that the Alabama Department of Corrections (“ADOC”) has violated and is continuing to violate the Eighth Amendment rights of prisoners housed in men’s prisons by failing to protect them from prisoner-on-prisoner violence, prisoner- on-prisoner sexual abuse, and by failing to provide safe conditions, and that such violations are pursuant to a pattern or practice of resistance to the full enjoyment of rights secured by the Eighth Amendment. The violations are severe, systemic, and exacerbated by serious deficiencies in staffing and supervision; overcrowding; ineffective housing and classification protocols; inadequate incident reporting; inability to control the flow of contraband into and within the prisons, including illegal drugs and weapons; ineffective prison management and training; 1 At present, there are 13 such correctional facilities: Bibb Correctional Facility; Bullock Correctional Facility; Donaldson Correctional Facility; Easterling Correctional Facility; Elmore Correctional Facility; Fountain Correctional Facility; Hamilton Aged & Infirmed; Holman Correctional Facility; Kilby Correctional Facility; Limestone Correctional Facility; St. Clair Correctional Facility; Staton Correctional Facility; and Ventress Correctional Facility. We also investigated the conditions at Draper Correctional Facility; however, in late 2017, the Alabama Department of Corrections (“ADOC”) closed that facility. We did not review the conditions in other ADOC facilities, such as work release facilities or the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women. 2 The Department’s investigation of Alabama’s prisons was opened to investigate three issues: (1) whether ADOC is protecting prisoners from physical and sexual violence at the hand of other prisoners; (2) whether ADOC is providing safe and sanitary living conditions; and (3) whether ADOC is protecting prisoners from excessive force and sexual abuse from staff. This Notice applies to the first two issues. The Department’s investigation into third issue is ongoing because the Department’s petition to enforce its subpoena for documents relevant to that issue is pending with the court. 2 insufficient maintenance and cleaning of facilities; the use of segregation and solitary confinement to both punish and protect victims of violence and/or sexual abuse; and a high level of violence that is too common, cruel, of an unusual nature, and pervasive. Our investigation revealed that an excessive amount of violence, sexual abuse, and prisoner deaths occur within Alabama’s prisons on a regular basis. Indeed, a review of a single week in Alabama’s prisons—a week in September 2017—provides a window into a broken system that too often disregards prisoners’ safety. The “Hot Bay” at Bibb3 was a housing unit populated exclusively with prisoners with disciplinary infractions. It had limited supervision and no programming. On a Friday in September 2017, three days before the Department of Justice arrived at Bibb for the first full facility tour of our investigation, two prisoners stood guard at the doors of the Hot Bay, an open dormitory housing men in bunkbeds multiple rows deep, watching for rarely-seen correctional officers. At the back of the dormitory and not visible from the front door, two other prisoners started stabbing their intended victim. The victim screamed for help. Anot
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