Judge criticizes state’s response to prisoners’ allegations of rape and violence

An incarcerated man sued Alabama, claiming state officials were deliberately indifferent to the threat of sexual violence in the state’s prisons. As the judge noted in 2023, Jacob Barefield’s lawsuit listed chilling, credible examples. But something else caught the judge’s attention – the state’s response to questions about why it spent more than $10 million fighting such lawsuits.

We are “an easy target,” the state’s lawyers wrote in a filing, and “baseless claims must continue to be defended.” Additionally, the state said, Mr. Barefield’s complaint did not “plausibly” allege a pattern of uncontrolled sexual violence.

U.S. District Court Judge W. Keith Watkins wrote:

Have you read the complaint? If they had done that, they would know that such a violent environment is exactly what (the plaintiff) claims and that arguments to the contrary are disingenuous, if not bordering on outright dishonesty.

In Alabama, people incarcerated in overcrowded and understaffed prisons are regularly raped, sexually assaulted, and subjected to horrific sexual violence. Twenty years after Congress unanimously passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), sexual violence in Alabama prisons is at an all-time high.

For years, officers have been informed of a pattern of sexual assaults, rapes and brutal assaults. Last year, the Alabama Department of Corrections received almost daily reports of sexual assaults in prison.

Mr. Barefield’s complaint, filed in federal court, details allegations of a harrowing incident at an Alabama prison.

According to the complaint, Mr. Barefield, 25, was standing in the cafeteria snack line at Ventress Correctional Facility, a sprawling medium-security prison in southeast Alabama, on Sunday morning, Nov. 11, 2018, when an incarcerated man wearing a teal wristband approached him a knife.

The bracelet meant the man lived in F dormitory, the area of ​​Ventress reserved for prisoners who had recently committed serious infractions and required the highest level of care. LL, the man who stabbed Mr. Barefield, had been transferred to Ventress from St. Clair, a maximum-security prison where he had allegedly stabbed a man in a fight five years earlier.

LL’s bracelet signaled that he had no business being in the cafeteria with Mr. Barefield and the other men there that morning. But there was no guard to stop him. LL didn’t encounter a single guard as he led Mr. Barefield at knifepoint out of the mess hall, across the prison yard, past a series of buildings, and into the F dorm.

The complaint alleges that Ventress officers knew Mr. Barefield could be a target. They had discovered that he was particularly vulnerable to sexual assault. He wore the yellow bracelet of the C dormitory, whose residents are not allowed in the F dormitory. But the security guard at the door to the F dorm did not check his bracelet, and there was no correctional officer on duty at the dorm.

The door should have been locked. That wasn’t it. LL opened it and forced Mr. Barefield into the open dormitory, a large room that housed more than 100 men deemed high risk.

LL marched his prisoner past the rows of metal bunk beds and forced Mr. Barefield onto a lower bunk. A nearby television had the volume turned up to full volume. Sheets and blankets hung from the top bunk, forming a makeshift tent, or “hump” in Alabama prison parlance, that hid what was happening inside.

LL told another prisoner he would “show him how to take control of another inmate.” Then he entered the tent.

What happened next, according to the complaint, is described by Judge Watkins in his August 22, 2023 memorandum opinion on Mr. Barefield’s lawsuit:

There, in the middle of the morning, in a residential home for violent offenders that Barefield should never have entered, in a crowded area that should have been supervised by a security guard, in a makeshift tent that should have been dismantled immediately, a knife that should have been confiscated should be, (LL) raped Jacob Barefield… The television drowned out all the screams.

After the rape finally ended, LL and another incarcerated person held Mr. Barefield hostage in the “hump” for more than five hours. During this time, contrary to Ventress policy, no guards patrolled this part of the F Dormitory or even monitored the security cameras.

If Mr. Barefield told anyone what had happened, he would be killed, LL warned.

When a prison official arrived before dinner to conduct the daily count, LL released Mr. Barefield, who immediately asked for help. He told the shift commander in the yard that he had been attacked and repeatedly asked him for help.

The commander did not take a statement or file a report as required. He did not send Mr. Barefield to the infirmary or ask who had raped him. He simply ordered him to return to the C dorm.

That night, Mr. Barefield called a friend and asked her to report the rape to the warden and other superiors. She did so promptly. However, Mr. Barefield’s statement of claim alleges that these officers did nothing for two days, violating the Prison Rape Elimination Act.

Weeks later, Director Michael Strickland intervened in a meeting between Ventress’ PREA compliance officer and Mr. Barefield. As the supreme authority in Ventress, Judge Watkins said to Mr Barefield “something along the lines of ‘Grow some hair on your chin'”.

“If true,” Judge Watkins wrote, “the allegations in this case tell a horrific story about excessively dangerous conditions at another state prison in Alabama — and the authorities’ failure to remedy them.”

The judge added this footnote:

This case does not come to court in isolation. Over the past year, multiple courts have found substantive allegations of unconstitutional and violent prison conditions throughout Alabama’s prison system. The common themes in these cases are easy to see: staffing shortages, overcrowding, proliferation of contraband weapons, and abject failures to monitor and supervise prisoners – all of which have reportedly led to the highest rates of prisoner violence in the country. And these failures, particularly with regard to the dire staff shortage, are not new. More than five years ago, the Commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) was directed to staff Alabama’s prisons at constitutionally appropriate levels. He has not done this yet.