Key Points:
- A specially-conducted independent audit of the Alabama Department of Corrections found multiple issues at its central office and one men’s prison in Montgomery County.
- A state senator that created the pilot program for the audit hopes to work with other legislators and Gov.-elect Tommy Tuberville to change the culture of the department from the top-down.
- A criminal justice advocate said the men’s facility examined served as the “tip of the iceberg.”
An independent audit of the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) found issues with “secrecy” in its central office and documentation of violence at an intake facility that are consistent with complaints in a federal lawsuit.
The 367-page audit released on Friday by the Alabama Department of Examiners of Public Accounts (ADEPA), an arm of the Legislature, described “an underlying sense of secrecy within the agency, whether perceived or actual” during its review. Examiners were required to route all requests through ADOC’s Legal Division.
ADOC is set to go to trial on Nov. 30 over conditions of the state’s men’s prisons, a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2020. The charges followed the release of reports in 2019 and 2020 detailing the use of excessive force by corrections officers against inmates and physical and sexual assault of incarcerated men in the state’s prisons…