While the 13th Amendment & pay for incarcerated people are a trending topic, it’s worth noting that most jobs performed by people incarcerated in Alabama’s state prisons pay exactly $0.00 per hour. This is not a well-known fact even in Alabama, but I have the receipts. THREAD 1/X
I’ll say that again, for emphasis and to make sure I’m being clear: in Alabama’s state prisons, incarcerated people aren’t paid at all for the majority of work they do, from scrubbing toilets & cooking food to acting as hospice workers & mopping floors. 2/X
An internal Alabama Department of Corrections document I obtained earlier this year showed that no standard jobs in multiple Alabama prisons paid a single cent as of June. 3/X
I asked the Alabama Dept. of Corrections and a spokesperson confirmed what I had found. She also noted that able-bodied people incarcerated in the state’s prisons are required to work - for free. The DOC’s full statement is at this link: reckonsouth.com/alabama-depart… 4/X
Justin Faircloth, who is incarcerated in Alabama’s Limestone Correctional Facility who can’t work because he has Stage IV colon cancer, also confirmed that most of his fellow incarcerated individuals are not paid for their labor. 5/X
Meanwhile, incarcerated people in Alabama’s state prisons have to have money if they hope to purchase a wide range of vital items, from toothpaste & shampoo to snacks & stationery 6/X
The Alabama DOC’s network of prison commissaries brings in more than $1 million in profit each month, all off of sales to incarcerated people. In May alone, the DOC’s commissaries made more than $1.2 million, according to internal records I obtained earlier this year.
This is just the tip of the iceberg re: the punitive economics of Alabama’s state prison system. There’s tons of great scholarship out there on this issue, by advocacy orgs like @southerncenter & @splcenter. 8/X
Or you can check out the app I created for @reckonsouth last month, which covers all the issues I touched on in this thread and more, in far greater detail. The TLDR of all this: Incarcerated people are vastly underpaid in prisons all across the U.S. 10/10 reckonsouth.com/commissary/
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Citing a “long history of serious deficiencies,” ICE has announced it will not longer house immigration detainees in the Etowah County jail al.com/news/2022/03/i…
This announcement comes six years after ICE toured the Alabama facility and issued a report detailing numerous failings including safety concerns and subpar food and health care. ice.gov/doclib/foia/od…
ICE’s announcement also comes four years after I reported that Etowah County’s former sheriff pocketed more than $1.5 million of federal money that was allocated to feed ICE detainees. al.com/news/2018/12/h…
Creeping on Charles Barkley at a COVID vaccination drive at Birmingham’s Legion Field just now. Story tk later today on @aldotcom.
Here’s more about the event if you’d like to come out and get the shot and meet Charles Barkley this afternoon. He’s been a prominent advocate for vaccination in Alabama and beyond.
Kabria Rembert, 20, said she got the vaccination here today because: “I’m young and I don’t have any underlying conditions, but I’ve got to take care of the people around me. I’m just trying not to be selfish.”
With mobile morgues in place in Mobile Co., AL’s health officer said today “there’s no room to put these bodies.” In March 2020, I wrote about AL’s mass-casualty plans. They include mass burials & cremations and temporary internments. A terrifying prospect al.com/news/2020/03/w…
Worth noting: These plans are still up on the AL Dept of Public Health website. And the ADPH’s general counsel told me last March “Alabama will continue to follow its disaster and pandemic planning documents, according each individual respect and dignity.” alabamapublichealth.gov/pandemicflu/as…
Here’s the slide deck for a 2009 presentation state health officer Scott Harris led to educate coroners on what their roles would be if there were to be a high-casualty pandemic. One slide is titled “Mass burial planning.” It’s still up on ADPH’s website. alabamapublichealth.gov/CEP/assets/Fat…
Tonight, Alabama has zero open ICU beds. Worth remembering that until last March, AL had a discriminatory protocol in place advising hospitals low on ventilators to take patients w/ certain diagnoses & disabilities off vents to free them up for others. 1/7 al.com/news/2020/03/l…
The protocol stated that during a worst-case scenario pandemic, Alabama hospitals should “not offer mechanical ventilator support for patients” w/ any of a long list of medical issues and intellectual disabilities. 2/7
Four days after I reported on the existence of the protocol, which the state health department later said was only a suggestion, the U.S. Dept of Health & Human Service’s Civil Rights Office issued a bulletin warning states against discriminatory ventilator triage practices. 3/7
Random Alabama factoid that still blows my mind 3 years after I found out about it: The municipal laws for municipalities in 18 counties are not available on any state website and the state does not have them in any digital format. 1/3
I was told this is because the state's contract to have them digitized ran out after Mobile County. The laws - *which are part of the state code* - were being digitized county by county in alphabetical order. So Mobile County is online, but Monroe, Montgomery, etc. are not. 2/3
When I needed to look through them for a story, there was no official way to access the text of all the municipal laws in the state w/o physically going to each county. I eventually tracked down a paper copy of the full state code at the 3rd law school I called. Good times. 3/3
Update on my March reporting for @propublica & @aldotcom: In multiple Alabama counties, ppl w/ >2 felony convictions are still being charged w/ failing to register as repeat felons & failing to present "felon ID" to police, crimes punishable by up to a year in jail & fines. 1/6
Alabama is the only state w/ state laws requiring 3-time felons to register & carry "felon ID," which even most lawyers & felons have never heard of. Ppl do end up serving real jail time for violating the laws, which are only enforced in some counties. 2/6 propublica.org/article/a-litt…
As a result of my reporting on this arbitrary regime, some Alabama sheriffs said they'd only enforce the laws in tandem w/ other charges. But ppl are still being punished for violating them alone. And the tally mounts, w/ hundreds of people arrested on the charges since 2014. 3/6