ACLU of Alabama Demands Accountability for Deaths in State Custody

MONTGOMERY, Ala.— The Alabama Department of Corrections is failing to provide full information on how Alabamians are dying in its custody — making it harder to assess how dangerous conditions are inside state prisons. According to a new report from the ACLU of Alabama with the national ACLU, ADOC’s lack of transparency and incomplete reporting raises serious accountability concerns.

The ACLU of Alabama and the ACLU spent thousands of hours researching and documenting the deaths of incarcerated people in ADOC custody during the 2024 calendar year. In total, 277 people died last year, and in more than one in three of those cases, ADOC listed the cause of death as “unknown” or “under investigation.”

“ADOC continues to avoid accountability by failing to provide full information about the deaths in its prisons,” said Alison Mollman, Legal Director at the ACLU of Alabama. “With prison conditions deemed unconstitutional by the Department of Justice, it’s time we hold ADOC leadership and staff responsible for these premature and preventable deaths.”

The Alabama Department of Corrections stopped its monthly reporting on in-custody deaths in 2019. Since then, it has only provided quarterly updates. Further, these quarterly reports do not include demographic data for those who have died in custody.

ADOC classifies incarcerated people’s deaths into one of eight categories: Accidental; Accidental/Overdose; Autopsy Not Authorized; Inmate-on-Inmate Homicide; Judicial Homicide; Natural Causes; Suicide; or Undetermined. However, the ACLU’s report found that there are no definitions to these broad classifications, creating serious barriers to public accountability.

The report also emphasizes how ADOC’s official classifications obscure, rather than clarify, how people are dying in custody. Terms like “natural,” “accidental,” and “undetermined” are used without any public definitions or methodology, making it difficult to assess what actually happened in many cases. In some instances, deaths caused by violence were labeled as “natural.” Others were marked “Autopsy Not Authorized,” a term that suggests family refusal but instead reflects current state law which does not require autopsies for every death in custody. These barriers, the report warns, significantly limit public transparency and accountability.

“Our team took over a year to investigate deaths happening in ADOC through multiple sources due to ADOC’s lack of transparency,” said Ranya Ahmed, Head of Analytics at the ACLU. “We need consistency, clarity, and correction of errors, such as the names of those incarcerated, by ADOC.”

Other findings from the report include:

• 72% of individuals who died by homicide in ADOC custody were Black. Although Black Alabamians make up just over a quarter of the state’s population, they comprised more than 72 percent of those killed by homicide in Alabama’s prisons in 2024. Nearly half of all individuals who died in custody were Black.
• 46 of 277 (17% of) deaths were classified as accidental or due to overdose. The report documents the continued availability of drugs in ADOC facilities and notes that incarcerated individuals continued to access illegal substances even when visitation was suspended due to COVID-19. In one three-month period alone, over 50,000 grams of drugs were found inside state prisons.
• At least 38 ADOC staff members were arrested for contraband-related offenses from January 2024 through November 2024. The report details arrests across multiple facilities, including the indictment of a warden on drug charges and several staff charged with using their positions for personal gain. ADOC staff previously told the U.S. Department of Justice that “without a doubt,” the number one-way contraband enters prisons is through staff.

To ensure greater public accountability and improve the accuracy of information surrounding in-custody deaths, the ACLU of Alabama is calling on state lawmakers to require the ADOC to:

• Require autopsies for all who die in custody.
• Update definitions of death - categorization and the methodology utilized to categorize deaths publicly on their website.
• Return to monthly reporting.
• Provide an annual report on deaths. This must include the total number of deaths for each calendar year, the causes of death, the number of open investigations, the average time of investigation, and accompanying demographic information for those who died in custody.

These changes would improve the accuracy of death reporting and help create a more transparent and accountable corrections system in Alabama.

To read the full report, visit: https://www.alabamasmartjustice.org/reports/death-capital-report