By Kim Chandler
Associated Press
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — An Alabama women’s prison will be overhauled after the U.S. Justice Department said officers there coerced inmates into sex, watched them in showers and bathrooms and organized a New Year’s Eve strip show.
On Thursday, the Justice Department filed both a civil lawsuit against the state and a settlement agreement to address the alleged abuses at the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka. Vanita Gupta, the Justice Department’s top civil rights lawyer, said the agreement could serve as a model for other prisons.
“The settlement ultimately aims for a complete transformation, a kind of cultural change inside the institution,” Gupta said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Those improvements include requirements that sexual abuse and harassment allegations are properly and thoroughly reported, and a rigorous tracking system for prison staff. State officials also agreed to install monitoring cameras and increase privacy in bathrooms.
“The Alabama Department of Corrections was really a full partner in drafting the agreement,” Gupta said, adding, “It’s hard for anyone to take a look at our findings and not be objectively disturbed by what we found.”
The Justice Department said last year that corrections officers at the prison had assaulted inmates, coercedinmates into sex, encouraged inmates to engage in group sexual activities, inappropriately watched inmates in the showers and bathrooms and organized a New Year’s Eve strip show.
“Defendants have allowed a sexualized environment to exist at Tutwiler, such that sexual abuse and sexual harassment are constant, and prisoners must sometimes submit to unlawful sexual advances from staff in order to obtain necessities or to avoid punishment,” the complaint against the state read.
The state has also agreed to hire full-time compliance manager for the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act.
“Hopefully, we are closing an ugly chapter in our state’s correctional history, but I don’t think by any stretch of the imagination that it is something to be happy about. It should be a wake-up call for all of us that we’ve got to do a better job of managing our corrections system.” said state Sen. Cam Ward, who chairs a state task force on prison reform.
Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley said the state has tried to address the concerns raised by Justice Department for the past three years.