Four years ago, Monica Washington, an inmate serving 20 years for armed robbery, was raped and impregnated by a male prison guard in Alabama’s Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women. Her three-year-old daughter currently lives with relatives near Montgomery, and the guard, Rodney Arbuthnot, ended up only serving six months for custodial sexual misconduct and was recently been compelled to pay $230 a month in child support.
As horrifying as this situation may sound, it is far from an isolated incident. “Tutwiler has a history of unabated staff-on-prisoner sexual abuse and harassment,” Jocelyn Samuels, the acting assistant attorney general for civil rights for the Justice Department, wrote in a letter to Ala. Gov. Robert Bentley (R).
“The women at Tutwiler universally fear for their safety. They live in a sexualized environment with repeated and open sexual behavior, including: abusive sexual contact between staff and prisoners; sexualized activity, including a strip show condoned by staff; profane and unprofessional sexualized language and harassment; and deliberate cross-gender viewing of prisoners showering, urinating, and defecating.”
The letter continued to note that inappropriate sexual behavior there is “grossly underreported, due to insufficient staffing and supervision, inadequate policies and procedures, a heightened fear of retaliation, and an inadequate investigative process.”
According to Samuels’ office, the Ala. Department of Corrections has known that Tutwiler staff members have sexually exploited the female prison population for nearly two decades, but it has did little to remedy the situation.
Her office also found that the staff’s sexual misconduct has also contributed to an excessive use of force, unconstitutional use of confinement and denial of medical and mental health care, and discriminatory treatment based on race and sexual orientation. As such, the assistant attorney general’s office found the state of Alabama in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment from both the federal government and the states.
“It’s a primitive, very backward prison system. … I’ve worked in prisons for most of 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Larry F. Wood, a clinical psychologist who was hired at Tutwiler in 2012. “We need to back up and look at it with fresh eyes. The people who are running it don’t have the perspective to see what can change.”
Tutwiler is just one in a group of troubled prisons in the Alabama correctional system. Alabama currently has the second-highest number of inmates per capita in the country, with more than half being held on non-violent drug or property crimes.
The prison is currently at 225 percent of its maximum capacity. Due to chronic understaffing and limited to only three cameras, the prison, like many other in the state, is prone to abuse. At least six Tutwiler correctional employees have been convicted of sexual crimes since 2009.
In a state where being tough on crime wins votes, it is hard to convince the legislature that prison reform is necessary. Federal government intervention and other changes are needed.
“We think that there is a very strong case of constitutional violations here,” Samuels said.
“Right now, for me personally, it’s still the same as far as the officers,” Washington, who is still serving time at Tutwiler, told New York Times. “It’s like an act of Congress to get the things you need just to live. It’s inhumane for inmates to be here, period.”