Rats, Cats, and Roaches:

Prisoners in Fountain Prison Discuss Living Conditions and the Recent Statewide Strike in Alabama

A three week long strike in Alabama’s prisons came to an end the week of October 14.

On September 24, Carol Robinson at AL.com reported, “A national civil rights attorney has been hired by an Alabama family after startling photos of a state inmate’s physical deterioration were made public on social media and immediately went viral.”

The 32 year old prisoner Kastellio Vaughan is serving a 20 year sentence that began in 2019, the article notes. The week of September 24th, Vaughan’s sister made images public of Vaughan “emaciated” with “his eyes rolling into the back of his head… in stark contrast to a photo of Vaughan taken in July.”

Vaughan’s condition was the result of a “surgery in August to remove a portion of his intestines as a result of gunshot injuries sustained prior to his conviction.” According to Vaughan’s family, the article continues, Vaughan “was immediately discharged from the hospital on the same day as his surgery and placed back into the general population at Elmore Correctional Facility.”

The attorney Lee Merritt, hired by Vaughan’s family, said in the article, “‘Due to inadequate facilities, abuse and medical neglect, Vaughn’s medical condition rapidly deteriorated… Vaughan is believed to have lost 75 pounds in less than a month… Vaughan’s surgical scars were exposed to unsanitary conditions and were possibly infected.’” Further, “Merritt said the family’s efforts to obtain information from prison officials were ‘rebuffed.’”

Merritt is “‘investigating whether or not agents of the state of Alabama violated their duty of care to Mr. Vaughan by allowing his medical conditions to spiral,’” he told Robinson.

Two days after the AL.com article, the local WSFA-12 reported, “Protesters aimed at changing conditions inside state prisons and the parole system are taking to the streets Monday in Montgomery… The ‘Break Every Chain’ rally is being held outside the Alabama Department of Corrections headquarters in Montgomery.”

The Alabama Prison Advocacy and Incarcerated Families United Group issued a set of demands, which can be viewed in the WSFA-12 report cited above. However, “Organizers say they’ve been unable to give the list… to ADOC directly, and according to their loved ones inside, inmates are protesting by not showing up to their assigned jobs,” the article notes.

(These jobs are not simply “assigned.” They are also unpaid and prisoners can be reprimanded or punished for not carrying them out, which Alabama Department of Corrections has confirmed to me in past emails. In other centuries, there was a word for work like that.)

The September 26 article notes that “ADOC has since confirmed ‘reports of worker stoppages at all major correctional facilities in the state,’ and says ‘controlled movement and other security measures have been deployed.’”

The article also notes a press release from Governor Kay Ivey’s office, expressing no plans to meet the prisoners’ demands or consider other measures to improve the horrendous conditions in Alabama’s prisons, reduce sentences for any crimes, or release people to reduce overcrowding.

The horrendous conditions and overcrowding in Alabama’s prisons, along with the enormous amount of people incarcerated on nonviolent drug charges, as in many states, has been a growing problem for years, and a backlash against it has been long overdue. Perhaps the most surprising thing about the strike is that it didn’t happen sooner.

My book, Doing Time: American Mass Imprisonment Pandemic, a collection of stories about Alabama prisons from late 2019 to 2020, mostly focusing on Ventress Prison, was the first book, to my knowledge, about American prisons during the pandemic. It covered issues from unpaid labor, prison phones, inadequate staffing, sanitary issues, widespread rodent problems, violence, mid-sentence prison transfers, overpopulation, and countless other crises.

The problems I wrote about in the book, relying primarily on many currently incarcerated sources and several ADOC spokespeople, were not new problems in Alabama prisons in 2020, but many already existing issues posed new dangers because of the pandemic. For example, as ADOC acknowledged to me in the book, safe social distancing is impossible at any prison. The prison phones had countless issues and were in high demand, and prisoners I interviewed said there were no cleaning items kept near the phones with which to clean them in between uses even while the pandemic was raging.

As noted in the book, Alabama’s prisons are an astounding 180% of capacity, or 80% percent overcapacity. Prisoners encountered rats in the light fixtures and in the walk-in freezer of Ventress. After prisoners are killed, it can be the job of unpaid prisoners assigned to cleaning duties to clean up the blood, which ADOC confirmed in their emails to me when I was writing the book. Time will not permit going through the countless examples of the poor living conditions described in the book.

The week of October 14, I interview two men incarcerated in Fountain Prison about the conditions there and the ongoing strike in the state’s prisons. Their identities are confidential in this story to protect their privacy and prevent retaliation against them for speaking out. I’ll refer to the first source as “Justin.”

Justin heard the strike was taking place the day it began. “It was passing around through an advocate group, and the advocate group was telling everybody about, ‘The shutdown is close.’ It was coming close on the 23rd. On the 23rd, they was preparing for the strike. It happened on the 26th.”

He continues, “It was just a day that everybody thought was going to be just a strike for one day, but it turned out to be for three weeks.” Justin tells me that the day we are speaking, October 14, is “supposed to be the last day” of the strike, “but I don’t know what kind of results they got from these people in Montgomery, but they did say that the judge had gave some type of order on the 14th, supposed to have gave a ruling on a motion.”

Justin is likely referring here to the October 7th motion. As reported on October 12th by the local WAAY-31 ABC, “Attorneys representing 37 inmates in Alabama prison facilities are demanding a federal judge intervene and force Alabama Department of Corrections staff to stop what they claim are ‘retaliatory tactics’ in response to the inmate labor strike.”

The report notes, “The plaintiff-intervenors are asking to be added to the ongoing Department of Justice court case against ADOC. They claim conditions have gotten worse since the original DOJ complaints came down in 2020 and 2021,” and further, “The judge ordered ADOC to respond to this motion by Oct. 14.”

In Fountain Prison, at the beginning of the strike, says Justin, for the prisoners, the first conversations were about communicating and organizing, “trying to get [other prisoners] prepared for the strike, trying to explain to them what was actually going on.”

He continues, “Actually, guys in the prison system here in Fountain Correctional Facility, they actually pulled together. We are one of the last prisons that are standing on the strike. When we learned of the strike, we went on it on the 26th. Others around the prison explained what was going on… and to be prepared for it, not to price gouge.”

Justin explains, “From the strike, we’re looking for different results in the parole hearings, the parole board. There’re guys doing more time than they should have on these sentences. I’m not saying they should let everybody go, but they should consider some of the guys that’ve been in for a long time. We’re not asking to relieve guys with heinous crimes. However, we are asking people to consider the guys that’s been locked up 20, 30 years on a case,” particularly burglary charges and nonviolent drug charges, he says, “as well as the Alabama Habitual Felony Offender Act, which has got a lot of guys in the State of Alabama’s prison system.”

The tactic of protest, says Justin, “is basically work stoppage. Make the officers do everything, made them feed us and everything. One particular day [of the strike], we received a rat in one of the sacked lunches they was passing out… [The officers] had to do all this stuff that normally we inmates would do.” During the strike, officers have to “make the food, wash the clothes, do everything.”

Justin is able to send a video and photo of the dead rat a prisoner claimed he found in his lunch bag instead of food the day it happened. (See the video and photo below.)

Justin has been transferred to many prisons in the state in his approximately 10 year long sentence, as many prisoners are. On the average day before the strike, unpaid prisoners would do “all the work,” he said, and estimated that, in Fountain and other prisons where he’s done time, there are 200 to 300 unpaid laborers working at any time to keep the facility operating.

In contrast, asked how many prison guards are working at each time, he estimates there are “five or six, sometimes eight” on each shift, but says there is one dorm in Fountain right now for which there is no officer on at night.

Justin elaborated on the living conditions at Fountain. Though they’re bad all over the state, “The living conditions here at Fountain are horrible. It’s very nasty. The food is nasty. The kitchen is nasty.”

He adds, “They have a prison up under this prison. They’ve got lock up cells under the prison at Fountain Correctional Facility… That’s like 31 cells that’s down under the prison. They’re still downstairs. Water flows up under it and they have to pump it out.”

He continues, “The prison here is very nasty. It’s got a lot of cats around it, rats around it, roaches. It’s infested with roaches.”

I reply, “Cats?”

“Yeah, cats,” says Justin. “They walk around the prison all day, all up in the dorms where we sleep in. It might be 10, 15, 20 cats here.”

“Who brought cats in there?” I ask.

“I can’t say that. I don’t know who brought them in. They was here when I got here.”

“So, they’re, like, stray cats from the area or something?” I ask.

“Right,” he answers.

“And the corrections officers, they’re not doing anything to get the cats out of there?” I ask.

“No,” says Justin.

He was able to send me a photo of the cats in the prison yard of Fountain. (See below.)

Further, Justin says there is “no area [of Fountain Prison] that you can say is clean. It’s nasty… They have an underground at this prison, downstairs, where they can take inmates and beat them and do what they do to them.” Justin says he knows prisoners this has happened to at Fountain.

Days later, I interview another prisoner in Fountain. I’ll call him “Mike” to protect his safety and privacy. His account of the prison conditions and his experiences of the strike are similar to Justin’s.

“I’m talking about it’s really, really nasty,” says Mike. “It’s bad. It’s filthy. I’m talking about roaches, rats. It’s just horrible, for real. You know what I’m saying? It’s like a dungeon. It ain’t been upgraded none.”

He adds, “It’s cold. Right now, it has no heat in the dorms, nothing. Windows are busted out.”

Commenting on the security of the prison, Mike continues, “And then sometimes you’ll be in the dorm, and it’s dangerous, because there’re no police in here at all, for real. I’m talking about at night, by yourself. Anything can happen. I’m talking about you could just actually walk up and kill somebody and lay back down and they wouldn’t know who did it, for real.”

Mike, too, describes the basement area underneath Fountain prison. “There’s an underground prison” under Fountain, he says, “where they used to use it. They don’t use it no more. It flooded with water and stuff like that, mosquitos and everything.”

He elaborates on other problems with the living conditions. “They’ve got black mold all in this prison, and they’ll just paint over it. The shower area, I wouldn’t even bathe my dog in it… It’s messed up, for real,” says Mike.

Asked if he’s ever seen any cats in Fountain Prison, Mike answers, “Yes, plenty of them.”

Asked what’s up with that, and if he knows where they came from, he says, “Man, I don’t know what’s up with the cats. It’s like they brought them to kill off the rats and stuff, but they don’t even eat the rats. They don’t even hunt. Them cats don’t even hunt. They eat the food out of the chow hall when folks throw it to them.”

Mike elaborates on the basement area of the prison. Asked if he has ever been down there, he answers, “Yes, when I was on the work squad. I’ve been down there before. They had, like, old files and stuff down there, prison files and documents like that down there, stuff like that… There’re some cells down there.”

Asked if he is aware of any prisoners being taken down to the basement and assaulted by prison staff, Mike answers, “Yeah, hell yeah, all the time. They’ll do that now,” and like Justin, says he knows people this has happened to as well.

Commenting on the strike, Mike says, “Actually, I think [the strike] is a good thing,” though he wishes the Alabama Department of Corrections “wasn’t prepared for it, so they could feel the struggle that we feel, because – for real – there’s a lot of [prison staff] in here that really do mistreat people on everything. I’ve seen officers just slap inmates for no reason. It’s like because we’re felons, ain’t nobody standing up for us.”

He continues, “It’s a lot of bad things going on over here. Then, a lot of the officers, they’ll pay Newport cigarettes for you to jump on another inmate. You know what I’m saying? It’s crazy.”

Asked if he has an assigned job in the prison, Mike answers, “No, I wouldn’t work for these folks. Why should we? What do you get out of it when you work for them? Nothing. You get treated like a slave, talked crazy to, and all of that.”

Asked what he would do if he was assigned a job, he says, “I would tell them I ain’t going to do it, straight up, because I know how they is.”

(In my book, the ADOC confirmed over email that prisoners can be punished for refusal to work their unpaid jobs.)

Mike has been in prison since 2019 for a nonviolent, marijuana related drug charge.

“Marijuana, that’s it,” he says. “That’s just the way the DOC in Alabama is, man, Alabama prison, man.”

The same week as my interviews with Mike and Justin, I seek comment from the Alabama Department of Corrections for this article. ADOC declined to comment on whether measures were being taken to reduce overcrowding and improve living conditions in the prisons as a result of the strike.

ADOC also declined to comment on whether they are aware of cats living in Fountain Prison, and declined to comment on whether there is a basement area of Fountain Prison. They declined to answer any questions. Instead, they sent me a two paragraph “media advisory” declaring the strike over and expressing gratitude to their employees.