PRISONS ARE A PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS: ALABAMA PAVES THE WAY

This is a culmination of cited resources. Due to technical complications, I could not add them as normal footnotes at the end of each page.

Home Page

1. Encyclopedia of Alabama. Cherokee Lands in Alabama. Map. Accessed April 30, 2025. https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/media/cherokee-lands-in-alabama/. ↩︎
2. Kaba, Mariame. We Do This ’Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice. Edited by Tamara K. Nopper. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2021. 

Introduction

1. Death Penalty Information Center. “The Death Penalty in 2024: Executions.” Accessed March 16, 2025. https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/research/analysis/reports/year-end-reports/the-death-penalty-in-2024/executions. ↩︎
2. Death Penalty Information Center. Accessed March 16, 2025. https://deathpenaltyinfo.org. ↩︎
3. Mapping Police Violence. Accessed March 5, 2024. https://mappingpoliceviolence.org.MappingPoliceViolence.org, “Mapping Police Violence”, March 5, 2024, https://mappingpoliceviolence.org ↩︎
4. Kaba, Mariame. We Do This ‘Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2021. ↩︎
5. Cason, Mike. “Alabama’s New $1 Billion Prison Will Be ‘Larger Than a Lot of County Seats’.” AL.com, October 23, 2024. https://www.al.com/news/2024/10/alabamas-new-1-billion-prison-will-be-larger-than-some-county-seats.html.  ↩︎
6. Taylor, Drew. “Alabama Prison Partially Funded Through COVID-19 Relief Funds Will Be Named After Gov. Kay Ivey.” CBS 42, November 13, 2024. https://www.cbs42.com/alabama-news/alabama-prison-partially-funded-through-covid-19-relief-funds-will-be-named-after-gov-kay-ivey/. ↩︎
7. Free Alabama Movement (F.A.M.). “Who We Are.” Pamphlet. Accessed March 16, 2025. https://freealabamamovement.wordpress.com/f-a-m-pamphlet-who-we-are/. ↩︎
8. Cloud, David, Ilana Garcia-Grossman, Andrea Armstrong, and Brie Williams. “Public Health and Prisons: Priorities in the Age of Mass Incarceration.” Annual Review of Public Health 44 (2023): 407–428. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-071521-034016. ↩︎
9. Browne, Jaron. “Rooted in Slavery: Prison Labor Exploitation.” Race, Poverty & the Environment 17, no. 1 (2010): 78–80. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41554724. ↩︎
10. Carpenter, Taylor. “The Death Sentence That Is America’s Toxic Prisons.” Indiana Health Law Review17, no. 2 (2020): 229–256. https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/inhealr17&i=256. ↩︎
11. Bradshaw, Elizabeth A. “Do Prisoners’ Lives Matter? Examining the Intersection of Punitive Policies, Racial Disparities and COVID-19 as State Organized Race Crime.” State Crime Journal 10, no. 1 (2021): 16–44. https://doi.org/10.13169/statecrime.10.1.0016. ↩︎
12. Newport, John. “Review of Health Services in Correctional Facilities in the United States.” Public Health Reports 92, no. 6 (1977): 564–569. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4595800. ↩︎
13. Douglas, N., E. Plugge, and R. Fitzpatrick. “The Impact of Imprisonment on Health: What Do Women Prisoners Say?” Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 63, no. 9 (2009): 749–754. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20721048. ↩︎
14. LeMasters, Katherine, Michael F. Behne, Jennifer Lao, Meghan Peterson, and Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein. “Suicides in State Prisons in the United States: Highlighting Gaps in Data.” PLOS ONE(2023). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0285729. ↩︎
15. Wilper, Andrew P., Steffie Woolhandler, J. Wesley Boyd, Karen E. Lasser, Danny McCormick, David H. Bor, and David U. Himmelstein. “The Health and Health Care of US Prisoners: Results of a Nationwide Survey.” American Journal of Public Health 99, no. 4 (2011): 666–672. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2008.144279. ↩︎
16. Stürup-Toft, S., E. J. O’Moore, and E. H. Plugge. “Looking Behind the Bars: Emerging Health Issues for People in Prison.” British Medical Bulletin 125, no. 1 (2018): 15–23. https://doi.org/10.1093/bmb/ldx052. ↩︎
17. Baćak, Valerio, and Greg Ridgeway. “Availability of Health-Related Programs in Private and Public Prisons.” Journal of Correctional Health Care 24, no. 1 (2018): [page range]. https://doi.org/10.1177/1078345817728078. ↩︎
18. Wildeman, Christopher, Maria D. Fitzpatrick, and Alyssa W. Goldman. “Conditions of Confinement in American Prisons and Jails.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 14 (2018): 29–47. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-101317-031025. ↩︎

Background

1. Harriet Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present (Doubleday, 2007) ↩︎

Research

1. Wolfe, M I et al. “An outbreak of syphilis in Alabama prisons: correctional health policy and communicable disease control.” American journal of public health vol. 91,8 (2001): 1220-5. doi:10.2105/ajph.91.8.1220 ↩︎
2. Wolfe, M I et al. “An outbreak of syphilis in Alabama prisons”  ↩︎
3. Wolfe, M I et al. “An outbreak of syphilis in Alabama prisons” ↩︎
4. Sprague C, Scanlon ML, Radhakrishnan B, Pantalone DW.”The HIV Prison Paradox: Agency and HIV-Positive Women’s Experiences in Jail and Prison in Alabama.” Qualitative Health Research. 2017;27(10):1427-1444. doi:10.1177/1049732316672640 ↩︎
5. Sprague C, Scanlon ML, Radhakrishnan B, Pantalone DW. “The HIV Prison Paradox” ↩︎
6. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/1981-audre-lorde-uses-anger-women-responding-racism/ ↩︎
7. Sprague C, Scanlon ML, Radhakrishnan B, Pantalone DW. “The HIV Prison Paradox” ↩︎
8. Sprague C, Scanlon ML, Radhakrishnan B, Pantalone DW. “The HIV Prison Paradox” ↩︎
9. Sanchez, Guillermo V et al. “Pneumococcal Disease Outbreak at a State Prison, Alabama, USA, September 1-October 10, 20181.” Emerging infectious diseases vol. 27,7 (2021): 1949-1952. doi:10.3201/eid2707.203678 ↩︎
10. Sanchez, Guillermo V et al. “Pneumococcal Disease Outbreak at a State Prison, Alabama, USA, September 1-October 10, 20181.”  ↩︎
11. Braggs v. Dunn. Complaint. Case No. 2:14-cv-00601-MHT-TFM. M.D. Ala., filed July 31, 2014. Southern Poverty Law Center. Accessed March 30, 2025. https://www.splcenter.org/resources/civil-rights-case-docket/braggs-et-al-v-jefferson-dunn-et-al/. ↩︎
12. U.S. Department of Justice. Complaint in United States v. State of Alabama and Alabama Department of Corrections. Filed December 9, 2020. Accessed [Month Day, Year]. https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-files-lawsuit-against-state-alabama-unconstitutional-conditions-states. ↩︎
13. Incarcerated Workers v. State of Alabama et al., Notice of Appeal, referenced in “Alabama Prisoners File Appeal to Court’s Dismissal in Forced Labor Claims,” *ABC 33/40*, February 15, 2023, accessed March 30, 2025, https://abc3340.com/news/local/alabama-prisoners-file-appeal-to-courts-dismissal-in-forced-labor-claims-against-state-alabama-prisons-governor-kay-ivey-john-hamm. ↩︎

Happening in Alabama

1. lor, Drew. “Alabama Prison Partially Funded Through COVID-19 Relief Funds Will Be Named After Gov. Kay Ivey.” CBS 42, November 13, 2024. https://www.cbs42.com/alabama-news/alabama-prison-partially-funded-through-covid-19-relief-funds-will-be-named-after-gov-kay-ivey/. ↩︎
2. Death Penalty Information Center. Enduring Injustice: The Persistence of Racial Discrimination in the U.S. Death Penalty. Washington, DC: Death Penalty Information Center, 2020. Accessed March 21,2025. https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/research/analysis/reports/in-depth/enduring-injustice-the-persistence-of-racial-discrimination-in-the-u-s-death-penalty. ↩︎
3. Equal Justice Initiative. “Alabama’s Second Execution of Kenny Smith Challenged as Unconstitutionally Cruel.” EJI News, November 22, 2024. https://eji.org/news/alabamas-second-execution-of-kenny-smith-challenged-as-unconstitutionally-cruel/. ↩︎
4. NPR, “Alabama’s Nitrogen Gas Execution Faces Legal Challenges,” November 22, 2024, https://www.npr.org/2024/11/22/nx-s1-5201699/alabama-nitrogen-gas-execution. ↩︎
5. NPR, “Alabama to Move Most Inmates from Notoriously Crowded, Violent Holman Prison,” January 29, 2020, https://www.npr.org/2020/01/29/800877838/alabama-to-move-most-inmates-from-notoriously-crowded-violent-holman-prison. ↩︎

What Now?

1. Jordan, June. Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays. New York: Basic/Civitas Books, 2002. ↩︎
2. Shakur, Assata. Assata: An Autobiography. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1987. ↩︎
3. hooks, bell. Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. New York: Routledge, 2003. ↩︎

Conclusion

1. Levin, Sam. “Los Angeles Palisades Prisoners Fight Wildfires as Part of California’s Controversial Program.” The Marshall Project, January 11, 2025. Accessed April 22, 2025. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/01/11/los-angeles-palisades-prisoners-firefighters. ↩︎