Is This The Worst Prison In America?

The New York Daily News headline reads “Hell Behind Bars.” The subject of the article: an Alabama prison rife with abuse and now under investigation by the Justice Department.

An Alabama women’s prison is a “toxic” house of horrors in which “repeated and open sexual behavior” is the norm, federal investigators said.

A Department of Justice investigation found that for two decades prisoners at Tutwiler Prison for Women have been subjected to all manner of humiliation.

The lengthy list of indignities includes, officers forcing women into sexual acts in exchange for basic sanitary supplies, male guards openly watching women shower and use the bathroom, a staff-organized strip show, and a constant barrage of sexually offensive language, according to investigators.

At least a third of the 99 employees at the prison with a population of nearly 900 have had sex with prisoners, according to the department.

And that’s just the beginning.

Read the rest here.

By: dave-dr-gonzo

David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.

* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.