William C. Holman Correctional Facility is an Alabama Department of Corrections prison located in unincorporated southwestern Escambia County, Alabama. The facility is along Alabama State Highway 21, 9 miles (14 km) north of Atmore in southern Alabama.
The facility was built to house 581 inmates. Holman now holds more than a thousand prisoners. It has 630 general population beds, 200 single cells, and 168 death row cells, for a capacity of 998 maximum through minimum-custody inmates, including a large contingent of life without parole inmates. The death chamber is located at Holman, where all state executions are conducted. Holman also operates two major correctional industries within the facility's perimeter: a license plate plant and a sewing factory.
Holman Correctional Facility was the subject of a documentary on MSNBC entitled Lockup: Holman Extended Stay (2006). The Warden at Holman Correctional Facility was Grantt Culliver, who served from 2002 - 2009. The current Warden is Cynthia Stewart.
In 2016 the prison had the reputation of the most violent in the country, due to overcrowding and understaffing. That year the Department of Justice initiated an investigation at the prison of conditions for both prisoners and officers.
Video Holman Correctional Facility
History
Opened during December 1969, Holman originally had a basic capacity for 520 medium-custody inmates, including a death row cellblock with a capacity of 20. It was constructed for $5,000,000 during the administration of Governor of Alabama Lurleen Wallace and Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner James T. Hagen. The prisoners of the old Kilby Prison were moved to Holman Prison. It was named in honor of a former warden, William C. Holman.
Due in part to legislative rules creating long-term penalties for drug crimes, the prison population at Holman and other facilities began to climb in the 1970s. On Friday August 29, 1975, two U.S. federal district court judges, William Brevard Hand and Frank M. Johnson Jr., ordered Alabama authorities to stop sending any more prisoners to Holman, Fountain Correctional Facility, Draper Correctional Facility, and the Medical and Diagnostic Center, due to overcrowding; the four prisons, designed to hold 2,212 prisoners, were holding about 3,800.
Since Holman opened, it gained a reputation for being the most violent prison in Alabama, a situation exacerbated by the years of overcrowding. In 1974 an employee was killed by an inmate with a knife. In 1985 a large riot occurred in which 22 men were taken hostage.
Staff and prisoners said that after Grantt Culliver became the warden in 2002, violence decreased. This was covered in the documentary, Lockup: Holman Correctional Facility (2006), which MSNBC produced. Hillary Heath, the inside producer of Lockup, said that it is difficult for reputations to die down, so Holman still has a reputation for violence. By 2016 violence had increased again.
Riots broke out against conditions in March 2016. In the first riot fires were set in a prison dorm; both the warden and a prison guard sustained stab wounds. An individual recorded portions of the riot on a cell phone and posted it to social media.
In September 2016, a group of corrections officers went on strike over safety concerns and overcrowding. Prisoners refer to the facility as a "slaughterhouse," as stabbings are a routine occurrence.
Maps Holman Correctional Facility
Operations
The Gulf Coast area, where Holman is located, often has 100-degree heat and high humidity during days in the summer. The prison administration cannot afford to install air conditioning, so the prison has hundreds of industrial fans used for moving the air in an attempt to provide cooling. The hottest areas in the prison are the kitchen facilities.
Staff shortages are made worse by absenteeism. On some days, as few as nine guards are on duty. Only two of the six towers on the perimeter are manned. Annual staff turnover is reported to be sixty percent. As a result of a hiring freeze in 2014, mandatory overtime was commonly required for the guards.
Demographics
The prison has a capacity of over 800 prisoners. The state's death row has a capacity of fifty-six but in early 2017 held almost two hundred men.
Prisoner life
Hillary Heath, the inside producer of Lockup, said that when she asked prisoners to describe Holman, they used names like "The Slaughterhouse", "Slaughter Pen of the South", and "House of Pain", which referred to the frequent stabbings and violent attacks committed among the prisoners. The names "The Bottom" and "The Pit" refer to the prison's location in southern Alabama. One inmate said that, within the state, "you can't get any lower than this."
Heath reported that Holman inmates made "julep", a homegrown whiskey, using water, sugar, and yeast. She described julep as a brown liquid with dark floating chunks, resembling raw sewage. She said its odor "was not as vile as I imagined", and it smelled like sourdough bread and prunes.
Prisoners who commit indecent exposure commit rule violation #38, thus indecent exposure is referred to by inmates as "doing a '38'". Violating rule 38 of ADOC policy requires an inmate to attend sex addiction courses.
Notable prisoners
Death row (does not include prisoners who were sent to Holman only for their executions):
- Henry Hays - Convicted of murder of Michael Donald - Alabama Institutional Serial #Z443 - Executed on June 6, 1997
- Walter Leroy Moody, murderer of Robert Smith Vance - Alabama Institutional Serial #00Z613
- Daniel Lee Siebert - Alabama Institutional Serial #00Z475 - Died from cancer while in custody in 2008, he was known for challenging protocol.
Non-death row:
- Bobby Frank Cherry - One of the Klan perpetrators of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, which killed four African-American girls. He was convicted of the murders in 2002. On October 13, 2004, Cherry was transferred from Holman Prison to Atmore Community Hospital in Atmore.Cherry died while in hospital custody on November 18, 2004.
- Bobby Ray Gilbert - Featured in three parts of MSNBC's documentary Lockup, (2006), filmed inside Holman prison.
See also
- Capital punishment in Alabama
References
External links
- Holman Correctional Facility (Alabama Department of Corrections)
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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