After serving almost 30 years in Alabama’s prisons, David Fuller reentered the free world with $10 and a bus ticket.

It was a difficult transition.

“They just let you out. You don’t talk to nobody. You don’t go see no counselor … They just put you out here,” Fuller said.

Thousands of people move through Alabama’s prisons every year. Some never go back. Others cycle in and out.

As the state faces mounting federal pressure to improve prison conditions, many advocates say the solution lies outside prison walls.

They want lawmakers to invest in resources to keep people out of prison.

State leaders say they want a system focused on rehabilitation and reentry, but it starts with a $1.3 billion investment in new prisons.

Episode 7 looks ahead to what’s next for Alabama’s prison system and the people inside.

Rodney Huntley didn’t plan to spend his career working inside Alabama’s prisons.

But his plans changed when a recession hit in the early 1980s.

At the time, Alabama was under federal court order to improve prison conditions, and the department of corrections was adding positions to staff new prisons across the state.

Huntley joined the team. Initially, he said staffing levels were good. But after federal oversight ended, there were budget cuts and layoffs.

“When they cut those people, and they cut everything but the inmates, I think this was the beginning of our situation that we're in now,” Huntley said.

As of late 2021, Alabama’s prisons are operating with fewer than half the number of correctional officers they need, and U.S. justice officials say officers frequently use excessive force against incarcerated men.

Episode 6 delves into what many people call the biggest problem facing Alabama’s prisons: how to hire enough security staff to protect the people locked up inside.

The trial began with testimony from 24-year-old Jamie Wallace.

According to court records, Wallace had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, an intellectual disability and “substantial physical disabilities.”

His lawyers say he often slept in a dark cell by himself, with a thin mat to lay over a concrete block.

The federal judge overseeing the case would later write that “Wallace’s testimony, and the tragic event that followed, darkly draped all the subsequent testimony like a pall.”

While Alabama battles in federal court over conditions of violence in state prisons, Episode 5 tells the story of a high-profile lawsuit that’s been going on much longer, about the treatment of people in prison with mental illness.

For most of his life, Pastor Kervin Jones had a rigid perspective on incarceration and punishment.

Then he started volunteering inside Alabama’s prisons.

“When I got there and saw men, saw people who made some poor choices, it changed my outlook,” Jones said.

Volunteers, most of whom are affiliated with religious groups, provide much of the programming in Alabama’s prisons. They lead Bible studies and church services, as well as GED courses and classes about life skills.

Officials with the Alabama Department of Corrections say the programs represent their commitment to rehabilitate incarcerated people.

But inside state prisons, most men don’t spend their days attending classes.

Episode 4 of Deliberate Indifference details daily life behind bars, and how volunteers try to bring structure to some prison dormitories.

Ron McKeithen’s record included a conviction of third-degree burglary, plus two felonies for illegal possession and fraudulent use of a credit card.

Then he and a friend stole a few hundred dollars from a convenience store.

It was 1983, a few years after Alabama passed a new law that mandated longer sentences for people convicted of multiple felonies.

The Habitual Felony Offender Act helped quadruple Alabama’s prison population by the early 2000s, and it kept Ron McKeithen behind bars for nearly 40 years.

Episode 3 of Deliberate Indifference traces the lasting impact of sentencing laws passed decades ago through the stories of the state’s “habitual offenders.”

Federal Judge Frank M. Johnson was well known, famous for his rulings in support of the civil rights movement, and deemed “the most hated man in Alabama” by the Ku Klux Klan.

In 1976, his attention turned to the state’s prison system.

Judge Johnson issued a landmark opinion detailing horrific violence and calling for drastic change.

He wrote, “the conditions in which Alabama prisoners must live … create an atmosphere in which inmates are compelled to live in constant fear of violence, in imminent danger to their physical well-being, and without opportunity to seek a more promising future.”

Today, Alabama is back in federal court for nearly the same reasons.

Episode 2 of Deliberate Indifference recounts the bitter battle that unfolded almost 50 years ago and how it was shaped by a history of racism and forced labor.

The report came out in early April 2019.

In graphic detail, the U.S. Department of Justice recounted dozens of stories of men stabbed in the head, beaten with metal locks and repeatedly raped inside Alabama’s prisons. 

The report said “Alabama is incarcerating prisoners under conditions that pose a substantial risk of serious harm” and “Alabama is deliberately indifferent to that harm.”

People inside prison don’t need to read the report. They live it every day. 

Episode 1 of Deliberate Indifference unravels the rampant violence through the story of one man murdered in an Alabama prison, months after justice officials put the state on notice. 

Deliberate Indifference is a new limited-run series from WBHM that tells the story of how Alabama’s prisons became among the most violent in the nation. New episodes every Wednesday, starting May 18.