the bloody truth

Inside America’s most violent prison system

Published Thursday April 11, 2019

By Beth Shelburne

BIRMINGHAM, AL (WBRC) - I thought they were photos from a battlefield of war. Bodies torn open by wounds, crude and jagged. Splattered blood, gushing red streams flowing from ripped skin, a panicked triage underway. The faces of the victims appear vacant, in shock, but a few contort in agony. Some of them are dead now.

These are not photos of soldiers, but men incarcerated in an Alabama prison. They’re not at war, but they might as well be. The people Alabama locks away have been fighting a battle to survive for decades, serving time in a prison system that turns even short stays into hellish torture, or a death sentence.

WBRC received the photos on a jump drive that arrived in an envelope with no return address, only a note inside titled “Read Me.”