Prisoner Discusses Living Incarcerated With HIV and Violence

(I)

Bullock Prison in Union Springs, Alabama, opened in 1987 and is designed to hold 919 prisoners.1 Alabama Department of Corrections currently has the number of people imprisoned there at 1,512.2 Alabama prisons are currently, and consistently, around 70 percent overcapacity.3

In recent weeks, multiple prisoners from Bullock have reached out to do interviews with me about the prison conditions and their lives. Over the coming weeks and months, those stories will comprise a series about Bullock Prison, with each story focusing on a different prisoner.

Last week, I connected with a prisoner in Bullock who I’ll call “Derek,” in his early 50s. He discussed his time incarcerated, physical and mental health issues, barriers to getting help, overcrowding, violence, being targeted as gay due to his recent HIV diagnosis, and many other topics. He has been in prison for over 20 years of his life total. He’s been serving his current sentence since 2006, and has been transferred through several prisons in the state during that time, as most prisoners are in Alabama. He is doing time under the Habitual Felony Offender Act (HFOA). All of his charges have been non-violent drug charges.

Derek was diagnosed with HIV in recent years, which has caused him concern for his safety and resulted in harassment and assaults from some of the other prisoners. In the past, he has also sustained knee and hip injuries, had surgery for both, and currently has an injured shoulder from falling in the midst of a seizure.

The seizures are one of several health issues, like hepatitis C and HIV, that “I didn’t have before I got to prison, and now I have them,” he says. His health issues also make him feel less able to defend himself than he used to be. Derek got HIV and hepatitis C from intravenous drug use but has been labeled a “ho” and “gay” by some other prisoners since he got the diagnosis.

When he was diagnosed with HIV, he reflects, “I came down and let the guys know in my dorm, so they could go get checked. I was trying to do that from the heart, but I have… a couple of times now wished I hadn’t done that, because, like I said, it changed a lot of things for me in here. And it’s got some of these guys looking at me sideways like, ‘Damn, is this guy gay or not,’ because ‘gay’ is a rough thing in prison, man. For the most part, dudes that are gay, they get treated pretty rough. You’re not allowed to go in the ice coolers and things like that. Certain things, they can’t do, or they get their head knocked off in here.”

As noted by The Washington Post, Federal authorities have “faulted [Alabama] state officials for what they said was a failure to fully investigate sex assaults in prison” and “‘implying that a gay man cannot be raped.’”4

Derek continues, “I didn’t want that kind of name put on me, but that’s neither here nor there. And I done what I thought I had to do” by informing others of the diagnosis. Derek explains that there are other reasons people know of his diagnosis as well. He says prisoners are being denied privacy rights around certain medical information, which we’ll come back to later in this story.

“This prison is flooded with HIV,” he says, and, “It’s not from homosexuality. It’s from drug use.”

AL.com reported in 2023, citing the Prison Policy Initiative, “Alabama prison inmates are about three times as likely as other residents to have HIV.”5

People labeled gay in prison are more likely to be assaulted, says Derek, and repeatedly makes sure I understand that he is not gay himself but is being mistreated just the same because of the connotations of his diagnosis.

“That’s why I’m in the predicament that I am in,” he says. “Like I told you, I can’t protect myself right now,” due to the shoulder injury, “and they know this. What would I do if they jump me right now? There would be nothing I could do. It wouldn’t even take one good lick to that shoulder, and it’d be through. It’d be over with for me. I can barely move the damn thing now. It hurts to even cough.”

He was assaulted recently, since his shoulder was injured from the fall. He was slapped in the face by another prisoner a couple of days before our interview. “It wasn’t that bad, but if I’d tried to fight back or something, they do a lot of cludging in here. There are a lot of groups that run together, and if you jump on one, you’ve got to jump on all of them, that type of deal.

“And they know that I’m HIV positive. And that makes it even worse for me because they don’t want to put their hands on me. So, if I do get attacked, for the most part, they’ll attack me with weapons, sticks and stuff, to keep them from getting my blood on their hands and stuff.”

Elaborating on the health issues and violence, “The head trauma and the seizures is one thing. That was the first thing, basically. All the head traumas that I’ve been through were making me have these seizures… Also, four of my teeth got knocked out at Staton due to being hit in the mouth with a lock. This is years ago.

“When this happened, I went to the back gate. And see, at Staton, you’ve got Staton, Elmore, and one other camp, all three of them right there together, and they all use the HCU, the Hospital Care Unit. So, I’m standing there bleeding, blood all over me, with my teeth in my hands, and [the officer] told me to go back, ‘Go back.’ I mean, scared and smashed like I was in the face with this lock, I’m not trying to go back to the dude that just beat me with this damn lock, standing down there. ‘I’m not going that way.’ How crazy would that be? He knocked four of my teeth out…

“Well, [the guard] wouldn’t open the gate and let me go to the HCU. He was telling me to go back. I wasn’t trying to disrespect the officer, or not obey his orders, but, to me, I couldn’t see me going back, the way this dude was that just beat me with this lock.

“But, anyway, to make a long story short: then the police came out there, and they jumped on me. And that got I&I involved in it, which is the Intelligence and Investigations Department of the ADOC, and that got them involved in it. A lady named Lieutenant Shepard that worked at the I&I came over there and talked to me and interviewed me. And by the next day, I was gone. They C-fifty-oned me.”

(A C-51 is a transfer to another prison, often without cause, or not as punishment.)

“I wasn’t in the next camp a full day — I hadn’t healed yet — and that was when I got hit in the mouth again,” he continues, “and that was when it broke my jaw and everything. I was at Ventress when that happened. Me and [another prisoner] was walking along together and then, next thing I know, he just planted one on me, hit me in the mouth. He hit me so hard it knocked me completely out. So, anyway, that was the one that broke my jaw that time. They said it fractured in 27 places.

“When I woke up, my mouth was wired shut. They never were supposed to wire my mouth shut to begin with because of me being a seizure patient, but they did. I ended up having to get surgery again and getting that other thing put on my face.

“The last time I got to see my mom alive was over there at Ventress, before her and my sister both died of Covid in 2021. I was in the HCU at Ventress and she got to come see me one last time before they ended up dying. But, I had to see her like that with that on my face, and it broke her heart.

“Anyway, whenever that happened, I ended up having to stay in the HCUs for a minute following that, back and forth between Kilby and Ventress, going to the doctors and stuff out there in the free world, and staying in those hospitals just trying to heal up.”

Derek was “in a relationship with a woman in the free world for a long time. She rode with me for, like, 13 years,” he says, but due to his imprisonment and the health issues that have come with it, Derek has let go of that relationship too.

When he found out he was HIV positive, he “lost a lot of hope. Yes, I did,” he recalls. “For a minute there, it had me thinking, ‘I’m never going to get out of here.’ And luckily, God and my spirit and the people in here were talking to me and saying, ‘Derek, that’s just a lie, man. That’s just something that they want you to believe, because you can make it through this. You’ve made it this far. You could make it further.”

“But, I don’t have much hope in this stuff anymore, and I let her go. I called her and I told her what the deal was [with the HIV diagnosis], and I told her even if I was to be out of prison, out on parole or something, I can’t be with her. I can’t go with her and be with her and take the chance of giving her this mess. Do you understand what I’m saying? So, I went ahead and told her, and told her that she should go on and go about her business if that’s what she wanted to do, because I know she wants to have a life too and I’m not trying to hold her back… I have talked to her. She still answers the phone for me occasionally.”

(II)

We again return to the issues of violence, health problems, and the healthcare systems in the prisons. I ask Derek more about his seizures.

“Head trauma,” he reiterates. “And they’ve had to change up my seizure medications a couple of times. They had me on Depakote. Now I’m allergic to Depakote and I can’t take that. So, they got me on a medicine called Keppra and I have to take it twice a day. 8:00 in the morning and 8:00 at night, they have pill calls. I get two big pills at morning and nighttime pill calls. I mean, I hate to say it, man, but I have to have that medicine, because if I don’t take it, if I miss it one night before I go down there to get my medicine again the next morning, I’ll have a seizure.”

He had his first seizure in 2009 or 2010, “after I had been hurt a few times” in the prisons, he says.

“And then when I got hit over the head with that lock in Staton, it knocked my teeth out,” he adds. “I don’t know if you’ve ever been in any fights or anything before, but I’ve been in a lot of them in here, and I’ve gotten my brains beat in a lot of times, because of the cludging thing that I was telling you about. They’re bad about that in here.”

“Cludging” refers to prisoners ganging up to participate in assaults together, rather than one on one fights. It seems to be regional slang. I can only find it defined or discussed in court files, and only in this region.6

“Also, for the most part,” he continues, “a lot of the things that have happened to me have been caused by inmates, me getting assaulted by other inmates, yes, but some of the things that have happened to me have been caused by the police.”

He gives an example he is struggling with now: “If I go and tell them that I’m homicidal and suicidal, they’re supposed to lock me up. I tried to do that a few times, and they won’t lock me up. They say that I’m faking it. They won’t lock me up. And when I said I’m suicidal and homicidal, a lot of those times, I’m not just suicidal and thinking about taking my own life. I really am homicidal, man, because I’m tired of taking this shit I’ve had to take… A lot of these things in here, especially in these last few years, I’ve just had to take, because I knew it was better to just take that than what it was going to be when I was going to try to fight back.”

When he has seizures, he often doesn’t remember what happened. “When my hip and my knee got broken,” he recalls, “I was having a seizure. The inmates were banging on the window, trying to get the police’s attention, because we’re really overcrowded and they don’t have enough people there. They don’t have enough guards working here. In other words, they have guards working in the hallways and in cubes. Here recently, they haven’t had enough guards to work the cubes. So, the guard in the hallway has to go in the cube and man the cube and open up our doors from the inside of the cube. Then they come back out in the hallway and run the hallway.”

After the prisoners started banging on the windows when Derek was having a seizure, “They came down there to see what was going on,” says Derek, “and the people in the dorm were telling [the officers] that I have seizures and stuff. And the lieutenant was coming up there thinking that I was wigging out on dope, and the inmates that they will listen to were telling him, ‘Nah, man, that dude has seizures.’ They told him, ‘Don’t walk up on him, man. Don’t walk up on that dude. He’s going to kick the shit out of you.’

“They’re telling the Lieutenant this. I’m over there, having a seizure. I don’t know what’s going on. But, obviously, I did kick him, but I don’t know what I’m doing, and when they tried to hold me down or submit me or whatever, I go to… kicking and stuff. Well, I kicked him. And he picked me up over his head and boomed me down on this damn concrete floor, and broke my hip and my knee, and they had to rush me out to the free world and I had to have hip surgery and knee surgery.

“And when I came back… If they think that something has happened to you — and they’ve done the body charts on me and my head is busted and I can’t tell them what happened and they don’t know if I’ve gotten into a fight or what — they’re supposed to protect me, man. But they don’t. They just send me right back up to the same dorm.

“If I have a seizure in the dorm and they do get the police’s attention, then they rush me up to the Hospital Care Unit. I wake up handcuffed, shackled, and belly-chained to the bed up there in the hospital care unit. And most of the time, I’ve usually urinated on myself or something like that, because I’m straining so hard and seizing out so bad, and I’m begging these people to let me out of these handcuffs and shackles and stuff. I’m all cut up from the straining by it, because they say they have to put me in that because I’m kicking and stuff so hard. But shouldn’t they have, like, straps with Velcro and stuff on them instead of putting you in handcuffs and shackles and stuff? But they don’t, sir.

“This has gotten to the point where I’ve even told the inmates in the dorm, ‘Man, look, if I’m not seizing out that bad, just don’t even take me up there to healthcare.’ They’re like, ‘Man, we’ve got to get the police and help you up there.’ I was like, ‘Dude, you don’t understand, man.’ I said, ‘Every time I wake up there, I’m handcuffed and shackled and belly-chained to this damn bed. And it hurts. And I’d rather you just not even do that. If you can and I’m coming out of it and there’s a way you can just put me on my bed, I’d rather you just put me on my bed than take me to the HCU.”

(III)

Derek also says the prison is flooded with fentanyl and other drugs. Asked how it’s getting in, he reiterates what most prisoners and experts say: “It beats me, because we don’t have any [prisoners] going out [into the free world] to work, so there’s nobody going outside of the gates. So, if it’s getting in here, it’s got to be getting in here by the guards. It’s a big business, man.”

He says that when prisoners overdose, sometimes multiple prisoners a day, “They’re wheeling them up [to the medical ward] in a laundry cart, in wheelchairs and stuff like that, because they don’t have any gurneys to take people up there. So, they just dump them off in a laundry cart and push them up there.

“They had the camp on lockdown for one or two days last week because they had, like, six or seven guys, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, drug overdose, drug overdose, drug overdose, drug overdose, all back to back. They were rushing them up there… It’s really bad here, man.”

There are also “a lot of dudes in here getting amputated,” says Derek. “Like I said, dudes I’ve been knowing for years, all over the system together, different camps together, they were fine last time I seen them and then I see them at this camp two or three years later, and his leg is gone, or I see another dude a couple years later and his foot is gone. I see another guy at a different camp and his fingers are gone.”

Asked what the amputations are for, Derek answers, “all different types of stuff.”

Indeed, amputations in Alabama prisons have been reported widely and the state has been sued in the past on this issue.7

He describes Bullock in greater detail. “Bullock, for one, is a mental institution,” he says. “They have the main camp, which is where I’m at, and they have what they call the Blue Building, which is for the real bad mental [illness], like talking to themselves and stuff like that. If people want to kill themselves or stuff like that, that’s where they put them.

“Except, when you go in to report that you’re homicidal or suicidal, they’re supposed to lock you up, but they won’t with me, and I’ve tried to tell them that it ain’t just suicidal. I’m homicidal. It’s hard taking this shit. I’m getting to the point where it’s like… Like I said, I was raised by a man… My dad wasn’t no sissy… And I can hear his voice in my head, and he’s like, ‘Man, will you keep taking this shit?’

“Look, it’s a bad situation when you get to a point where you really feel like you’re not going to ever get out of prison. And there’s dudes in here that got three, four life sentences, running wild with each other, and they know they’re never getting out of prison. And they don’t give a shit. They don’t care about the police. They damn sure don’t care about other inmates. They will kill you. I thought that after them finding out I had HIV that it would… But, there’s still guys that want to have sex with me. They still talk about stuff like that. It’s crazy.”

Derek returns to the privacy issues surrounding healthcare in the prison, which he alluded to at the beginning of this story. In theory, prisoners have HIPAA rights. In my research, I also found that Alabama Department of Corrections’ Administrative Regulation number 604, dated March 8, 2024, section III reads, “Confidentiality: Provision or documentation of services in a manner such that Protected Health Information cannot be overheard or otherwise accessed by unauthorized persons.”8

In practice, it’s a different story. As Derek explains, “The prison system makes it so easy for [other prisoners] to find out about it anyway. We do these telemonitor things, where you have to go see the doctor on the telemonitor. And the guy that we see is a doctor out of Atlanta… And everybody in the prison that sees this particular doctor has HIV… They make it so easy for the other inmates in this camp to find out who it is that’s got [HIV] because they do a newsletter every day, and that newsletter has got your appointments, the appointments for the camp on there for the next day. It’s got everybody’s name, AIS number, bed number, dorm number, if they’ve got to go to the HCU, or classifications. And everybody that goes and sees this particular doctor…that I was telling you about from Atlanta on that telemonitor, he’s the only doctor for the HIV, so they know that everybody that goes and sees him is HIV positive.

“So, if somebody did want to keep that private, because it is our right to keep our medical issues private… We do not have to share that with other people if we don’t want to, but it’s so easy for them to find out that people are going to find out anyway… Since a lot of these people have found that out about me — and like I said, it changed their view of me — they were looking at me like a homosexual for it…but I’m not.”

He reiterates the frustration and rage building up as a result of the harassment from other prisoners, worsened by the health issues, pain, and limited ability to defend himself.

“I know that even though I’m in this bad health and stuff like I am, even with my shoulder like it is right now, I could do something to make them stop this shit. If they’re going to beat the shit out of me or whatever is going to happen… I can tell you one damn thing: If I wanted to, I can put a stop to it. That’s why I’m trying to tell [the officers] that I’m homicidal, man, because I am homicidal right now, especially when it comes down to these people slapping me and me having to take this shit from them, treating me any kind of way.

“And when I go try to get the police to lock me up to keep me from getting in trouble and getting another disciplinary, or catching not just a disciplinary but a case… Man, I already have a problem of getting out of here on this life sentence for trafficking. What you think they’re going to do if I stab one of these dudes in here and catch a murder case or something because I was rightfully trying to protect myself? I’m telling these people. I’m telling them I need to be locked up, but they won’t do it, to put me in protective custody, and they will not do it.”

(IV)

Further, Derek discusses the overcrowding and violence problems in Bullock, consistent with prisons throughout the state, and which causes and exacerbates many other problems in the prisons, if not all other problems in the prisons.

“Man, it is super overcrowded in here,” he says. “Being homeless in the first place is a bad situation, but being homeless in prison, that’s even more terrible. And these dudes are having to sleep on the floor, and they don’t have a mat, and they don’t have any blankets…

“I see these older men in wheelchairs and stuff like that. These guys wheel them to the chow hall and they’re just taking their food from them, man. So, a lot of dudes don’t get to eat. They’re hungry…

“I’m looking at a dude right now. He’s laying on the floor, concrete floor. He does not have a mat. He does not have a blanket, a sheet, or nothing, just his clothes, and he doesn’t have a coat. I’m looking at him, watching him right now. He’s got his arms pulled inside his shirt… He has to have his arms pulled inside his shirt because he’s freezing, laying there on this damn floor, and the police know it and they won’t do anything about it.

“Well, the police might give you a mat. You take that and put it on your bed, and the first time they call you out to chow hall or something like that, you come back and it’s gone. Somebody done stole the damn thing. What are you supposed to do about it?

“That’s one of those situations where I’ve closed up from fighting, man. I didn’t used to have to take this kind of stuff. I’m not used to that. I’ve had to draw back into myself and take that kind of stuff.

“But, I’m telling you, Matthew, I’m super homicidal right now, and if I do something or hurt one of these dudes, man, I can’t get myself out of here. But if I’m going to be stuck in here, I’d rather be in lockup. I’d rather be getting some help to where I at least have some kind of protection. The officers don’t understand that. Man, they’ve got to put me in that cell…

“I’ve done that one time here. About seven or eight months ago, I stabbed a dude. Me and him got into it and I stabbed him, and when the police came to find out what was going on, they ran out there. They know me by name. So, they’re like, ‘Derek, what the hell you got going on?’ I was like, ‘I don’t know, man.’ He said, ‘Who you fighting with?’ I was like, ‘I don’t know who they were. I only know one dude…’ And I said, ‘I don’t know about anybody else, but I know about this one dude…’ And the officer was like, ‘What do you mean?’ And I still had the ice pick in my hand. I held it out to him and I said, ‘I stabbed him,’ and I held the ice pick out to him and tried to give it to him. And you know what he told me? He said, ‘I don’t want that shit, man. Throw that down.’ And then I threw it down on the yard and he didn’t even take the darn thing, didn’t even write me up for it… I guess it wasn’t bad enough for them. They’re not trying to do no paperwork, man. They’re already low on officers, and they’re not trying to do no paperwork.”

This piece was first published at hardtimesreviewer.substack.com. 

NOTES

1. Alexander Willis, “Assaults in Alabama Prisons Increase in May, Still Down From Last Year,” Alabama Daily News, 8/6/2024

2. https://doc.alabama.gov/facility.aspx?loc=4

3. Brian Lyman, “Alabama Cannot Build its Way Out of The Prison Crisis,” Alabama Reflector, 4/29/2024

4. Devlin Barrett, “‘Cruel and unusual’: Alabama prisons plagued by severe violence, Justice Dept. investigation finds,” Washington Post, 4/3/2019

5. Sarah Whites-Koditschek, “Alabama Inmates’ HIV Rates Triple Rest of Population,” AL.com, 6/19/2023

6. https://clearinghouse-umich-production.s3.amazonaws.com/media/doc/34032.pdf

7. Southern Poverty Law Center, “SPLC Files Motion to Hold Alabama Accountable for Inadequate Health Care of All State Prisoners,” 8/20/2016, and See: Julia Marnin, “Inmate Needed an Amputation After Medical Needs Ignored, Suit Says. Doctor Owes $400K,” Miami Herald, 5/24/2024

8. https://doc.alabama.gov/docs/AdminRegs/AR604.pdf

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