Joshua Hamer, 41, died on November 23 after he was assaulted and sustained serious injuries at Bibb Correctional Facility in Brent, Alabama, on November 6.
Alabama Appleseed confirmed with a spokesperson for the Alabama Department of Corrections that Mr. Hamer was hospitalized “for life-threatening injuries sustained in an inmate assault” and was pronounced dead at the hospital. “His face was just literally kicked in,” his aunt told Appleseed.
At the time of his death, Mr. Hamer had served 20 months of a 115-month sentence for theft of property. He would have been eligible for parole in June 2026.
Mr. Hamer is at least the 12th person known to have been killed in an Alabama prison this year, and the third in the past six weeks. On October 26, Carl Powell was killed at Limestone Correctional Facility, and Jamal Wilson was killed at Elmore Correctional Facility on November 1.
In 2019, the U.S. Department of Justice notified Alabama officials that ADOC “routinely violates the constitutional rights of prisoners” by failing to protect them from rampant violence and sexual abuse and that the department’s management practices have “greatly contributed to the high level of violence” in the state’s prisons.
Despite this, ADOC’s prison crisis continues unabated. The homicide rate in Alabama prisons for each of the past five years has reached more than 60 per 100,000 incarcerated people—more than five times the most recently reported national rate.