EJI has confirmed two previously unreported homicides at Ventress Correctional Facility in Clayton, Alabama, bringing the number of people killed in Alabama’s prisons to four in just three weeks.
EJI has documented at least nine homicides in the state’s prisons in the past year alone.
On December 29, 2025, Marvin Taylor, 32, was in a dormitory at Ventress when he was struck “multiple times in the head with a closed fist,” according to a sworn statement by law enforcement. This caused “severe head trauma that led to the death of Taylor on Sunday, January 4, 2026.”
On January 10, 2026, Andre Dunlap, 31, was “stabbed in his head and facial area by a sharp object, causing death” in a dormitory at Ventress, a second sworn statement by law enforcement said.
Ventress Correctional Facility is a medium-security prison in southeastern Alabama that houses approximately 1,300 people primarily in large, open dormitories.
High levels of violence at the facility have been widely reported for years. Twelve people were killed at the prison in the five-year period from 2019 to 2024 alone.
A federal judge ruled in 2023 that a man who filed a federal lawsuit after he was raped at Ventress had plausibly shown that “life-threatening inmate-on-inmate violence” was “rampant” at the prison, “where armed, unsupervised, and violent inmates can go wherever they want, whenever they want, and do whatever they want.” The Alabama Department of Corrections settled the lawsuit in February 2025.
ADOC’s own statistical data shows that the violence at Ventress continues unabated. In 2025, Ventress had more nonfatal assaults than any other Alabama prison, with 160 nonfatal assaults nearly one every other day.
The facility is severely understaffed. ADOC’s latest data shows that nearly two-thirds of the 244 correctional positions ADOC says are needed to safely operate the prison are vacant.
Killings in Alabama prisons significantly exceed prison homicides in neighboring states with larger prison populations. Only two incarcerated people have been killed in the past year in Florida, where four times more people are incarcerated than in Alabama.