Third Murder in Alabama Prisons in a Single Week

05.12.21

EJI has confirmed the third homicide in Alabama’s prisons in a single week. We received reports that Regial Ingram was fatally stabbed in a population dormitory at Bullock Correctional Facility in Union Springs early in the morning on May 8.

Mr. Ingram’s death is the 58th prison homicide in Alabama since the Department of Justice launched a statewide investigation to assess whether prisoners are protected from physical and sexual violence.

The Alabama Department of Corrections confirmed that Mr. Ingram died Saturday after sustaining injuries in an apparent inmate-on-inmate assault. An ADOC spokesperson told WSFA News that the homicide is under investigation.

Mr. Ingram, 32, suffered from mental illness. He had been housed in a segregated area of the prison restricted to people with mental illness until ADOC transferred those men into the general prison population several months ago.

Mr. Ingram was serving a 21-year sentence from Russell County, according to ADOC.

His is the third murder in less than five days in three different prisons.

The Justice Department’s investigation found “a high level of violence that is too common, cruel, of an unusual nature, and pervasive” in the state’s prisons and concluded that Alabama “routinely violates the constitutional rights of prisoners” by failing to protect them from assault and abuse.

Twenty-nine people have been killed in the state’s prisons since the Justice Department reported those findings to Alabama Governor Kay Ivey in April 2019.