Limestone Correctional inmate stabbed
Jul. 19—An inmate at the Limestone Correctional Facility was found with a puncture wound to his chest on Friday and transported to the hospital, according to the Alabama Department of Corrections.
Brian K. Shelton, 37, is serving a 25-year sentence at the prison for a first-degree burglary committed in Baldwin County.
According to ADOC, Shelton was found unresponsive in his bed and taken to a medical unit, where staff determined he had been stabbed.
ADOC said an investigation into the incident is ongoing.
Limestone Correctional is in Limestone County. It is designed to hold a maximum of 1,628 inmates but as of the end of May, the most recent data available, held 2,339 inmates.
According to a statistical report released last month, the prison had 13 inmate-on-inmate assaults in May, and has had 69 such assaults this year. ADOC reported 32 year-to-date inmate assaults of prison staff.
The U.S. Department of Justice has sued Alabama over a prison system it says is riddled with prisoner-on-prisoner and guard-on-prisoner violence. This month, Alabama officials issued $509 million in bonds to assist in the $1.2 billion construction of two supersize prisons to be located in Elmore and Escambia counties. The bond sale, which was opposed by activists and some impact investors as a cruel investment in mass incarceration, fell $200 million short of expectations
The Justice Department has said that dilapidated prison facilities were a contributing factor to the unconstitutional conditions but wrote "new facilities alone will not resolve" the matter because of problems in culture, management deficiencies, corruption, violence and other problems.
— eric@decaturdaily.com or 256-340-2435. Twitter @DD_Fleischauer.
