Third Homicide in Eight Months at Alabama Prison

Jeffery Brian Parker, 45, was killed at Ventress Correctional Facility in Clayton, Alabama, on July 14, according to multiple reports received by EJI.

Mr. Parker was fatally beaten in a housing dormitory at the prison. He had survived an earlier assault on May 30 and had repeatedly sought protection from prison leadership.

Mr. Parker is the 10th person killed in an Alabama prison in the past 12 months, and the third killed at Ventress, where Marvin Taylor, 32, was beaten in the head on December 29, 2025, causing severe head trauma that led to his death on January 4, 2026. Andre Dunlap, 31, was stabbed in the head and face in a dormitory at Ventress on January 10, 2026, and died soon afterwards.

High levels of violence at Ventress have been reported for years. A federal judge ruled in 2023 that a man who filed a federal lawsuit after he was raped at Ventress had plausibly shown that there was "rampant, life-threatening inmate-on-inmate violence" 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.

Since then, violence at Ventress has continued unabated. The Alabama Department of Corrections's own statistical data shows that Ventress has recorded the most assaults on prisoners of any Alabama prison, with 164 assaults in 2025-nearly one every other day-and 38 more during the first four months of 2026.

Mr. Parker's murder is the 103rd murder of an incarcerated Alabamian EJI researchers have documented since the Justice Department notified the State of Alabama in April 2019 that the conditions inside its prisons were unconstitutional and subjected incarcerated people to "a high level of violence that is too common, cruel, of an unusual nature, and pervasive."

In December 2020, after ADOC failed to act on the Justice Department's findings, federal prosecutors filed a lawsuit against the state.

"The Department of Justice conducted a thorough investigation of Alabama's prisons for men and determined that Alabama violated and is continuing to violate the Constitution because its prisons are riddled with prisoner-on-prisoner and guard-on-prisoner violence," the complaint alleged. "The violations have led to homicides, rapes, and serious injuries."

Since the suit was filed, 78 incarcerated people have been killed in Alabama prisons. The lawsuit remains ongoing.

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