Alabama’s Tutwiler Prison for Women is still months away from installing security cameras, despite calls for extra money in the 2014 state budget to solve the prison’s security problems, the Anniston Star reports. Speaking to a legislative committee, state prisons chief Kim Thomas Thomas said the cameras won’t be in place until September 2014. Legislators told him to expedite the process.
Officials have been scrambling to improve conditions at Tutwiler since last year, when a non-profit group issued a report alleging sexual abuse of inmates by guards at the prison. The prison is the subject of a U.S. Department of Justice investigation. In 2012, the Equal Justice Initiative reported that corrections employees had illegal sexual contact with dozens of women inmates. It alleged that official responses to reports of abuse created an atmosphere of intimidation that discouraged complaints at the prison, which houses about 950 inmates, 400 more than its capacity.