Prison Riot Near Mobile

An early morning riot was reportedly sparked by a fight between a prisoner and a guard that left the officer stabbed nine times at the Holman Corrections Facility, north of Mobile. A SWAT team known as the Department of Corrections Emergency Response Team entered the prison and brought the fighting under control. Photos on news sites show inmates setting fires, wearing makeshift masks, and moving around the prison. Holman is the only correctional center in the state where executions are performed. Alabama has a chronic prisoner overcrowding problem. The state has twenty four thousand inmates in a system designed to hold thirteen thousand. State lawmakers are balking over a plan by Governor Robert Bentley to spend eight hundred million dollars on new prisons to try to resolve the issue.