"I Wouldn't Let a Dog Live in the Prison"

Matthew Leonard, recently released, discusses his six years inside of Alabama prisons

(Matthew Leonard shopping with a friend on July 29th after being released from prison.)

On July 29^th, 2024, Matthew Leonard, 45, was released from a six year prison sentence in Alabama on nonviolent drug charges. He tells me about his experience over the phone two weeks later.

Like most prisoners, Matt served his one sentence in multiple prisons, as prisoners are transferred often randomly and without warning in what are referred to as “swap outs.” I’ve interviewed prisoners who have been randomly transferred to every prison in the State during their single sentence. Matt has done time in three of them.

He tells me about his time in Limestone Prison, then about his transfer to Fountain Prison and his time there, then about the last year and a half or so of his sentence, which was at Loxley Prison, a work release program where Matt says the State makes prisoners “work like a slave. Some of them dudes are making 40,000 or 50,000 dollars a year and ain’t got 2,000 dollars on their books, because the State is taking their money, and making them pay for restitution, and making them pay for van rides, and making them pay for laundry. Man, it’s pathetic.” He adds, “I wouldn’t do a dog that way. I wouldn’t work a dog that way.”

(We’ll return to his experience in the work release camp, where he spent the last year and a half or so of his sentence, toward the end of the article.)

Going through each of the prisons in which he was incarcerated in order, he first tells me about his experience in Limestone Prison in Harvest, Alabama, which he says was similar to his experiences in other prisons.

“Man, I’m talking about stabbing, police putting hits out on folks,” he recalls. “You can cuss the police out. He’ll pay a motherfucker a pack of Newports or something, or a CashApp that gets you knocked off.”

He continues, “It’s hot. It’s crowded. They don’t care. You can walk straight up and the police can see somebody getting stabbed or getting stomped. They is not fitting to do nothing. Not at all, man. Watching it is terrible. It’s horrible. I’m talking about: I wouldn’t let a dog live up in the prison, an animal, yes.”

From Limestone, Matt was transferred to Fountain Prison, a prison I recently wrote a story about after interviewing others who are still there. Matt describes the process of a prison transfer, a “swap out,” a subject I’ve documented in recent years in my book and elsewhere.

Being transferred from Limestone to Fountain, he tells me, “Man, it’s a shackled down, bumpy ride, get to the camp, the police take all your stuff, everything that you transferred with from another camp, put it in a plastic bag. Your food goes in a bag, because rats and roaches are eating it. Man, it’s horrible, man. It’s terrible. And the State has funds for folks to get toothpaste and soap, tissue. Man, you get two rolls of [toilet] tissue every two weeks. Come on, man. What if a man have to defecate three or four times a day? Man, he’s out of tissue within three days…. [The prisons] are not livable. Man, I’m talking about: I know asbestos is in them old prisons. That’s why so many people got cancer and stuff. I’m talking about mildew, mold. I’m talking about everything in them.”

Asked if he knew that he was going to be transferred, “No,” Matt answers. “They just up and do it. They do it out the blue, a swap out. They call it a ‘swap out.’ I haven’t gotten in no trouble or nothing and they just swapped me out.” They also did not tell him where he was going, he says.

The drive from Limestone to Fountain is about four or five hours, says Matt. A quick Google Maps search shows the drive is four hours and 31 minutes, and there were “no stops at all,” Matt recalls.

He elaborates, “You get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. If you’ve got to use the bathroom, you piss in a milk jug in front of everybody who is getting transported with you. Everybody pisses in the same jug. Come on.”

Matt did 14 months at Limestone, 18 months at Fountain, and the rest of his sentence at Loxley. He was in Fountain Prison when all male prisoners went on strike and pulled off a three week long work stoppage (see here and here for more on the strike).

Matt says that when the prisoners went on strike, “even though it was a nonviolent strike, it seemed like the police got stricter. They started selling cigarettes for 100 dollars a pack. They started doing terrible things to the inmates. It’s like they don’t care at all. It’s like a land of yourself. They don’t care nothing about that. Them prisons are uncontrollable.”

(See examples from my last article on Fountain Prison of other retaliatory measures imposed by ADOC employees as a result of the strike.)

Matt also described a basement, “dungeon” like area, which he calls an “underground prison” beneath Fountain, where prisoners are often taken to be assaulted by guards. Prisoners have told me of this area in Fountain Prison in the past. I’ve asked ADOC about this area of Fountain in the past, and they declined to comment.

The “underground prison” is said to be underneath the medical ward of Fountain. “If the police don’t like an inmate, they’ll take him down there and beat him, then put you in the infirmary until you heal up,” says Matt, “where you can’t get in touch with your folks.”

Matt has been in the dungeon himself “when I cleaned it out,” he said. “When it was full of water, we had to pump the water out.”

“They had the prisoners doing that?” I asked.

“Yes, prisoners,” he answered. “Man, prisoners do all the work, the maintenance and everything. They even got them folks messing with electricity. Inmates fix the electricity. Inmates fix the plumbing. Inmates do it all. And you’ve got to be certified to mess with [electrical work].”

In May of 2023, Matt was transferred to work release at Loxley. There, “You’d rather be back behind the fence,” he said, “because them folks, man, they take all your money, talk to you crazy, work you like a slave. Then, if you mess up, they want to ship you and stuff like that, so you’ve got to humble yourself and go to work. I know a man should work, but some work that them work release jobs got, man, come on, man, let them folks get their money, man – you know what I’m saying? – instead of the State robbing them. The State is robbing these people blind, legally. I used to work, man, it’d be 98 degrees, heat index 110. Come on.”

In work release, there is “minimum out” and “community custody.” (Prisoners in prisons that are not work release also work but are almost always paid nothing and they work within the prisons. Those are the main two differences between work in the prison and work release.)

“It’s a prison itself,” Matt explains. “It’s just that you’re at a work camp…. Minimum-out custody is where you just get you a job slaving all day for two dollars a day. Community custody is a job where folks make from, like, 10 to up to 20 or 30 dollars an hour, but yet you may make that money now, but you ain’t going to see none of that. You may make 1,800 dollars every two weeks and put 400 dollars on your books out of 1,800, and the State gets the rest.”

There are over 500 prisoners in Loxley. “500 and something people, and you’ve got five showers and five toilets,” says Matt. “Come on, man. What if everybody has to use the restroom or something?”

Throughout his time in all three prisons, he witnessed the illness breeding conditions of the prisons as well.

“Man,” he says, “you’ve got folks sick left and right, going to the doctor. Some of them don’t come back. You’ve got people who get transferred because they don’t want to go back behind the fence, because it’s so violent that they hang themselves. I’m talking about: man, you’ve got folks that got TBs real bad. They keep it on the low and hush. Instead of quarantine the whole camp, they’ll still let you go to work.”

In work release at Loxley, “I used to work at a truck stop,” says Matt. He made 12 dollars an hour but wouldn’t see most of the money he made. “I’m talking about: They’ll give the free world people raises and won’t give the inmates raises, and they’ll expect for you to do all the work, all the work. The boss folks talk to you like you ain’t nothing. I’m talking about: like you ain’t nothing, ‘Do this,’ ‘Do that,’” he says.

His job was truck washing and maintenance. “Sometimes I’d work from 6:00 in the morning until 11:00 at night,” he explains.

If you refuse to work, “They’ll write you up and ship you, lay you off and won’t give you another job for about eight or nine months.” Others will be eager to take one’s place, “and they earned their way there,” Matt explains.

There’s no written limit on the number of times you can “sign up for sick call,” he says, “but if you take too many off days, they’ll ship you.”

Upon release from prison, “You feel relief,” says Matt, talking to me soon after his release. “You feel a big difference, man.” He left with the money he had on his books and some clothes his loved ones sent him. “That’s it,” he says.

“My homegirl picked me up, one of my good friends,” he recalls, and it was “wonderful, just to be free, just to be free from there. You know what I’m saying?”

They went shopping, went out to eat, “and just came on home,” and “seen all my people,” says Matt.

He says after a pause: “It’s a happy feeling, man, a happy feeling.”

Matt says the prison system “wouldn’t be so violent if they had a for sure way that, as they get their time, that they get out.” Asked to elaborate, Matt continues, “Same way they put you in, they could make ways and programs that can get you out, and there wouldn’t be that much violence. All them dudes lost hope, because they got their time. When you go up for parole, they set [your parole eligibility hearing] four years, five years [apart], stuff like that. You know what I’m saying?”

Matt is looking for a job and is excited to return to work in the free world, where it’ll be “a good feeling, getting all my money,” he says, making 1,800 every couple weeks and paying 200 in taxes rather than “2,000 dollars and you get three or four hundred dollars, big difference, make you enjoy yourself and make you want to go to work. When you get money like that at the work release, it make you not even want to do any work or give it your all.”

Employers and coworkers in the free world are “totally different” from work release, he says. “They want to talk to you, respect you. As long as you do your work and come to work on time, you’re good.”

Matt grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, and that’s where he returned upon his release.

I reached out to The Alabama Department of Corrections last week for comment on whether prisoners being transferred from one prison to another on long drives are expected to urinate in a jug, and they declined to comment. They declined to comment on the presence of asbestos or other dangerous molds, mildews, or chemicals in the prisons. They also declined to comment on how many bathrooms and showers are in the Loxley Facility.

And they have still not replied to the inquiries for my last article about Fountain Prison, meaning: They declined to comment on whether there was an assault of a prisoner by guards in the days leading up to that article on Fountain Prison. They declined to comment on whether any prisons or tiers in the State currently have more beds than people and have people sleeping on the floor. And they declined to comment as to whether or not they are aware of any recent outbreaks of scabies in Fountain or other prisons in the State.

I will continue interviewing Matt. Mixed in with further upcoming stories on the prisons will be more on his life story, his experiences in prison, and the process of readjusting back into the free world.

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