Lawyers representing Alabama state prisoners asked a federal judge today to block the placement of mentally ill inmates in segregation because of an increase in suicides.

Two Alabama inmates have taken their own lives already this year, following nine suicides in Alabama prisons last year.

Lawyers for the inmates asked U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson for an emergency temporary restraining order that would prevent the Alabama Department of Corrections from placing any inmates with serious mental illness in segregation. The order would apply to certain other at-risk inmates, including those who have been on crisis placement or suicide watch.

The inmates would be required to have at least two hours of unstructured, out-of-cell time every day and confidential meetings with a counselor at least once a week. Prison staff would have to conduct security checks on the isolated cells at least every 30 minutes on a staggered basis.

The request for a temporary restraining order comes in the lawsuit over mental health care in state prisons. In 2017, Thompson ruled mental health care failed to meet constitutional standards and noted the “vicious cycle of isolation and inadequate treatment" and the "skyrocketing number of suicides, the majority of which occurred in segregation.”

In their request for the temporary restraining order, lawyers said the situation has gotten worse since Thompson’s 2017 ruling.

The most recent suicide in an Alabama prison was Wednesday. Prison officials found Paul Ford, 49, hanging by a bed sheet in his cell at Kilby Correctional Facility. Ford was sentenced to life without parole in 1995 on a murder conviction in Talladega County.

There was one inmate suicide in Alabama in 2017, nine in 2016 and five in 2015, according to the request for the temporary restraining order.

The request says the rate of suicides in Alabama prisons last year was about two-and-a-half times the most recently reported national average rate. The inmates are represented by lawyers from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program and others.

Jamie Wallace, the first prisoner to testify in the trial over mental health care in prisons in December 2016, took his own life in his cell a few days after his court appearance.