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Julia Tutwiler Prison Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2013, in Elmore County near Wetumpka, Ala. (Julie Bennett/jbennett@al.com)

MONTGOMERY, Alabama --- The U.S. Department of Justice said today that conditions at Julia Tutwiler Prison violate the Constitution, citing what it called "a history of unabated staff-on-prisoner sexual abuses and harassment."

and reported their findings in a 36-page letter to Gov. Robert Bentley.

"The women at Tutwiler universally fear for their safety," the report stated.

"They live in a sexualized environment with repeated and open sexual behavior, including: abusive sexual contact between staff and prisoners; sexualized activity, including a strip show condoned by staff; profane and unprofessional sexualized language and harassment; and deliberate cross-gender viewing of prisoners showering, urinating and defecating," the report stated.

DOJ said the conditions violate the Eighth Amendment right to be protected from harm. It said problems go back almost two decades.

The DOJ also said it will expand its investigation to look into medical and mental health care for inmates and other issues.

Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner Kim Thomas said today he did not think conditions at the prison were unconstitutional and said efforts have been under way for months to address problems

Thomas declined to respond to specific allegations in the DOJ report, which he said he received this morning.

"I think they are off-base in their findings, but I don't want to respond to any one part of the findings," Thomas said.

He said inmates and Tutwiler are safe and free to report abusive behavior by staff.

"We will look very carefully at the contents of this report and look forward to working with the Department of Justice to understand the valid complaints that they raise and hopefully finding resolution without the necessity of imposing some court action," Thomas said.

Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the EJI, said findings in the report were troubling and a cause for quick action by the state.

"I think it's a serious indictment of the conditions of confinement that exist at the Tutwiler Prison for Women and it calls into serious question whether there's a need for fundamental reform within the Department of Corrections specifically related to sexual abuse and misconduct at Tutwiler," Stevenson said.

"I think it's a very thorough and troubling set of findings that ought to warrant a very significant response from the governor and the department to immediately remediate these very serious problems at Tutwiler."

EJI asked DOJ to investigate when it reported its findings in 2012.

Today's report follows

part of the DOJ, which also sent a team to Tutwiler and found abuses of inmates by staff and problems with the way inmate complaints were handled.

Thomas had asked for the review by NIC following the complaints by EJI. He announced a list of more than 50 changes to address the problems they found.

"I don't think they give us enough credit for everything we've started and are trying to keep moving," Thomas said of today's DOJ report.

He also said: "It's a little bit surprising to me that they give so much weight to unverified allegations."

The DOJ report says investigators did an on-site inspection at Tutwiler for four days in April 2013 and interviewed staff and dozens of prisoners. They analyzed incident reports, investigative reports, disciplinary reports and other documents and received 233 letters from current Tutwiler prisoners detailing a variety of concerns.

In a summary of findings, DOJ says it has made a number of factual determinations, including:

-- For nearly two decades, Tutwiler staff has sexually abused and sexually harassed inmates with impunity.

-- Staff has raped, sodomized, fondled prisoners and coerced prisoners to engage in oral sex.

-- Prison officials discourage prisoner reporting of sexual abuse by, for example, placing women in segregation after they make a complaint. (Thomas said that practice has been stopped.)

-- Tutwiler fails to adequately investigate allegations of sexual abuse and harassment.

The report says individual prisoner allegations were corroborated by paternity tests, polygraph examinations, staff admissions, ADOC investigations and corroboration by other prisoners with no chance to coordinate stories.

The DOJ report includes a set of minimum remedial measures for Tutwiler.

Those include complying with the Prison Rape Elimination Act, a federal law, and making sure that prisoner complaints of sexual abuse and misconduct are handled and investigated appropriately. They say DOC should develop a plan to recruit more female officers to work at Tutwiler.

DOC spokesman Brian Corbett said the remedial measures overlap with many of the reforms Thomas announced last year. For example, DOC has stepped up efforts to recruit female officers and provides a 5 percent pay differential for officers who work at Tutwiler.

Thomas said the agency has worked hard to address the issues since the EJI report in 2012. He said that includes working with NIC to train prison staff in proper management of female inmates. DOC is scheduled to install security cameras in the prison before the end of the year.

"We have been very proactive in addressing these issues form the very beginning," Thomas said. "We've never downplayed the importance of these concerns."

"I'm going to do everything within my power, with the resources that are allocated to us ... to make sure that we afford the best living conditions and the best environment for our female offenders," Thomas said.

This story was updated at 7:03 p.m. to add the last six paragraphs. This story was edited at 10:08 a.m. on Jan. 18 to clarify that findings were reported in a 36-page letter to Gov. Robert Bentley.

