The Justice Department has filed a statement of interest in a lawsuit brought in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama alleging that conditions in the St. Clair Correctional Facility violate the Constitution.

The statement said that, under the Eighth Amendment, prison officials must respond reasonably when they know people in their custody face a substantial risk of serious harm, including harm from other incarcerated people.

“The Constitution requires prison officials to take reasonable steps to protect the people in their custody,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a press release. “We must not allow violence and sexual abuse to run rampant in our prisons and jails. We are committed to securing the constitutional rights of all people, including those who are incarcerated.”

In 2014, a group of inmates housed at the St. Clair facility, located in Springville, filed a federal lawsuit alleging the Alabama Department of Corrections had failed to address a pattern of prisoner-on-prisoner violence, sexual assault and excessive force at the prison.

“People do not lose their constitutional rights behind prison walls,” U.S. Attorney Prim F. Escalona for the Northern District of Alabama said in a press release. “Our office remains committed to ensuring constitutional conditions, including reasonable safety, within Alabama’s prisons.”

The maximum-security prison houses about 1,000 male inmates.

The department’s statement of interest clarifies the appropriate standards under the Eighth Amendment. A high level of violence in a prison puts inmates at a substantial risk of serious harm. The Eighth Amendment requires prison officials to respond reasonably to this risk when they become aware of it. The department’s statement notes that when prison officials continue ineffective measures and disregard available alternatives to mitigate the risk of harm, they are not complying with their constitutional requirement to respond reasonably.

The Alabama Department of Corrections will file a response later this month.