The Alabama Joint Legislative Prison Oversight Committee held one of its quarterly meetings on Wednesday to provide updates on some ongoing projects within the criminal justice space in the state.
Chairman Clyde Chambliss, R-Prattville, spoke about the progress the Alabama Department of Corrections made with its constituent service process. Constituent services within ADOC resulted from a public testimony meeting of the committee in December 2023. The following legislative session, Chambliss introduced Senate Bill 322 to allow the ADOC Commissioner permission to employ 15 unclassified employees for “studying and addressing services provided by the department to constituents and families of inmates.”
Previously, Chambliss said that when the public submitted a complaint to ADOC, the majority of time was spent simply looking for the inmate within the system and identifying the details rather than solving the issue.
“The point of that is that a lot of what we heard was a lack of communication, good, bad or indifferent, but just a lack of communication, being able to get questions answered,” Chambliss said. “This is an effort to address that. Obviously, it takes us some time in government to get from point A to point B, but we are well on the way there.”
The committee also provided an update on the ongoing construction of the Governor Kay Ivey Correctional Complex. Currently, the facility is 65 percent complete and on track to be constructed by the end of 2026. Chambliss said it will be a “massive undertaking” to begin occupying the prison in 2027, moving inmates from three different facilities to the one in Elmore County.
Chambliss also pointed the attention of the public toward the new proposed guidelines for granting parole from the Bureau of Pardons and Paroles. Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, criticized the abrupt revision of the guidelines and questioned the integrity of the decision-making process.
“We’ve had several years of an opportunity to assess what those guidelines what sort of results that we were going to produce,” England said. “And instead of using that data, it seems like this just kind of came out of nowhere because they were threatened with losing funding. And the importance of that is that we wanted the data so we could determine if the guidelines were working or not. But since the Chair took it upon herself to change those guidelines, depending on who the person was, the data is corrupted, so I really don’t know what the new guidelines were based on.”
England also pointed out certain disparities in the parole rates. As it stands, ABPP is paroling those who are ranked as lower risk at a lower rate than those considered to be a medium risk.
“We shouldn’t be creating guidelines to increase our conformance rate to make sure our denials look legitimate,” England said. “We should actually create guidelines that effectively assess the person that’s before them. So if this is about public safety, we’re releasing those that should be out and keeping those in that should be.”
During fiscal year 2023, low-risk inmates were released at a rate of 8 percent to moderate-risk inmates’ 11 percent. In fiscal year 2024, the ABPP granted parole to 22 percent of inmates with a low-risk assessment and to inmates with a moderate-risk assessment, 24 percent. ABPP’s current rate of parole grants for this year, between low-risk and medium-risk, is 24 percent and 25 percent.
Rep. Jim Hill, R-Odenville, echoed England’s sentiments toward the differing standards between granting parole for low-risk versus medium-risk inmates while also emphasizing the age and physical health of a parole candidate.
“If we have somebody who is incapable of committing acts or being a threat to public safety, I don’t want to just be housing people like we’re running a large nursing home,” Hill said. “If they need to be in a nursing home, then there are plenty of facilities that do that under Medicaid, and it would relieve us from the financial burden of paying $250 million a year for health care.”
England addressed a claim that was brought up frequently during the legislative session when discussing bills that would alter the paroles process.
“This is not a situation where we’re all just up here advocating for people to be released,” England said. “We’re trying to do it the smart way, the best way, the most cost effective and cost efficient way, that respects the victim, making sure the victim doesn’t have to continue to reappear for hearings, knowing that the same result is going to happen, but at the same time, create a reliable system where those who are applying can have some sort of expert expectation when they go through the process.”
The next committee meeting will be a public hearing on July 23.
