Tuesday night, Doug Jones was in Columbiana for the fifth stop of his town hall tour. He was joined by Beth Shelburne, Co-producer of the Oscar-nominated documentary The Alabama Solution to talk about what’s broken inside Alabama’s prisons, and what a governor can actually do to fix it.
“Twenty-five cents of every dollar you give this state goes to prisons, between $900 million and a billion dollars a year, supporting facilities that are failing and are the deadliest in the nation,” Jones said.
Shelburne pointed to Second Look Sentencing, legislation introduced this year with bipartisan support and Governor Ivey’s own backing, that would give people who’ve served decades under Alabama’s habitual offender law a chance at resentencing. It still died in committee.
“We thought this was the year,” Shelburne said. “It did not pass, even with the governor’s support.”
Jones said the fix starts with power the governor already has.
“The governor appoints the prison commissioner and picks the parole board,” Jones said. “Right now, roughly 80% of people eligible for parole are still getting denied. You’ve got to have people in both of those seats willing to actually fix this, not look the other way.”
Jones also committed to independent oversight of the state’s spending, including the Governor Kay Ivey Correctional Complex, a new prison in Elmore County whose cost has ballooned from an original estimate of $623 million to $1.2 billion.
“We were told this prison would cost $623 million. It’s now $1.2 billion, and they’re already planning another one,” Jones said. “That’s not building a safer state. That’s a system with no accountability, and Alabamians are the ones paying for it.”
