Parole Reform
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ShareAs incarceration rates increase, parole has become a critical mechanism for controlling Alabama’s bulging prison population. In the early 1990s, a significant portion of Alabama’s prisoners were paroled, but in the past decade parole grants plummeted even as prison overcrowding reached crisis proportions.
The Attorney General’s Office opposes nearly all parole grants and has even pressured Parole Board members into rescinding parole determinations.
Stringent parole conditions and a lack of support for those re-entering the community have created a high recidivism rate among parolees, who face – among significant obstacles to employment and housing – a complex and time-consuming process to achieve restoration of their right to vote. Alabama has one of the highest disenfrancisement rates in the United States.
News
U.S. Supreme Court Reviews Prison Overcrowding and Horrendous Conditions of Confinement
December 3, 2010
The United States Supreme Court on November 30, 2010, heard oral argument in Schwarzenegger v. Plata about whether a federal court in California properly ordered the release of 40,000 prisoners to relieve the severe overcrowding in the state's prisons that has led to inadequate medical and mental health care for prisoners.
Court Finds Part of Alabama's Community Notification Act Unconstitutional
November 9, 2010The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals has upheld a ruling by a circuit court judge which struck down part of Alabama’s sex offender statute, the Community Notification Act (“CNA”). The appeals court concluded that the CNA unconstitutionally discriminates against the poor and punishes people solely for the status of being homeless, in violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
United States Considered Most Punitive Country in the World
July 26, 2010
From The Economist
Mass incarceration in the United States continues at record high levels despite outsized costs. According to recent data reported in The Economist, the United States has the world's highest incarceration rate, locking up five times more people per capita than Britain, nine times more than Germany, and 12 times more than Japan.
Alabama Reforms Probation Law to Promote Safety and Reduce Prison Crowding
May 10, 2010On April 30, 2010, Alabama Governor Bob Riley signed a new law that limits incarceration in Alabama's overcrowded prisons for people on probation who commit no new offense but technically violate the terms of their probation. The new law gives judges more non-incarceration options for addressing technical probation violations.
EJI's Public Education Efforts Featured on PBS
April 5, 2010
Bryan Stevenson, right, on Bill Moyers Journal on PBS.
On April 2, 2010, EJI's Bryan Stevenson discussed the status of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s vision of economic justice on PBS's Bill Moyers Journal. Watch it here.
Also this week, PBS will broadcast the critically-acclaimed film, The Dhamma Brothers. EJI supported the Dhamma Brothers project and film.