By Tim Lockette
The Anniston Star
MONTGOMERY — Alabama’s prisons remain overcrowded because the state is too willing to send people to prison for small-time property crimes and because the state’s parole board is keeping them there, according to a study by the Council of State Governments.
“There’s more to this than just the beds these people are occupying,” said Andrew Barbee, an analyst for the CSG, a nonprofit that advises states on policy. “There’s a public safety component.”
Barbee spoke Thursday in Montgomery to the Prison Reform Task Force, a panel created by the Legislature this year to deal with a crisis in the state’s prisons.
Alabama currently has roughly 32,000 people in some sort of state criminal custody, including roughly 25,000 people housed in decades-old prisons built for just 13,000. That overcrowding, combined with ongoing investigations into alleged sexual abuse of inmates at Tutwiler Prison for Women, have lawmakers worried that federal courts will intervene and order reforms.
Efforts to reduce the prison population through sentencing reform have made little headway, and the task force asked the CSG to study the cause of the problem.
At Thursday’s meeting, Barbee told the task force that despite recent reforms, prison is still the most-used punishment for felony offenders. Two thirds of the people sentenced to prison committed property or drug offenses. And Alabama treats low-level property crimes more seriously than any state in the South.
Barbee said Alabama considers theft of anything worth more than $500 to be a felony, while 34 states have higher limits. Unlike most other states, Barbee said, Alabama treats any kind of burglary, no matter how small, as a violent crime.
“The adage of someone who breaks into a detached building and takes a lawn mower,” Barbee said. “That would be Burglary 3. That would be a violent crime.”
Even as new sentencing guidelines reduced the terms for those offenders, Barbee said, the rate of releases by the Parole Board has slowed during the past four years, keeping the prison population more or less level.
After asking Parole Board members to document their reasons for denying parole for a month, Barbee said, the CSG found that 14 percent of parole denials were because of inmate misconduct in prison, while 57 percent of denials were because of factors such as prior criminal history or the nature of the offense the inmate committed.
“The board’s reasons for denial paint a picture of re-sentencing of inmates,” Barbee said.
Covington County District Attorney Walt Merrell objected to that notion, saying that under state formulas, inmates almost never serve the amount of time the judge actually gives them.
“It’s not re-sentencing if they’re sentenced to 10 years, and they’re eligible for parole in 18 months,” he said.
Robert Longshore, the only Parole Board member on the task force, said in remarks after the meeting that the reduced release rate is driven by the behavior of the inmates themselves. Alternative sentencing programs, he said, may have kept some of the less-troubled inmates from ever coming to the parole board.
“This is driven by the demographics of the inmate population, and not by any policy of ours,” he said.
Barbee said mixed messages in state law — combined with broad authority and input from crime victims and other stakeholders — put a range of pressures on the board.
“The Parole Board is arguably in the middle of a maelstrom,” Barbee said.
One voice that isn’t present in the mix is that of inmates themselves, who don’t appear at their own parole hearings. Barbee interviewed inmates at Staton Correctional Institution; he told the board many of the inmates don’t understand why their parole is being denied or what they can do to increase their chances of parole.
“They desperately wanted an opportunity to convey their case to the board,” he said.
Rep. Barbara Boyd, D-Anniston, a task force member, said the group should ask whether sentencing was done fairly in every case, whether the offender is black or white.
“We’ve got to deal more fairly and justly with everyone,” she said.
“Isn’t that demanded in the Scripture?” replied Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, a task force member.
Moore said judges’ hands are often tied by sentencing rules that require harsh sentences — even life — for drug offenders or habitual offenders.
“I don’t see a lot of mercy in our justice system,” he said. “I see a lot of ‘lock them up and throw away the key.’ ”
Task force chair Sen. Cam Ward, R-Alabaster, said the group will likely have some kind of reform legislation ready for consideration by the beginning of the 2015 legislative session in March.
“This is the year to make the change,” he said.