By Ralph Chapoco
Chattanooga Times Free Press
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The Alabama Sentencing Commission said Alabama’s already overcrowded prisons could see inmate populations rise by nearly a third by 2030 due to new punitive laws passed by the Legislature.
The commission and Applied Research Services, a research firm that studies criminal justice, estimated the population in custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections could grow from almost 22,000 to between 24,000 and 28,000 inmates. That depends on the number of people the Alabama Department of Corrections admits each month on average.
Those numbers, if reached, would come near or exceed Corrections’ record inmate population, set 16 years ago. They would also further strain the state’s General Fund. The state’s prisons have taken up an ever-larger share of the budget over the past two decades.
The system, even before all the changes that happened, was already trending up,” said Bennet Wright, executive director of the Alabama Sentencing Commission, on Friday. “All the things that I discussed, and that is not to say they are good or bad, but they are going to adjust the track up more.”
Wright said the projections factor several changes implemented by the Alabama Legislature, from increasing the number of judges assigned to oversee cases to changes in statute related to split sentences, to a law passed in 2023 that further restricted the use of good behavior to reduce incarceration time.
Wright and the researchers said there are some uncertainties that are embedded within the simulations.
Overcrowding crisis
Alabama has struggled with prison overcrowding for decades, and the crisis has been a major contributor to violence in correctional facilities. The U.S. Department of Justice sued the state in 2020, saying the conditions in men’s prisons violated inmates’ Eighth Amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishment.
The state’s prison population fell after 2015 after the Legislature approved a series of sentencing reforms, dropping from about 26,300 in 2013 to 20,200 in 2018. It fell still further during the COVID outbreak in 2020, when Corrections temporarily barred the admission of new prisoners. The population was about 18,300 in 2021. Since then, the number of people has steadily increased, going to 20,500 in 2022, 21,000 in 2024, and is currently at 21,753 for the year.
But the simulations run by the commission projected that the population would increase.
Even the lowest figure generated by the simulation estimates the population of people in custody of the state Corrections department in 2030 would increase by 31% from a 2021 baseline of 18,300. The highest projected population, 28,000, by the end of the decade means that the prison would increase by more than 50% from the baseline.
Many of the estimates from the simulations predicted the prison population to be higher than the 26,500 in 2009, the highest number of people ever incarcerated in Alabama’s prisons.
In the video below, Gordon Graham addresses jail overcrowding, its impact on safety and operations, and offers strategies like diversion, reentry support and rethinking pretrial detention to reduce risks.
Multiple estimates
The sentencing commission provided people who attended the presentation with multiple estimates instead of a single measure incorporating all the factors because of the uncertainty inherent in the model. One element that was not incorporated into the simulations to provide the estimate was the average number of people admitted into the Alabama Department of Corrections each month.
“The idea about the number of people coming in the front door has to be an independent determination,” Wright said.
One reason is that the number can fluctuate dramatically. The rate was more than 800 in 2018, but it is currently about 450.
“I know what you are thinking,” Wright said. “Well Bennet, look to the past. Well, that is the past, what part of the past do you want me to use?”
The composition of the admissions could also change depending on the laws enacted by the Legislature. When lawmakers enacted into law a rule that made the sentencing guidelines presumptive, fewer judges sent people to prison.
So instead of incorporating the admission rates for the Alabama Department of Corrections into the model, researchers calculated a population estimate by assuming a given rate for the number of people admitted into custody.
The lower estimate of 24,000 assumed that about 400 people were admitted into custody each month. The higher estimate of 28,000 assumed that 500 people were admitted into the Alabama Department of Corrections custody each month.
Contributing factors
Wright highlighted several changes that were factored into the model. One was that the Legislature increased funding to provide the judicial system with more judges, allowing more cases to be processed, which potentially adds to the number of people sentenced to prison.
Another factor is changes to statute enacted by the Legislature for split sentences. In the past, most cases in the criminal justice system required judges to apply split sentences once defendants were convicted.
“You either had to get probation or a split sentence,” Wright changed. “So now, everything is back on the table.”
The split sentence law was also changed.
“So even if someone is split, the split sentence law is amended to allow for longer sentences on splits,” Wright said.
The Legislature in 2023 reduced the amount of credit people in prison could receive on their prison sentences for good behavior. Prior to passing the law, people classified in the second tier could receive up to 40 days of credit for every 30 days served. Senate Bill 1, sponsored by April Weaver, R- Brierfield, reduced it to 15 days for every 30 days served.
“They reduced general good time and they reduced access to maximum good time as well,” Wright said.
Along with that, the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles updated the guidelines they used to determine whether to grant an applicant parole.
All those changes factor into the prison population. Wright and researchers provided two numbers for every rate that people are admitted into Alabama Department of Corrections custody. Wright said the three factors that drive the trend between high and low estimates are the percentage of people who will receive a split sentence, the parole rate, and the number of people in prison subject to the updated correctional incentive time laws.
“With a high percentage of splits, high parole and a higher percentage of people coming in on good time, you would expect a prison population in five years of about 24,000,” Wright said.
The complement of that, with low numbers on split sentences, parole and good time allocation, that figure increases to about 26,000 if the state admits an average monthly rate of 400 people into the prisons.
“Look at what we historically do in Alabama,” Wright said. “Policy-wise, we do not have sustainable, slow growth or slow decline. We typically have very accelerated growth or very accelerated decline.
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