Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, speaks during a debate in the Alabama House of Representatives on April 25, 2024 at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Alabama. England prefiled a bill to increase oversight of the state’s parole board. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector)
A Tuscaloosa lawmaker is refiling a bill aimed at creating guidelines for the state parole board to follow.
HB 40, sponsored by Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, would create a committee to update risk assessments of those incarcerated in state prisons and direct the Board of Pardons and Parole to create guidelines when considering parole.
The move comes amid a years-long controversy over declining parole rates, which fell to 7% last year. Parole rates have gone up to between 20 and 30% this year, according to England, but with ongoing violence in state prisons, lawmakers from both parties have discussed safety and overcrowding in public forums, such as the Contract Review Committee.
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England, who has introduced versions of the legislation over the last several years, said in an interview Tuesday that “the conversation needs to continue.”
“The parole rates are rising, but what we need to do is make a more permanent change to the system so that it is not subject to the whims of the membership, but more so based on data and science guidelines so we can replicate those results when necessary,” he said.
The bill would create a new committee, the Criminal Justice Policy Development Council, composed of different officials from the Legislature, the executive branch, and victim advocacy groups such as Victims of Crime and Leniency.
“A lot of the numbers that have been pointed out indicate that the less likely you are to reoffend, the more likely you are to be denied parole, which has led to all sorts of allegations, including using it to create a labor force inside the prison and out,” England said.
Members of the council would update the inmate classification system used by the Alabama Department of Corrections (DOC) and establish a validated risk assessment for individuals in prison to be used by DOC and the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles.
The council will report its progress to the Legislature and, once the policies have been created and adopted, will report to lawmakers how they plan to implement the two policies.
England’s bill would also require the Board of Pardons and Paroles to establish guidelines to determine whether someone currently in prison should be granted parole.
The guidelines would determine the likelihood that a person will reoffend according to a validated risk assessment; how well they adhere to a plan from the DOC for reentry; and input from the victims.
It will also consider the inmate’s behavior; the severity of the underlying offense and whether the person participates in risk-reduction programs. The guidelines will also incorporate information gained from an interview with the person in custody.
Members of the Board of Pardons and Paroles would be required to adhere to the guidelines when deciding parole. If their decision deviates from the guidelines, they must provide a written explanation about how they arrived at their decision.
If an applicant is denied parole, the individual has the option to appeal the decision to the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals.
England first proposed the legislation in 2022, but it has failed to advance, mostly due to opposition from Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee.
“When the parole board has a packet or considers somebody on parole, they are picking from the bottom of the bottom,” said Rep. Jerry Starnes, R-Prattville, during a discussion of the bill in the House Judiciary Committee in March 2023.
“The only thing that has changed is the membership, but we don’t really want a system that changes at the whim of the members,” England said Tuesday. “We want a system that operates off of data and guidelines. If something is working, you can replicate it, versus a system that changes, just in general, based upon who is on it.”
Parole rates declined dramatically after Jimmy O’Neal Spencer, who was mistakenly classified by the Alabama Department of Corrections as nonviolent, was released in 2018. He was convicted in 2022 of the murder of three people, including a 7-year-old, while on parole.
Those who study the matter said the connection between people getting granted parole and the crime rate is not at all clear.
“I am unaware of any evidence suggesting people returning on parole are any more likely to recidivate for a new offense compared to someone returning following the completion of their maximum sentence,” wrote Thomas Baker an associate professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Central Florida, in an email on Wednesday “People on parole do face the possibility of being reincarcerated for violating conditions of parole which may be entirely unrelated to committing a new crime.”
Thomas presented figures from the neighboring states of Georgia and Mississippi, both of which had higher rates of parole and less violent crime than Alabama.
According to Georgia’s Board of Pardons and Paroles, the parole rates for the state were 38%, 49%, and 53% respectively for 2019, 2020, 2021. For Mississippi, it was 74%, 70%, and 82% respectively. According to crime statistics from the FBI, in 2022 the violent crime rate for Georgia was 367 per 100,000 people, for Mississippi it was 245 per 100,000 people, and for Alabama it was 409 per 100,000 people.
“In other words, despite far lower parole granting rates than two of its neighbors who also grant parole, Alabama experiences a higher violent crime rate,” he said in the emailed statement.
Researchers said there are consequences for denying people parole and continuing to incarcerate them. It costs money to incarcerate people.
Some, as they age, are no longer a threat, either because they are elderly or have medical issues.
“Some people are just really not dangerous,” said Elsa Chen, a professor at Santa Clara University who teaches classes on criminal justice policy, in an interview Wednesday. “They are physically incapable of committing more crimes, they are elderly, or they really have turned themselves around.”
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