A pair of handcuffs poking through prison bars. Criminal justice reform advocates highlight state of parole system in state. (File/Getty)
John Woods was told that if he reformed himself, he would get an opportunity for parole and the chance to move on with his life.
With that understanding, Woods, who served 18 years of a life sentence for a reckless murder charge but did not fire the weapon involved, worked to meet the parole requirements.
It was a decade of work before he became parole eligible. He entered into programs to learn a trade and further his education while waiting for his turn before the Board. He was denied. Five years later, Woods was denied again, and required to wait for four years.
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“After the first time getting denied, it bothered me,” Woods said. “I was destroyed for a year because I had this expectation. I had been told from the beginning that if you do these many years, and if you do them right, then you would be released.”
Finally, after getting denied twice, he was granted parole in 2020.
“It started to take a toll on my mother and on my father,” Woods said. “After the first time they said, ‘Well, we will let it go.’ The next time after five years after getting denied, then I came back up, I was denied again and turned down. You come up again, fear and doubt set in, and it goes through your mind.”
Woods was part of a panel of speakers Monday hosted by Alabama Values, a civil rights organization.
The Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles has gotten national scrutiny as parole rates have fallen in Alabama. According to a 2023 policy brief from the Prison Policy Initiative, Alabama’s parole grant rate fell 67% between 2019 and 2022, the largest drop in the nation. In South Carolina, the grant rate declined by 63%. Maryland’s parole grants dropped 54%, and Oklahoma’s fell 45%.
That decline paralleled a national parole rate decline between 2019 and 2022. The brief stated that of the 29 states from which the organization collected parole rates in 2022, 23 saw parole grants decline.
Alabama’s 10% parole grant rate in 2022 was the lowest in the policy brief. According to the annual report from the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles, the rate for granting parole for fiscal year 2023 was slightly more than 8%. South Carolina’s was 7% based on the policy brief from the Prison Policy Initiative.
The Alabama Legislature changed the parole system in 2019 after Jimmy O’Neal Spencer, misclassified by the Alabama Department of Corrections as a nonviolent offender, was paroled in 2017. While on parole in 2018, Spencer murdered three people, including a 7-year-old, in the course of a series of robberies.
“The Alabama Legislature locked down parole for everyone in Alabama,” said Katie Glenn, senior policy associate for the Southern Poverty Law Center who served on the panel.
Despite a recent increase in parole grants, the numbers remain below 2017, when roughly half of applicants had been granted parole.
Members of the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles are supposed to base their decisions on established guidelines meant to gauge whether a person has been rehabilitated. Some of the elements include disciplinary violations, particular violent ones, and programs that a person completed, including education and workforce development training.
The different components are then graded and are compiled to provide a score that then offers a recommendation whether a person should be granted parole.
However, the board is not required to adhere to the guidelines. Legislation introduced by Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, that would require board members to justify parole denials that deviate from the guidelines has not advanced.
“The guidelines that the parole board uses, if they actually followed them, something like 70% of the people who are up for parole would be paroled,” Glenn said.
Advocates said that efforts to keep parole rates low can have dramatic consequences for those who are incarcerated, dampening their motivations to behave properly while in prison and working to get rehabilitated.
“Literally people are dying in Alabama’s prisons and at their work release facilities because they are getting denied parole,” said Alison Mollman, interim legal director for the ACLU of Alabama. “Every week, we hear about a tragedy. We hear about people on work release getting struck by a car and getting killed while doing road service. We hear about homicides at level four prisons.”
Legislators passed a bill increasing staff within DOC specifically to provide services to constituents to call into prison facilities to inquire about those incarcerated.
And more lawmakers attended Joint Prison Oversight Committee meetings than as recently as 2022 when people spoke at hearings on behalf of their loved ones.
“Since then, I have been in conversations with legislators, I have heard that we are in a moment where something might happen, where something might change, where people who previously had disagreed with us might be interested in having a conversation,” Glenn said.
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