A prison corridor in Holman Correctional Facility in 2019. Cases pending in municipal courts can complicate reentry for people serving time in state prison. (File)
A Mountain Brook municipal judge told the Alabama Commission on Re-Entry Thursday that those about to be released from prison could face local cases they may not have considered.
“As part of re-entry, from a municipal court standpoint, I am trying to impress upon you that there is something there that we need to deal with because reentry, when they come out, if they have got these cases throughout municipal courts, it can trip them up,” said K.C. Hairston, the vice president of the Alabama Municipal Judges Association. “They are trying to get a fresh start, but now they are right back into this system.”
During his presentation to committee members, Hairston compared those about to be released who have assistance dealing with those pending cases and any potential penalties that may be waiting, and those who do not realize they have additional cases in municipal court resulting from past behavior, those that they may have forgotten about or did not resolve.
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“They get out, footloose and fancy free, and they don’t handle their business,” Hairston said. “That may be why they went to prison in the first place. If they don’t handle their business, what happens? They get new (failure to appear notices), new suspended driver’s licenses. Now, they get pulled over up the road, and because of the FTAs, now they are right back in jail.”
Obtaining employment is an important factor in recidivism, with evidence demonstrating that recidivism rates for people decline when they have steady employment, which pending cases in municipal court can hamper.
“In these municipal courts, it just goes on and on,” he said. “That can be problematic for jobs. Also, if they don’t handle their municipal court business, well, that is not good for a job either.”
Hairston said he received correspondence from people serving longer sentences in state prison asking that their punishments from municipal court violations be levied concurrently.
“You know what I do with that request? I grant every one of them,” he said. “I have never turned down one of those requests. That is what we are seeing.”
Hairston encouraged officials to develop a system that integrates municipal court violations with existing information that state has in a database of those incarcerated within the Alabama Department of Corrections.
“What if we could formalize a process where there is not someone, at the point they are about to get out of prison, that is when they start thinking about these things?” Hairston said. “What if, while they are serving time, we could have a formalized process where a form gets filled out, it goes to all the municipal courts … we grant these things?”
The municipal courts may not grant the request for every individual about to be released, Hairston said. Some charges stemming from violent incidents may not be considered, but others would.
Hairston’s comments stem from a conversation that happened during the previous month’s Commission meeting in which information related to criminal offenses at the municipal and county level is not well integrated.
“There is no one at fault,” said Cam Ward during Thursday’s meeting, director of the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles, who chairs the Reentry Commission. “There is no bad guy here, it is just the system our government is in.”
Ward said that only half of the law enforcement agencies, including courts, prosecutors, cities and counties, are reporting data.
“We are making public policy on maybe 56% of the data getting reported,” Ward said.
SB 203, sponsored by Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur and signed into law in 2022, requires that municipal courts submit their records, including fines and fees, to the state’s Administrative Office of the Courts.
“These sessions that we are having are precisely what the aim of that legislation was intended to be,” said Jerome Dees, policy director with the Southern Poverty Law Center, a member of the Reentry Commission.
It was meant to aid in pretrial resolutions and greater transparency for cases at levels of the court system.
That bill is only the beginning, however. Agencies and associations must then work to integrate the information into a single system that could eventually result in having everyone incarcerated in state prison having their criminal charges resolved.
“A lot of times, the municipal courts, that is where the driver’s license hold up is,” Hairston said. “If we are resolving the municipal court cases, all the clearance letters are entered, I think the packet they get when they step out is a resolution of all their municipal court cases and a brand-new driver’s license.”
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