Kay Ivey

Parole Hearings, Incentive Good Time, Prison Overcrowding & Criminal Justice Reform – An Open Letter to Gov. Kay Ivey

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Dear Governor Ivey

I have been incarcerated for 11 years as of November 2020. In my time with Alabama’s Department of Corrections i have seen numerous people with what are considered “violent crimes” be denied parole or not be considered until they have done 85% of their time or 15 years, whichever is less. Most women who are by law considered violent, are not. If you look at the statistics for women who are charged with violent crimes and have been released, the recidivism rate is extremely low.

The Parole Board has some serious issues that need to be addressed. A parole hearing should not be about re-trying our case. The judge has already done that. It should be about our institutional record; i.e. what steps we have taken to keep from re-offending, the classes we have taken to help in our recovery and classes that ADOC recommended, if we have any behaviour disciplinaries and our work performance while incarcerated. These things will tell if we are ready to re-enter society as a law abiding citizen. Our charge/conviction will never change, but we can change if we have a desire to and our institutional record will reflect this.

Prison overcrowding could be alleviated by re-instituting Incentive Good Time (IGT) to people with sentences less than life without parole or the death penalty and placing a cap on life sentences. The IGT was removed by “Michie’s Alabama Code Title 14, Chapter 9, Article 3, Deductions from sentences of Correctional Incentive Time”. Capping life sentences and making good time available across the board would provide a huge incentive for not only good behaviour, but it would reduce the amount of drugs being done in the prison system. IGT can be pulled if an inmate gets into trouble by receiving a disciplinary (such as bad behaviour or dirty urinalysis) so this would be a good incentive to remain trouble and drug free. As it stands now, people with long sentences have no incentive to improve their behaviour except their own moral conviction. This does not work for some people who have served long periods of time and numerous denials of parole, they have lost all hope and need a more tangible reason, such as getting IGT or some hope of making parole in the foreseeable future.

We need a prison system that allows people to work toward achievable goals that are based on our behaviour while incarcerated and not on our crime. We can not change what we did yesterday, but we can change who we are today. Locking people up and throwing away the key will only change people for the worse. That is why our prisons are in the shape they are in today. We must all learn from our past mistakes and that includes the way Alabama views its prison population. Not only do the laws need to be revised, sentencing guidelines re-worked and due process of law examined (which includes plea agreements that are signed by people that do not know their rights or the law, but are convinced by prosecutors that its in their best interest to sign them).

Thank yolu for taking the time to read this and i hope you will take into consideration the above suggestions given by someone who has lived this life for 11 years and witnessed the hopelessness firsthand.

Respectfully.

A female inmate at Birmingham Community Based Facility.

Alabama Department of Corrections ridiculous and arbitrary mail practices that discriminates against women with the lowest custody level at Birmingham Community Based Work Release Facility

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There is nothing in the Alabama Department of Corrections administrative regulations that we could find that details what they are doing to the women’s mail at this facility. As mail arrives, it is photocopied, be it letters, birthday cards or photographs, they then destroy the originals and give the women the black and white photocopy.

They claim this arbitrary practice is in order to stem the supply of drugs into the facility, however, despite not having visitation for over 3 months now due to the pandemic, the drugs are still readily available which proves what we all suspected anyway, in that the drugs are not brought in by an inmates family and friends at visitation, but rather its being smuggled in by ADOC’s own staff or via legal mail.

The key dealers in this facility know how to easily circumvent ADOC’s ineffective drug screening and detection protocols, they would rather punish every woman by destroying their mail, even mail that is sent from 3rd party online services, than deal with the culprits effectively.

Morale and self esteem is at an all time low, visitation has been put on hold with no time frame of when it will resume. This work release facility should be preparing women to go back into the free world after years of suffering within these hell hole facilities where they have been deliberately denied even the most basic of human rights, but ADOC is doing the opposite, they are locking down, they are taking away, they are disregarding and punishing those that have already been punished with the loss of their liberty in some cases for decades already, now they can’t even receive a picture drawn by a child to its mother.

We are sick and tired of how they treat our loved ones.

 

Resuming parole hearings is not enough

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By Beth Shelburne April 24th 2020

On December 18, 2019, I watched Alabama’s parole board deny relief to every case it considered that day. It was the last day of parole hearings for the year, and I decided to observe the process in action after monitoring the data for months as paroles plummeted like an elevator with snapped cables. Under new leaders appointed by Governor Kay Ivey, the number of scheduled parole hearings dropped by more than half compared to the year before and parole grants fell to a new low of 15 percent.

I watched the three board members deny release to people convicted of both violent and nonviolent offenses, to people whose families practically begged for parole and promised to provide a stable home, and to people who were within six months of reaching the end of their sentences. I wondered why those cases were even scheduled for hearings when there are thousands of people with long-term sentences that could be considered. Between cancellations and fewer hearings under this regime, the backlog of parole-eligible people inside Alabama prisons has ballooned to over 4000.

Only two victims out of the 18 cases scheduled that day spoke out against paroling the person who committed a crime against them, but an officer with the attorney general’s office voiced opposition in 15 of the cases. The officer began testimony against each person with the same boilerplate introduction- “We are here to protest the parole of this inmate-” never saying the person’s actual name. She pointed out their prison disciplinary infractions with no context, and went over facts from their criminal cases like she was retrying the crime in court.

In one case, she argued against paroling a man who had served over 11 years for third-degree robbery. She casually mentioned that he agreed to a plea deal after first being charged with a more serious crime, suggesting that he was more dangerous than his record indicated. A parole hearing is not the place to relitigate criminal cases, or bring up accusations against someone that didn’t pan out in court. But apparently everything in these hearings is fair game, even holding people to a standard beyond their actual convictions.

The officer with the attorney general’s office sat at a table with members of a victim’s advocacy group, who accompanied the crime victims during testimony. On the table sat cups, a pitcher of ice water and a box of tissues. Conversely, the friends and loved ones who supported parole sat at an empty table across the room. There was no one to gently usher them through the intimidating process of speaking out in support of someone who has committed a crime. Many who advocated for parole stumbled through their statements, then silently filed out of the room after hearing the decision, shoulders hunched, faces cast down. It was an exercise in shaming, much like incarceration itself.

Whether we like it or not, parole is an integral part of Alabama’s criminal sentencing structure. We have indeterminate sentences, which means judges almost always impose a range of time someone must spend in prison, with parole being the most tangible way to cut that time and return to one’s family and community. Ideally, parole gives incarcerated people something to strive for, an incentive to stay out of trouble and participate in rehabilitative programs. It should be the vehicle to pull people out of incarceration, but our current parole apparatus finds new ways to punish, to demoralize, to take away the one thing left to cling to in the dark: hope.

It has always been difficult to make parole in Alabama, but never more so than today. We are one of only two states that does not allow the person being considered for parole to participate in their own hearing. Our system has always been fraught with politics, cloaked in opacity. In 2019, Alabama received an F in a study by the Prison Policy Institute that graded fairness in state parole systems. That failing grade was before Governor Ivey appointed Charlie “lock-em-up” Graddick as executive director for the agency, with a salary of $172 thousand a year, $68 thousand more than his predecessor.

For months after Graddick began, the agency doubled as a tough-on-crime propaganda machine, issuing a daily list of parole candidates it referred to as “murderers, rapists and robbers,” along with sensational details of their crimes lifted from media reports. Press releases on parole results included celebratory headlines- “Board denies parole for 14 violent felons.” The inflammatory rhetoric calmed down only after lawmakers questioned why the very agency that decides who gets out of prison seemed intent on making everyone in prison look as terrible as possible.

This board has denied parole in 85 percent of cases, only granting 133 paroles out of 866 cases considered so far this fiscal year. In the last fiscal year, 1,337 paroles were granted out of 4,270 cases considered, and those were the lowest numbers in 15 years worth of data. This board seems particularly hellbent on denying parole for anyone serving time for a violent offense, even when they’ve served decades in prison and demonstrated rehabilitation. Multiple studies show people typically age out of criminal behavior and there’s little public safety benefit in long-term sentences. Additionally, a 2018 study on recidivism by the U.S. Department of Justice found released property offenders are much more likely to be arrested than released violent offenders.

Mr. Graddick recently announced parole hearings will resume in May after canceling hundreds of hearings due to concerns about COVID-19. But it’s not enough to just resume hearings. To mitigate the swelling backlog, the Bureau of Pardons and Paroles must aggressively increase the number of scheduled hearings. Since November, current leadership has slated an average of 173 parole hearings a month, less than half the average number of monthly hearings in fiscal year 2019. If an estimated 300 people become eligible for parole each month, the board would need to hear approximately 460 cases per month for the next 2 years just to catch up. Right now 141 hearings have been scheduled for the entire month of May.  

The urgency to fix this crisis is truly a matter of life and death and all state leaders should insist that no more time be wasted. The state needs to establish an infrastructure, so all sides are supported in the parole process, not just crime victims and law enforcement. Alabama needs to provide a prison system that allows people to work toward achievable parole goals, instead of allowing unmitigated violence, corruption and apathy. And lastly, leaders must restore a meaningful chance at parole by demanding that the parole board evaluate people according to who they are now, not who they were when they committed their crimes. Every person waiting for a parole hearing, along with each person denied relief is yet another Alabamian at risk of having a prison sentence turn into a death sentence in the most overcrowded, violent prison system in the nation, which now faces the additional threat of COVID-19.

ACLU OF ALABAMA DEMANDS TRANSPARENCY FROM BUREAU OF PARDONS AND PAROLES

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JANUARY 24, 2020

MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Today, the ACLU of Alabama sent a second public records request to the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles (ABPP) asking for any policy that is guiding the bureau to schedule far fewer people for parole hearings. A previous open records request to ABPP was sent back with references to the Alabama Code and ABPP’s Administrative Code, which Campaign for Smart Justice investigative reporter Beth Shelburne analyzed before sending a second public records request.

These requests come in response to the drastic decline in parole rates, noted in a new ACLU report issued in early January. In 2018, the agency averaged 600 hearings per month, while approximately 150 hearings were scheduled for January 2020. In November and December 2019, the board granted parole to only 17 people, denying release to 92 percent of eligible people.

Beth Shelburne, Investigative Reporter, Campaign for Smart Justice:
“We’ve asked to see the specific policy or procedure that guides the scheduling of parole hearings. We’ve also asked to interview any supervisor within the agency who can walk us through the process, but I was told today that my interview request would not be granted.

We’ve submitted a new request, renewing our commitment to hold this state agency accountable. The Governor and the Bureau of Pardons and Paroles must follow through on transparency and answer our questions about this important policy.”

Read ACLU of Alabama report on parole rates here: https://www.aclualabama.org/en/press-releases/aclu-report-shows-dire-eff…

Below is a copy of the letter in its entirety:

Beth Shelburne
P.O. Box 320635 Birmingham, AL 35232

January 24, 2020

Terry Abbott
Director of Communications
Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles 100 Capitol Commerce Boulevard Montgomery, AL 36117

Dear Terry,

On January 14, 2020 I received your response to my open records request that I sent to you on December 17, 2019 asking for the specific policy or practice that is guiding the scheduling of inmates for parole hearings. Your response included information that you already sent to me on December 16, 2019, which referred me to the administrative rules for the Bureau of Pardons and Paroles. Your latest response also referred me to the statutory codes for which the rules are based on. I have reviewed Act 2019-393, Code of Alabama sections 15-22-28, 15-22-26, and 15-22-37. I have also reviewed Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles Administrative Code Chapter 640-X-3ER: Scheduling Parole Consideration. None of these documents answers the open records request.

Sections 15-22-28, 15-22-26, and 15-22-37 set forth guidelines for reviewing inmates for parole eligibility, granting paroles, managing inmates on parole, Christmas furloughs and similar details irrelevant to my questions. Chapter 640-X-3ER roughly mirrors Act 2019-393 in detailing the procedure for setting an inmate’s initial parole consideration date and setting consideration dates if an inmate’s parole is denied.

There is a difference between the date on which an inmate becomes ​eligible for parole consideration and the date on which the same inmate is actually considered​ for parole at a public hearing held by the parole board. On current practices, it appears the agency is setting an inmate’s ​eligibility date ​according to the requirements of Act 2019-393 and Chapter 640-X-3ER. However, none of these documents specifies when or how the agency schedules the public hearing of a specific inmate’s case once he or she becomes eligible for parole consideration. A procedure is clearly being followed to determine which cases, from among all the eligible inmates, are being scheduled for public hearings. The public deserves to know these specific policies and procedures because, at present, this side of the parole process is completely opaque.

As I stated previously, my mission is to try to understand why fewer inmates are being scheduled for parole hearings, and why they are not being scheduled in order of their consideration dates. I specifically asked for any writing that could explain the policy or practice for scheduling hearings that has been transmitted to the Bureau and/or Board employees who are tasked with creating the hearing dockets. That writing would include emails, memos and any other writing, formal or informal. You have not sent me any writing of this nature, which would be a proper response to the Public Records Request.

As a result, I am submitting a new request for all documents, emails, and other written communication, formal or informal, that sets forth the policies and procedures determining or specifying the following: 1) How many days each week the Board holds public hearings; 2) How many cases are considered each day that hearings are held; 3) How many files case workers are instructed to review each day, week, or month; 4) The criteria or process used in selecting cases to be scheduled for public hearings among the inmates who are eligible to be considered; 5) Who determines which cases are selected for public hearings, whether it’s the actual parole board, administrators at the Bureau, or some other person or group.

Additionally, you did not address my request to speak to a supervisor who can walk me through the process currently being utilized. Please consider that request current and ongoing. I look forward to hearing your response to these requests.

Sincerely,
Beth Shelburne

 

We need YOU at the Alabama State House

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This summer, Governor Kay Ivey commissioned monthly study group meetings to address the groundswell of issues within the Alabama prison system. However, although these meetings began in June, there has never been an opportunity for directly impacted people to speak.

But on Wednesday, December 4, this finally changes.

This December meeting will give formerly incarcerated people a chance to speak directly to Alabama lawmakers about how they have been negatively impacted by the state’s prison system.

Join us at the Alabama State House in support of the brave people calling on Alabama lawmakers to reform our state’s prisons.

GOVERNORS STUDY GROUP MEETING

Alabama is experiencing a prison crisis, and we’re calling on lawmakers to end it.

Wednesday, December 4, 10 a.m.
Alabama State House
11 S Union St.
Montgomery, AL 36130

Please note: This link will take you to a third-party website, Facebook.com

 

Together, we must demand that our elected officials commit to a much-needed overhaul of the Alabama prison system.

We can, but we need your support, too.

Help us fill the room,

Jasmine Peeples
Digital Media Strategist, ACLU of Alabama

Alabama Prison Population Rising Dramatically

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As violence continues to plague the state’s prisons, new data from the Alabama Department of Corrections shows that the department is rapidly erasing much-needed reductions in the prison population. The prison population declined 3.6 percent last year, but that progress has been almost completely reversed in the first half of this fiscal year as the population rose 3.3 percent (an increase of 890 people) between last October and this April.

Admissions to ADOC custody for the current fiscal year are 9.5 percent higher (8332 people) than the same time last year (7607). And while admissions are climbing, releases have plummeted to 11.4 percent fewer so far this year (7704) than the same time last year (8698).

This dramatic rise in Alabama’s prison population coincides with changes in parole policy last fall. Since October, 37.2 percent fewer people have been paroled (1482 people) than were paroled by the same time last year (2360).

The rise in admissions and increasing limits on parole mean Alabama will experience a growth in the prison population that will add new challenges to the existing crisis in conditions in the state’s prisons. The data also undermines prison officials’ assertions that sentencing reforms are lowering the incarcerated population and easing overcrowding in the state’s prisons.

Alabama’s extraordinary prison homicide rate has already reached new crisis levels this year, with eight homicides in the first six months of 2019. Alabama had 10 homicides in 2018; 11 in 2017; 3 in 2016; and 8 in 2015.

The unprecedented level of violence, including sexual and lethal violence, that has plagued the state’s prisons for the last five years was the subject of a scathing findings letter issued by the Department of Justice this spring, and it has only gotten worse.

Since the Justice Department report was released on April 2, two incarcerated people have been killed in medium-security facilities. Joseph Holloway was serving a 40-year sentence for robbery when he was stabbed to death on June 5, 2019, at Staton Correctional Facility in Elmore, Alabama. Jeremy Bailey was serving a 7-year sentence for a drug conviction when he was stabbed to death 10 days later at Fountain Correctional Facility in Atmore.

Violence at St. Clair Correctional Facility in Springville has also continued unchecked. During Memorial Day weekend, unconfiscated weapons and drugs, combined with staff failure to regulate prisoner movement, resulted in the stabbing of four men by a single armed and intoxicated incarcerated man. One of the victims was classified as minimum-out custody, had been in prison less than three months, and had repeatedly sought protection, notifying officials in the days before he was attacked that he was at risk in the housing unit and feared for his life.

Article originally published here