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Associated Press
5 days ago
- General
- Associated Press
Lawmakers offered mixed reviews on proposed parole guidelines
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — The Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles is proposing new parole guidelines after state lawmakers voted to withhold funding unless the document was updated as required by law. The advisory guidelines use factors like the severity of offense and the inmate's behavior in prison to create a score to aid in parole decisions. The parole board has come under fire for both low parole rates and how often its decisions deviate from what the guidelines recommend. State lawmakers — frustrated that the board had not fulfilled a requirement of a 2019 law to update the guidelines every three years — put language in the budget requiring the guidelines to be revamped for the board to receive funding. The board this month proposed new guidelines. Members of the Joint Prison Oversight Committee on Wednesday offered mixed reviews of the proposed changes. Republican Sen. Clyde Chambliss, who chairs the oversight committee and was the lawmaker who proposed the budget language, said he was glad to see the board beginning the work. But he said he needed to study the proposed changes before giving an assessment. Republican Rep. Matt Simpson said he liked some of the proposed changes. 'I think it's an important step to make sure that the guidelines are worth the paper they're printed on,' Simpson said. However, others were skeptical. Rep. Chris England, a Democrat, said the board 'magically produced these guidelines that were three years overdue.' 'I think the way that these happened is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever witnessed,' England said. He said there is data from prior releases that could be used to update the guidelines. 'Instead of using that data, it seems like this kind of came out of nowhere because they were threatened with losing funding,' England said. Alabama's parole rate has plummeted over recent years. The percentage of inmates being granted parole fell from 53% in 2018 to a historic low of 8% in 2023. The rate rose back to about 20% in 2024. The board's parole decision matched the guideline recommendation in about 25% of cases in the 2024 fiscal year, according to numbers from the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles. Jerome Dees, policy director at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said he is concerned that the proposed changes are based on increasing the conformance rate — how often parole decisions match the guideline recommendation — instead of on a deeper policy analysis. 'It is the equivalent of taking a pop quiz, failing, and instead of digging deeper and seeing what changes you need to make, you just rewrite the questions on the quiz so that it aligns with wrong answers,' Dees said.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles issues proposed parole guidelines
A prison corridor in Holman Correctional Facility in 2019. The Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles earlier this month issued new parole guidelines shortly after the Alabama Legislature made their funding contigent on their development. (File) The Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles earlier this month published an updated version of parole guidelines, weeks after the Alabama Legislature voted to make the board's funding conditional on their development. The state determines whether a person should be recommended for parole based on a a point system that accumulates based on a person's predicted risk for recidivism and whether that person will endanger the public. If applicants receive a score of at least 8, the guidelines recommend they be denied. Under the proposed guidelines, With the proposed guidelines under consideration, the parole guidelines recommend that people be denied parole if they receive a score of 9 or higher. The changes add weight to the crime committed by the applicant. Based on the current guidelines, those who commit the most severe crimes receive two points, but the updated guidelines increase it to four points. A severe offense using the current guidelines is given two points. That is the same number of points in the proposed guidelines for an offense characterized as moderate. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX The new guidelines also use the Ohio Risk Assessment System or the Sex Offender Risk Assessment, which are the same as the current guidelines. However, the updated proposal does not consider a risk assessment from the Alabama Department of Corrections, the institution that most closely tracks the applicant's behavior while incarcerated. Messages seeking comment were left Tuesday with the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles and Sen. Clyde Chambliss, R-Prattville, who chairs the Legislative Joint Prison Oversight Committee, and who has also criticized the parole board. Chambliss introduced the budget amendment that required the board to issue the new guidelines to receive funding. The parole guidelines remain voluntary, and members of the parole board have the authority to deny parole to applicants even though the guidelines recommend they be afforded parole. Some legislators and criminal justice advocates Tuesday had specific problems with some of the criteria, such as weighing the severity of the crime more heavily than in the past to other factors, from a person's age to the risk assessment from the Alabama Department of Corrections. Those considerations were not included in the new guidelines. Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, a longtime critic of the board's relatively low parole rates, said Tuesday the new guidelines seemed aimed at increasing the board's 'conformance rate,' or the frequency at which its decisions align with parole guidelines. The board's rate has been at roughly 20% for the past several years. 'I think it is unfortunate the new guidelines don't take into account all the things that some of the applicants have done in order to gain their freedom,' he said. England also called it 'odd' that Corrections' assessment was not included. 'The Department of Corrections basically allows someone to work unsupervised everyday offsite and leave for 72 hours at a time and earn that trust from the Department of Corrections, that the Board doesn't appear to take that into account,' he said. Others said the guidelines do not capture factors that weigh in the applicants' favor, particularly in the section that measures an applicant's behavior while incarcerated. According to the proposed guidelines, a person can receive points for sanctions for both violent and nonviolent actions known as disciplinaries within the past 12 months. 'There are people who have not gotten any disciplinary infractions for the past 10 years or five years and that hard work will not count in their favor for parole,' said Carla Crowder, executive director of Alabama Appleseed, a criminal justice reform organization. 'The restriction to evaluating only 12 months of institutional behavior then serves as a disincentive to follow the rules over the long term.' Another concern is the re-entry plan. Applicants will receive a penalty totaling either one or two points if they submit a reentry plan that is not complete. But to submit a completed reentry plan, it must include both work and home plans. 'It is very difficult for people to gain employment if they are still incarcerated,' Crowder said, explaining that the lack of a job plan should not count against someone, especially people who have no access to online resources to apply for employment or to reentry staff to assist them in that process. By that logic, applicants will automatically be awarded at least one point counted against them for parole. Critics also say the guidelines penalize applicants if anyone from the public, regardless of whether they are the victim or not, speaks against them. The Alabama Attorney General's Office as well as a staff member from Victims of Crime and Leniency (VOCAL), a victims' rights group, regularly attend the parole hearings to oppose parole. Oftentimes, VOCAL does speak with the applicant and bases their recommendations solely on the person's criminal record. 'Also, all the evidence suggests that a person's chances of committing another crime decreases dramatically with age, and there is no section in the parole guidelines where old age is a factor,' Crowder said. 'This is a missed opportunity.' Criminal justice reform advocates, and more recently legislators, have been increasingly concerned with a dramatic decrease in the number of paroles the board has granted in recent years. There will be a public comment period on the proposed updates for the next month. If a legislator has an issue with the proposals, the person can ask that they be reviewed by the Legislative Council who can either reject them entirely, amend them, or accept them. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Alabama lawmakers to Parole Board: Produce guidelines or lose your funding
Sen. Clyde Chambliss, R-Prattville, speaks with Sen. Dan Roberts, R-Mountain Brook, in the Alabama Senate, Feb. 25, 2005. The General Fund budget includes an admentment he proposed to require the Parole Board to complete an update on the parole guidelines. (Photo/Stew Milne for the Alabama Reflector) If next year's budget is any indication, Alabama lawmakers have lost patience with the state Board of Pardons and Paroles. The 2026 General Fund Gov. Kay Ivey signed last week makes funding for the board dependent on drafting new parole guidelines that determine the likelihood that an applicant can be safely released on parole. The budget goes into effect on Oct. 1. Sen. Clyde Chambliss, R-Prattville, the chair of the Joint Legislative Prison Committee, introduced the amendment shortly before the Senate approved the budget on April 29. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX 'When a state entity does not follow state law, I think it is incumbent upon us in our oversight role to do whatever we need to do, or can do, to help them follow state law,' he said in an interview last week. 'And the power of the purse is really about the only tool that we have to do that.' The Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles did not return messages sent last week seeking comment. Lawmakers also cut the General Fund allocation to the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles, the agency that oversees reentry and rehabilitation for people in the custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections, by 4.1%, bringing it from $94.5 million to $90.6 million. Lawmakers enacted legislation in 2019 that updated rules on parole, part of a broader overhaul of the parole system after Jimmy O'Neal Spencer, who had been serving two life sentences, was mistakenly released on parole in late 2017. The following year, Spencer killed three people, including a seven-year-old child, during a robbery in Guntersville. Spencer was later convicted of the murders and sentenced to death. The 2019 law required the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles to update the parole guidelines within three years, based on evidence and data for those who were released. The Parole Board missed the 2022 deadline and has yet to release an updated version required by state law. Several lawmakers expressed frustration with the Parole Board, particularly chair Leigh Gwathney, after they did not receive any response from a set of questions concerning the low parole rate and their process for deciding who should be granted parole and who should be denied that were submitted in the spring of 2024. At a meeting of the Joint Legislative Prison Oversight Committee meeting in October, Gwathney gave meandering replies to lawmakers' questions. Chambliss demanded that Gwathney provide her responses by the end of November. They never received any response. 'We didn't get a response,' Chambliss said. 'When the Attorney General's Office got involved and asked questions, apparently a response was prepared in November, but we never got it.' Chambliss said that he only made his final decision to introduce the amendment shortly before he took the floor on April 29. But Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, one of the most vocal critics of the Parole Board, said he understood it could be a possibility when he learned that lawmakers were discussing the proposal among themselves toward the start of the current legislative session. England said the amendment is the result of actions of the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles, particularly Gwathney. 'The money being taken away isn't to suggest that the Bureau is doing a good job with reentry and rehabilitation, but it is to focus on the fact that the chair, who has been there since 2019, is not following the law and defying the Legislature openly.' The amendment was one of several actions taken by Democrats and Republicans in an attempt to create additional oversight for the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles that they believe has flouted their oversight authority. SB 324, also sponsored by Chambliss, would increase the number of Parole Board members from three to five and allow members of the Board to appoint their own chair instead of the governor making the appointment. HB 40, sponsored by England, would create a commission that would create a validated risk and needs assessment, as well as parole release and classification guidelines for people in custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections. It would also requires the Parole Board to adhere to the parole guidelines when making decisions and disclose reasons for not adhering to them in any parole decision. But with just one day left in the 2025 session, neither bill seems likely to get to Gov. Kay Ivey's desk. England's legislation remains stalled in the House chamber. Chambliss' bill has passed the Senate and squeaked though the House Judiciary Committee in April, but will compete with many other bills seeking approval on the final day of the session Wednesday. That leaves the amendment, which says that the board's funding for 'personnel and employee benefit costs' will be released 'after the board revises and adopts guidelines concerning the granting or denial of paroles, and make available on the Board's website.' 'My guess and my hope are that they will update the guidelines,' Chambliss said. 'If they do that, then it is a moot point. I am pretty confident, I heard they are working on it.' His amendment received unanimous support from the Senate when it was introduced. 'We do that all the time with money, that is a stick that legislators have that if someone is not following the law, whatever that may be, to use money to say, 'Hey, if you are not going to do this, then we are going to withhold funds,'' said Sen. Will Barfoot, R-Pike Road, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Parole rates declined dramatically, falling to the single digit percentages at times during 2023 before increasing slightly to roughly 25%. The parole rates were low even though the conformance rates, the percentage that the decisions of the Parole Board aligned with the recommendations based on the parole guidelines, was about 20%. During the meeting in October, Gwathney said she altered the score sheets to favor parole applicants, and even then, the parole rate remained low. 'What we wanted was several years of data to figure out if the guidelines worked or not, but since they were not being followed, and the conformance rate was so low, and the chair admitted to changing them to fit whatever goals she had, not only do we not have the data, but the data is corrupted,' England said. 'We wasted a bunch of time, and we wasted a bunch of money.' Controversy regarding the parole rate has become so problematic that civil rights groups have weighed in on the issue. 'It is good to see a little added accountability with some financial strings attached to it to ensure compliance with, honestly, what the Parole Board is supposed to have been doing for years,' said Jerome Dees, policy director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights group. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
21-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Alabama Senate passes bills requiring device filters, app store age checks for minors
Sen. Clyde Chambliss, R-Prattville, speaks to colleagues on the floor of the Alabama Senate on Feb. 4, 2025 in Montgomery, Alabama. The Alabama Legislature began its 2025 regular session on Tuesday. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector) The Alabama Senate approved two bills Thursday aimed at enhancing online safety for minors by requiring filters on new smartphones and tablets and mandating age verification for app store access. Sen. Clyde Chambliss, R-Prattville, the sponsor of the legislation, said on the Senate floor that the bills aim to prevent children from accessing potentially harmful content online. 'They try to protect children, the most vulnerable of our society … they do it in different ways, but it's all about protecting children,' Chambliss said following the vote. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX The first bill, SB 186, passed the chamber on a 28-5 vote. It would require that smartphones and tablets manufactured on or after June 1 and activated in Alabama include a pre-installed filter capable of blocking obscene material. During the device activation process, users will be asked their age and the filter will automatically be enabled if the user is identified as a minor who is under 18. Adults would be able to disable the filter using a password. 'We don't even have to come up with a solution. It's already there. It is already there. This bill is very simple. All it does is require those who manufacture these devices to turn the filter on if the device is enabled, activated for a child. That's it in a nutshell,' he said on the Senate floor, adding that smartphones are already equipped with these filters. The bill would allow parents or guardians to sue manufacturers for damages if a minor accesses obscene material due to non-compliance, and the Attorney General would also be able to pursue civil penalties against manufacturers. The second bill, SB 187, which passed 26-6, would require app store to verify the age of individuals creating accounts in Alabama. The app store must obtain parental consent for users identified as minors before the minor can download or purchase apps or make in-app purchases. It would also prohibit developers from enforcing disclosures or terms of service on minors without parental consent. 'This is important because children, minors are not of an age and maturity and intellect to enter into these contracts, to read and understand these contracts. They're hard enough for adults,' Chambliss said. This legislation would require app store providers to share age category data with developers and notify parents of significant app changes, requiring renewed consent. The attorney general would have the right to pursue civil action for potentially deceptive trade practices, potentially leading to significant fines. Chambliss said that similar legislation regarding app stores has advanced in other states, including one that was signed into law in Utah in March. Chambliss said that the Alabama bill was amended to align closely with Utah's law. 'The point is to try to make it consistent across the states, and then, hopefully, when enough states adopt it, maybe Congress will adopt it, and we wouldn't have a different law in every state,' Chambliss said. Both bills move to the Alabama House of Representatives for consideration. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
