There are two elements critical to a functioning prison system. Security and hope.
Alabama doesn’t do well on either.
Start with security. At the most basic level, a prison needs doors that lock. This was a problem in at least one state correctional facility in recent memory. But security also means that staff and inmates don’t have to live under a constant threat of physical harm.
That’s not the case in our prisons. The Alabama Department of Corrections last fall reported a 13% increase in fights in its facilities as well as an increase in inmate-on-staff assaults. DOC has also shelled out millions of dollars to settle lawsuits alleging excessive force by corrections officers on inmates. And all of this comes amid a years-long federal lawsuit over physical and sexual assaults in Alabama prisons.
Knowing all this, hope seems trivial, even something to scoff at. Most politicians think public safety is sidearms and snappy uniforms, not allowing people to see a better future. But if the incarcerated don’t have something to live for or work toward during their time in prison, violence becomes a lot more tempting and rehabilitation programs become far less appealing.
“What reason do they have to go (to rehab programs) as long as they’ll be denied for parole?” Kenneth Traywick, an inmate in the state prison system, told my colleague Melissa Brown in 2021. “They know this. Nobody is wanting to do any of that because they know good and well it’s not going to help them in the long run.”
Brian Lyman is the editor of the Alabama Reflector.
As chair of the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles, Leigh Gwathney did all she could to destroy hope among the state’s incarcerated population.
During Gwathney’s time on the board, which ended last week, the parole grant rate, which stood at 54% in 2017, plummeted to 8% in 2023. It’s rebounded in recent years, but in many cases, the board ignored parole guidelines when they said applicants should be released from prison.
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This was done in the name of law and order, or at least a 1987 version of it. Gov. Kay Ivey, who got new powers over the state pardons and paroles process in 2018, first paired Gwathney with Charlie Graddick, a former Alabama attorney general and judge who embodied a Reagan-era approach to law enforcement. Ivey said in a statement at the time of Gwathney’s appointment that she expected them to “ultimately, improve public safety across the state.”
Six years later, it’s hard to see any effect that approach had on public safety. By most measures, Alabama’s crime rates in 2019 were up from historic lows in the middle part of the decade but not even close to records set in the early 1990s. A pandemic-era surge in crime the next year — coming as the board was squeezing parole rates — was sharp but short. Crime rates were effectively flat in the state in 2022 and 2023, according to the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency. Birmingham and Montgomery, hit hard by gun violence, have seen homicide levels drop this year.
But Alabama prisons never stopped being violent or dangerous in those six years. And the board kept many people locked in there, even those who had worked in good faith to reform and cut time off their sentences.
The parole board didn’t create the crisis in the state’s correctional facilities. But they embodied state officials’ effective indifference to it. By telling inmates they could never take steps to shorten a sentence, they took away incentives for order behind bars. For keeping prisons safe.
And for a while, most of the people responsible shrugged.
But not all. Even before parole rates hit their all-time low, Graddick faced sharp questions from Democratic and Republican legislators about the declining parole rates. He stepped down from the job at the end of 2020.
Gwathney held on. The end only came after a disastrous appearance before lawmakers last October, where she struggled to answer questions about the board’s parole rates and its responsiveness to legislators’ inquiries. (A tip for all state officials: Do not make the people who set your budget wait months for their requests.)
Can things get better? We’ll see. Graddick’s old job has been held for years by Cam Ward, who spent much of his time in the Legislature trying to fix the prison crisis and has worked to provide rehabilitation and training services to those in his purview.
Hal Nash, Ivey’s pick to succeed Gwathney, is also talking about putting public safety first. But he also acknowledged that people can change for the better, an idea that seemed foreign to Gwathney and many of her colleagues on the board.
I hope Nash understands that “public safety” and “inmate rehabilitation” are not ideas in conflict with each other. They are tied together. And keeping the hope out of prisons will mean extending the violence and a lot less security for all of us.
Brian Lyman is the editor of Alabama Reflector. He has covered Alabama politics since 2006, and worked at the Montgomery Advertiser, the Press-Register and The Anniston Star. A 2024 Pulitzer finalist for Commentary, his work has also won awards from the Associated Press Managing Editors, the Alabama Press Association and Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights. He lives in Auburn with his wife, Julie, and their three children.
Alabama Reflector is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Public safety and parole aren’t mutually exclusive | BRIAN LYMAN