“That is not unique to Alabama, as it is more of a national issue when examining the data,” said Cam Ward, director of the Alabama Pardon and Parole Bureau.
In April and May of 2023, the 3-member Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles heard 662 parole-eligible cases, but only 92 were granted parole. That’s a grant rate of 14%.
Alabama has granted fewer and fewer parole requests in recent years despite an ongoing federal challenge to the state’s overpopulated prison system, prompting mocobizscene.com to examine parole data in greater detail. The majority of prisoners used to be granted parole.
In 2018, the majority of prisoners who appeared before the board were granted parole. The Board reports that only 6% of eligible prisoners have been granted parole thus far in fiscal year 2023.
AL.com discovered that between April and May of this year, Black men had a 25% lower probability of receiving parole than Caucasian men.
Carla Crowder, executive director of the nonprofit legal centre Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, expressed that the data is both alarming and expected, considering the racial inequalities that Appleseed has previously observed throughout Alabama’s criminal justice system at every stage.
“Such glaring racial bias in the length of sentence served demands closer scrutiny and investigation,” she added.
According to AL.com’s analysis of state court records, 640 out of the 662 people who came up for parole over the two-month period had detailed demographic information. That includes details on charges, race, sex and age.
Some 60% of those 640 people who got parole were white, despite most of the prisoners going before the board being black.
Black men also serve more of their sentences before they’re released.
The majority of Black male inmates who were granted parole were already serving at least 75% of their court-ordered sentences – an average of 14.5 years – or were serving life sentences.
Most of the white prisoners who were given parole in April and May were new in jail and had served less than a quarter of their sentence. On average, white male prisoners who were let out on release had been in jail for only 4.5 years. There could be many reasons for the difference, such as different charges and sentences based on race.
Ward said that the racial differences in the system start much earlier in the charging and sentencing stages.
The average sentence for a prisoner who was black was 23.6 years, while the average sentence for a prisoner who was white was 14.6 years. Those averages are based on the data from 603 people, but they do not include people who are given life sentences.
Rep. Matt Simpson, R-Daphne, said that the data showed that Black men spend more time in jail before getting parole should be sorted by multiple variables and did not make a “apples to apples” comparison.
“There are many factors that go into sentences and parole decisions,” he said. “Those factors include criminal history, details of the offense that occurred, whether there was a victim that was injured… until we can compare all of those factors, just comparing race versus race of inmates won’t be able to show any patterns in what’s occurred from parole decisions.”
Even though the punishments people got in court were very different depending on the crime and where they lived in the state, Crowder said that the differences in sentences don’t explain why some people don’t get parole.
“This disparity is uniquely harmful to Black men in Alabama because our prisons are unsafe and harmful, rather than rehabilitative,” said Crowder. “So the parole board’s racially biased decisions are resulting in incarcerated Black men being subjected to violent, drug infested, corrupt prison conditions at much higher rates than everyone else. This demands an explanation from the Board and additional oversight.”
When you look at detainees whose main crime was a nonviolent drug charge, those average sentences get shorter. Out of the 640 prisoners who went before the parole board in April and May and for whom data was provided, 117 were drug offenders with no other major or violent charges. The average sentence for Black prisoners in that group was 13.6 years, which was 10 years less than the average term for all Black prisoners. And sentences for white drug criminals who didn’t hurt anyone were cut down to 8.9 years.
At the hearings, both black and white detainees with nonviolent drug charges did better than most because 26% of them were let out on parole. Even though white men still got more grants than black men, 21% vs. 19%.
Each month, a lot fewer women go to jail or get parole. During the two months, only 74 women were given their freedom.
AL.com found that women were much more likely than men to get out. About one-third of them were let go. Even though the numbers are small as a whole, there was no difference between how often white women and black women got out of jail.
The conferences started on April 4, and Darryl Littleton and Kim Davidson, along with board chair Leigh Gwathney, made the decisions. AL.com stopped getting information after the meetings on May 25.
Another headline from Alabama: weather update: Again time of year when Saharan dust travels across the Atlantic Ocean
