Alabama 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.