Alabama Prison Crisis Fact Sheet

ALABAMA IS OUT OF STEP WITH THE REST OF THE NATION. Over-reliance on imprisonment sets Alabama apart from the national trend toward more effective use of correctional options. Alabama's prisons are chock-full of people whose likelihood of continued offending would have been greatly reduced if they had been sentencing to mandatory treatment instead of prison.
CURRENT SENTENCING POLICIES CONTRIBUTE TO SHARP RACIAL AND GEOGRAPHIC DISPARITY IN INCARCERATION. Over-reliance on imprisonment in Alabama is marked by racial disparity in the prison system-with African Americans comprising 60 percent of prisoners, while they represent just 26 percent of the state's population overall. Whites, who comprise 71 percent of state residents, fill just 40 percent of prison beds. And over-reliance on imprisonment is marked with unjustified geographic disparities, especially in the application of Alabama's harsh habitual offender law-with just eight counties accounting for more than a third of prisoners sentenced in this fashion. And prisoners committed from Montgomery were two times more likely to be sentenced as "habitual offenders" than those committed from Mobile.
"TOUGH" POLICIES ARE FAILING TO ACHIEVE CRIME-CONTROL GOALS. If the purpose of prisons is to combat crime then Alabama's tendency to "lock them up and let the parole board sort them out" must be viewed as a failure. Between 1994 and 2003, Alabama's incarceration rate shot up by 41 percent yet the state's index crime rate fell by a paltry nine percent. During the same period, the nation as a whole experienced slower growth in incarceration rates, which rose by 25 percent, but much greater reductions in the crime rate, which fell by 24 percent.
WRONG-HEADED APPROACHES TO SUBSTANCE ABUSE ARE DRIVING PRISON POPULATION GROWTH. The use of incarcenration for offenses that are directly tied to substance abuse contributes significantly to Alabama's overcrowding crisis. Among the ten leading commitment offenses, the top three are substance-related. In 2004, more people were admitted to prison for possession of marijuana than for first-and-second-degree assaults combined. While many states have taken steps to reduce incarceration of substance abusers, Alabama is allowing addition to drive prison growth. Between 1999 and 2004, commitments for drug possession and DUI shot up by 28 percent and 17 percent, respectively, while admissions for offenses against persons fell by 14 percent.
THE POLICY CHOICES ARE CLEAR: A permanent prison crisis that fuels ever-more costly prison expansion; or rational sentencing standards and a comprehensive statewide system of community corrections serving every court jurisdiction and every county.

*These facts are taken from the report "Alabama Prison Crisis," written by Justice Strategies.