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Low Risk, Still Locked Up

5 min read

In late October, a candidate for governor came through Hamilton. I asked him a simple question. Why are Alabama's parole rates so low?

I've put the same question to both candidates for governor. This post isn't about either of them. It's about the question, because every taxpayer in this state is paying for the answer.

The numbers

In 2017, Alabama's parole board granted parole in 55 percent of its hearings. By 2023, that number had fallen to 8 percent.

It has climbed since. In fiscal year 2025, the board granted parole in 23 percent of hearings: 589 grants out of 2,562 decisions. Through June of fiscal 2026, the rate was 21 percent. That is real progress, and the people who pushed for it deserve credit.

But it's still fewer than one in four. And the overall rate isn't the most important number. The most important number is WHO gets turned down.

Low risk, still denied

Before a hearing, the state scores each applicant with its own risk assessment: low, moderate, high, or very high.

In fiscal 2025, 766 people the state rated low risk went before the board. 566 of them were denied. That's 74 percent.

Low-risk applicants were granted parole 26 percent of the time. High-risk applicants, 18 percent. The state's own tool says these are very different people. The outcomes treat them almost the same.

The ACLU of Alabama has watched more than 1,000 parole and pardon hearings in person since 2020. Its 2026 report found the same pattern, and one more. When nobody spoke against an applicant, the grant rate was 47.5 percent. When someone did, it dropped to 12.7 percent.

And the person whose freedom is on the line isn't in the room. According to the ACLU, Alabama and Georgia are the only two states that bar people from attending their own parole hearings.

Who pays

Every "no" comes with a bill.

The Alabama Department of Corrections estimated it would cost about $87 a day to hold one person in fiscal 2024. That's more than $31,000 a year.

Run the math on one group. If each of the 566 low-risk people denied in fiscal 2025 served just one more year, that's about $18 million. One year. One risk group. One fiscal year.

Zoom out and it gets bigger. Corrections was budgeted $826.7 million from Alabama's General Fund in fiscal 2026, about a quarter of the whole fund. Federal data for 2023 showed our prisons holding about 21,000 people in space designed for about 12,000. And the state is building a new 4,000-bed prison in Elmore County, now estimated at $1.25 billion.

We are paying to build more space while holding people our own system calls low risk.

A "no" isn't forever

Here's the part that gets missed. Denying parole doesn't keep someone locked up forever. It just delays the day they come home.

At least 95 percent of people in state prisons will be released at some point. The real question is how they come home. With a plan, a job lined up, and someone checking in on them? Or later, older, and with less support?

Parole is supervision. It's structure at the exact moment people need it most. Turning down a low-risk person doesn't take the risk out of the community. It moves the release date and shortens the runway.

Where things are moving

There are good signs. The grant rate has more than doubled since 2023.

This year the Legislature passed HB86, sponsored by Rep. Chris England. It requires the board to weigh a person's work and education while incarcerated, along with their risk of re-offense. The Bureau of Pardons and Paroles said it supported the bill.

SB240, sponsored by Sen. Will Barfoot, would let people take part in their own hearings by video. It passed both chambers with bipartisan support, then died when the session ended before lawmakers acted on the governor's amendment. It deserves another shot in 2027.

One more number worth watching. Under the guidelines adopted in 2025, the board's decisions matched the guidelines 87 percent of the time through June of fiscal 2026. But the guidelines themselves suggested parole in only 13 percent of cases. Following the guidelines matters. So does asking whether the guidelines are right.

Why this matters to us

constrAInt exists for the moment someone has to explain their past to a stranger who decides their future. A hiring manager. A landlord. A parole board.

We don't sit on any board. We can't make anyone's case for them. What we can do is help people get READY: a real resume built from their own words, and practice answering the hardest questions out loud until the answer is theirs.

HB86 says work and education count. Readiness counts. We should be measuring it, building it, and rewarding it.

Holding low-risk people longer than we need to isn't tough on crime. It's expensive. And it doesn't make anyone safer when they come home anyway.

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