Alabama’s Board of Pardons and Paroles finalized and issued their new parole guidelines on Thursday, following years of delays.
There are two major changes in the board’s new guidelines: there is an increase in weights based on the severity of the original offenses parole applicants are convicted of — meant to “better capture offenses that are classified as sexual and/or violent crimes,” according to a statement released by the board — and there is now more consideration given to applicant’s behavior while incarcerated.
Under the new guidelines, the board will look closer at an applicant’s behavior while incarcerated — both positive and negative. The board has said that the new guidelines will place more emphasis on disciplinary violations, but that additional consideration will also be given to applicants who have completed educational or vocational programs while incarcerated.
Parole applicants will also be able to submit a video statement to the board to complement their Institutional Parole Officer’s Report.
Parole guidelines use a point system to determine whether an applicant should be granted parole; the more points an applicant accrues, the less likely they are to be offered parole. However, these guidelines are non-binding — the final decision is left up to the three-person parole board’s judgement.
The new guidelines have drawn some criticism from criminal justice reform groups for their focus on the applicant’s original offense, rather than their behavior in prison. The Southern Poverty Law Center, Alabama Arise, the ACLU of Alabama and Alabama Appleseed issued recommendations in May to reduce the weights placed on severity of the offense and increase the amount of credence given to incarcerated behavior.
“The parole hearing application process is not a forum to relitigate the underlying offense — the sentence the applicant is currently serving,” the groups wrote in their submission. “The process is meant to assess and determine the individual’s ‘status’ of rehabilitation.”
However, these recommendations were not heeded in the board’s final changes.
“We are extremely disappointed that these guidelines place all the responsibility upon incarcerated people to prepare their own reentry plans or else be penalized by these guidelines,” Carla Crowder, executive director of Alabama Appleseed, said in a statement on Friday.
These updated guidelines come several years after the 2022 deadline the board was given by the state legislature in 2019 to issue updated guidelines. The legislature pushed the board to update parole guidelines after Jimmy O’Neal Spencer was mistakenly released on parole in 2017, and then went on to kill three people during a robbery in Guntersville.
Lawmakers made funding for the board contingent on if they adopted new parole guidelines in the 2026 General Fund, which takes effect on Oct. 1.
The board has said that it will continue to review and update the guidelines as needed every three years.
Alabama top stories in brief
Alabama politicians urged to returns donations linked to Georgia Ponzi scheme
- Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen has urged Alabama politicians who received political contributions from a Georgia man accused of running a $140 million Ponzi scheme to return their contributions.
- The scheme was run by Edwin Brant Frost IV, a prominent Republican donor, who has made political contributions to at least three politicians running for office in Alabama, including state auditor Andrew Sorrell, Rep. Ben Harrison, R-Elkmont, and Alabama state Board of Education member Allen Long.
- Allen is urging these politicians to return contributions linked to Frost so that victims of his Ponzi scheme can be reimbursed.
August execution of death row inmate put on hold for mental examination
- The August execution of death row inmate David Lee Roberts has been temporarily stayed for Lee to receive a mental evaluation.
- The goal of the examination is to determine whether Roberts’s “mental state is so distorted by a mental illness that he lacks a rational understanding of the state’s rationale for his execution,” according to Marion County court officials.
- If Roberts is found to not be mentally competent enough to undergo execution, Circuit Judge Talmage Lee Carter has ordered a report on treatment options for Roberts.
- Roberts is convicted in the 1992 killing of Annetra Jones. At his trial, the jury recommended that he be sentenced to life in prison, but a judge overrode that decision to send Roberts to death row.
Hottest temperatures of the year expected statewide next week:
- Alabama is expected to see its hottest temperatures of the year next week, as a heat wave envelops the state.
- According to the National Weather Service, temperatures are expected to near or exceed 100 degrees in some parts of the state. In tandem with humidity, these temperatures could feel much warmer as well.
- Nightly low temperatures are only forecasted to barely drop into the 70s.
- Temperatures are expected to peak on Tuesday, but the heat wave is expected to linger through Wednesday or Thursday.
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