By Ivana Hrynkiw and Ramsey Archibald
Black men are being paroled from Alabama prisons less often and serving longer sentences than white men. That’s according to state data over a two-month snapshot from early 2023, covering nearly 700 parole hearings.
“That is not unique to Alabama, as it is more of a national issue when examining the data,” said Cam Ward, the Director of the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles, acknowledging the gap.
During April and May of 2023, the three-member Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles heard a total of 662 parole-eligible cases but granted parole to just 92 of those. That’s a grant rate of 14%.
AL.com took a deeper look at parole data because Alabama has been granting fewer and fewer parole requests in recent years, despite an ongoing federal challenge to the state’s overcrowded prison system. A lot of prisoners used to get parole – most, in fact.
As recently as 2018, the majority of prisoners that went before the board got parole. But so far in fiscal year 2023 just 6% of eligible prisoners have gotten parole, according to the Board.
While looking at data from a two-month window April and May of this year, AL..com found Black men were 25% less likely to get parole than white men during that time.
Carla Crowder, the executive director of nonprofit legal center Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, said the data is “disturbing, but not surprising given the racial disparities Appleseed has documented at all stages of the criminal justice system in Alabama.”
“Such glaring racial bias in the length of sentence served demands closer scrutiny and investigation,” she added.
By combing through state court records, AL.com was able to gather detailed demographic information for 640 of those 662 people that came up for parole over the two-month period. That includes details on charges, race, sex and age.
Among those 640, some 60% of people who actually got parole were white, despite the majority of prisoners who went before the board being Black.
AL.com also found Black men tend to serve more of their sentences before receiving parole.
Nearly half of Black male inmates who were granted parole had already served at least 75% of their court-ordered sentence – an average of 14.5 years – or were serving life sentences with a chance for parole.
Most white prisoners who were granted parole in April and May were relatively new in prison and had served less than a quarter of their sentence. White male prisoners who were granted parole served an average of just 4.5 years. Several factors could contribute to the difference, including charging and sentence disparities by race.
Ward said racial disparities start much earlier in the system during the charging and sentencing phases.
The average sentence of a Black prisoner was 23.6 years, versus a 14.6-year sentence for white prisoners. Those averages are based on the 603 people whose data was available and didn’t include those serving life sentences.
Rep. Matt Simpson, R – Daphne, said that the data showing Black men serve more time in prison before getting paroled should be sorted by several factors and did not create an “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.”
While sentences handed out in court did vary widely by charge and by location in the state, Crowder said that sentencing disparities don’t explain away the difference in who gets 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.”
Those average sentences shrink when looking at prisoners whose primary offense was a non-violent drug charge. Among the 640 prisoners who went before the parole board in April and May and whose data was available, 117 were drug offenders without another major or violent charge. Black prisoners in that category averaged a sentence of 13.6 years – a full 10 years shorter than the average for all Black prisoners. And sentences for white non-violent drug offenders shrank to 8.9 years.
Both Black and white prisoners with non-violent drug charges tended to do better than most at the hearings, as the parole board released 26%. Though white men still saw a higher grant rate than Black men, 21% to 19%, respectively.
A lot fewer women go to prison or come up for parole each month. Only 74 women came up for parole over the two months.
AL.com found women were much more likely to get out than men. About a third were released. And while the overall numbers are small, there was no gap between parole rates for white and Black women.
The hearings started on April 4 and were decided by board chairperson Leigh Gwathney and members Darryl Littleton and Kim Davidson. Data gathered by AL.com ended with the hearings on May 25.
