Alabama lawmakers to Parole Board: Produce guidelines or lose your funding

If next year’s budget is any indication, Alabama lawmakers have lost patience with the state Board of Pardons and Paroles.

The 2026 General Fund Gov. Kay Ivey signed last week makes funding for the board dependent on drafting new parole guidelines that determine the likelihood that an applicant can be safely released on parole. The budget goes into effect on Oct. 1.

Sen. Clyde Chambliss, R-Prattville, the chair of the Joint Legislative Prison Committee, introduced the amendment shortly before the Senate approved the budget on April 29.

“When a state entity does not follow state law, I think it is incumbent upon us in our oversight role to do whatever we need to do, or can do, to help them follow state law,” he said in an interview last week.  “And the power of the purse is really about the only tool that we have to do that.”

The Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles did not return messages sent last week seeking comment.

Lawmakers also cut the General Fund allocation to the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles, the agency that oversees reentry and rehabilitation for people in the custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections, by 4.1%, bringing it from $94.5 million to $90.6 million.

Missed deadline

Lawmakers enacted legislation in 2019 that updated rules on parole, part of a broader overhaul of the parole system after Jimmy O’Neal Spencer, who had been serving two life sentences, was mistakenly released on parole in late 2017. The following year, Spencer killed three people, including a seven-year-old child, during a robbery in Guntersville. Spencer was later convicted of the murders and sentenced to death.

The 2019 law required the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles to update the parole guidelines within three years, based on evidence and data for those who were released.

The Parole Board missed the 2022 deadline and has yet to release an updated version required by state law.

Several lawmakers expressed frustration with the Parole Board, particularly chair Leigh Gwathney, after they did not receive any response from a set of questions concerning the low parole rate and their process for deciding who should be granted parole and who should be denied that were submitted in the spring of 2024.

At a meeting of  the Joint Legislative Prison Oversight Committee meeting in October, Gwathney gave meandering replies to lawmakers’ questions. Chambliss demanded that Gwathney provide her responses by the end of November.

They never received any response.

“We didn’t get a response,” Chambliss said. “When the Attorney General’s Office got involved and asked questions, apparently a response was prepared in November, but we never got it.”

‘Defying the Legislature openly’

Chambliss said that he only made his final decision to introduce the amendment shortly before he took the floor on April 29. But Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, one of the most vocal critics of the Parole Board, said he understood it could be a possibility when he learned that lawmakers were discussing the proposal among themselves toward the start of the current legislative session.

England said the amendment is the result of actions of the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles, particularly Gwathney.

“The money being taken away isn’t to suggest that the Bureau is doing a good job with reentry and rehabilitation, but it is to focus on the fact that the chair, who has been there since 2019, is not following the law and defying the Legislature openly.”

The amendment was one of several actions taken by Democrats and Republicans in an attempt to create additional oversight for the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles that they believe has flouted their oversight authority.

SB 324, also sponsored by Chambliss, would increase the number of Parole Board members from three to five and allow members of the Board to appoint their own chair instead of the governor making the appointment.

HB 40, sponsored by England, would create a commission that would create a validated risk and needs assessment, as well as parole release and classification guidelines for people in custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections. It would also requires the Parole Board to adhere to the parole guidelines when making decisions and disclose reasons for not adhering to them in any parole decision.

But with just one day left in the 2025 session, neither bill seems likely to get to Gov. Kay Ivey’s desk. England’s legislation remains stalled in the House chamber. Chambliss’ bill has passed the Senate and squeaked though the House Judiciary Committee in April, but will compete with many other bills seeking approval on the final day of the session Wednesday.

That leaves the amendment, which says that the board’s funding for “personnel and employee benefit costs” will be released “after the board revises and adopts guidelines concerning the granting or denial of paroles, and make available on the Board’s website.”

“My guess and my hope are that they will update the guidelines,” Chambliss said. “If they do that, then it is a moot point. I am pretty confident, I heard they are working on it.”

His amendment received unanimous support from the Senate when it was introduced.

“We do that all the time with money, that is a stick that legislators have that if someone is not following the law, whatever that may be, to use money to say, ‘Hey, if you are not going to do this, then we are going to withhold funds,’” said Sen. Will Barfoot, R-Pike Road, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Parole decline

Parole rates declined dramatically, falling to the single digit percentages at times during 2023 before increasing slightly to roughly 25%. The parole rates were low even though the conformance rates, the percentage that the decisions of the Parole Board aligned with the recommendations based on the parole guidelines, was about 20%.

During the meeting in October, Gwathney said she altered the score sheets to favor parole applicants, and even then, the parole rate remained low.

“What we wanted was several years of data to figure out if the guidelines worked or not, but since they were not being followed, and the conformance rate was so low, and the chair admitted to changing them to fit whatever goals she had, not only do we not have the data, but the data is corrupted,” England said. “We wasted a bunch of time, and we wasted a bunch of money.”

Controversy regarding the parole rate has become so problematic that civil rights groups have weighed in on the issue.

“It is good to see a little added accountability with some financial strings attached to it to ensure compliance with, honestly, what the Parole Board is supposed to have been doing for years,” said Jerome Dees, policy director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights group.