Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and Attorney General Steve Marshall said they are dissatisfied with the parole board’s improvement plan and are asking the board to make additional changes and provide more information.

Ivey and Marshall intervened earlier this year after prosecutors and victim advocates expressed concerns over who was being released from prison and the number of people being paroled earlier than normal. Ivey asked the board to submit a corrective plan and put a 75-day moratorium on early paroles— when an inmate wins release before serving a designated minimum amount of their sentence.

In a 10-page response to the board’s plan, Ivey and Marshall wrote that while the board’s plan has some “positive features” there are “too many unanswered questions” about how the board will make good on its promises.

“We recognize answering many of these questions will be difficult. But the people of this state deserve answers to them. How you respond — both in word and in deed — will undoubtedly determine the next steps we take as a state in this vital area,” they wrote in the Nov. 29 letter.

Ivey and Marshall directed the board to implement more objective criteria in the consideration process for all inmates so that “early parole consideration is available in only the most extraordinary cases and for only the most compelling reasons.”

They said the evidentiary burden should be put on the inmate to show he, or she, is worthy of release.

The push for changes came after prosecutors and victim advocates expressed alarm this year over who was being released from prison and the adequacy of parole supervision once an inmate is released.

A man charged in the July murders of a 7-year-old boy, his great grandmother and another woman in Guntersville had been released from prison in January after being granted parole.
(Associated Press, copyright 2018)

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