With more than 2.3 million men and women imprisoned in U.S. jails and prisons, two statistics stand out: today’s U.S. incarceration rate is the highest it has ever been in history, and the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world, reports the Americans Civil Liberties Union.
The ACLU reported that Alabama has the most overcrowded prisons in the U.S. Its prisons accommodate nearly twice their designed capacity.
Several studies on overcrowded prisons show such conditions are hazardous for guards and inmates. More significantly, Alabama lawmakers say they want to avoid what happened in California—court intervention and a population cap, according to the ACLU.
Alabama Republican State Senator Cam Ward introduced a bill last year to allow the state sentencing commission to set new sentencing standards and give judges more latitude in deciding what type of sentence to impose on defendants. That legislation went into effect last spring.
The bill has started to show results. The new sentencing guidelines have resulted in lower sentences for a variety of nonviolent offenses, reports the ACLU.
Judges are required to follow the new guidelines unless they can demonstrate a good reason for giving a defendant a higher or lower sentence.
The new guidelines will have a significant impact on the state’s severe habitual offender law, which impose longer sentences on offenders with prior convictions.
Under the habitual offender laws, if a defendant has two prior felony convictions and she/he gets convicted of a non-violent, non-serious felony, the defendant must be charged as though they committed a serious or violent felony, which means a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison, even if the prior three felonies were for minor drug possession or forgery. Under the new sentencing guidelines, someone convicted of a third drug possession felony would now be eligible for a non-prison sentence.
