Panelists discussed the human costs of mass incarceration, low parole rates, and prison conditions during a virtual event organized by the voting rights group.
By Wesley Walter
A panel organized recently by the League of Women Voters explored issues endemic to prison and parole board policies in the Deep South, alongside efforts pushing for reform.
During the virtual event entitled “Freedom and Fairness: Parole Boards and Prison Labor in the Deep South,” and organized as a part of LWV Alabama and Georgia’s Good Trouble Tuesday panel series, participants discussed the state of debates surrounding parole board and prison labor policies in Alabama and Georgia.
The event was moderated by University of Georgia sociology professor Sarah Shannon with panelists: Veronica R. Johnson, deputy director of the Alabama Justice Initiative; Nichelle Cunningham, a paralegal with the ACLU of Alabama; Fallon McClure, deputy Southeast regional director of the Working Families Power, as well as Executive Director of the Georgia Justice Project Douglas Ammar.
“The system of mass incarceration in the United States has had a profound impact on individuals, families, and communities, in ways that have also disproportionately affected communities of color,” Shannon said. “And so today we’re gonna kind of move beyond the big statistics and really focus in on trying to understand the human cost of this practice of mass incarceration.”
Johnson, who heads a Birmingham-based organization advocating for parole, criminal, and social justice reform throughout the state, served as a juvenile probation officer for 16 years prior to joining the Alabama Justice Initiative.
“My experience is unique in that I’ve worked both sides of the aisle, and so currently I’m here trying to change a system that has impacted many of the people that I previously served,” she said of her work.
When asked to describe the landscape regarding parole policies in Alabama, Johnson cited that the state’s parole release rates have fallen from 43 percent ten years ago to around 17 percent today.
“There’s currently a crisis within not only our prison system, but our parole system as well,” she remarked. “Within the last 10 years, our parole release rates have plummeted severely.”
“There are certain guidelines that they’re supposed to be following, and they aren’t following,” Johnson added, arguing that the parole board has routinely ignored its risk assessment requirements to determine whether an individual may be paroled.
“Our parole board oftentimes overlooks those recommendations and then make their decisions based on whatever they want to make their decisions on, which results in more low-risk offenders remaining behind the wall,” she said.
Alabama and Georgia are the only two U.S. states where individuals eligible for parole are unable to attend their own parole board hearings.
As of July 2025, individuals eligible for parole have been able to provide recorded statements arguing in favor of their release.
However, both Johnson and Cunningham emphasized that since family members only have two minutes to advocate for an individual’s parole and the Attorney General’s office has access to an incarcerated individual’s files, which families don’t, teaching family members how to make the most of their time before the board with strong reentry plans has been an important step to advocating against the state’s low rates of parole.
“We have to equip family members with what they need to ensure that their family member can be released on parole,” Johnson said.
Describing how Deep South states grew to have some of the highest rates of mass incarceration and correctional control in the nation, McClure, whose organization provides employment and healthcare support for families, attributed the current state of correctional policymaking in the South to “remnants” of Jim Crow lawmaking.
She explained that following the abolition of slavery, mass incarceration became the driving force, continuing the region’s reliance on forced labor.
“So, what we’re seeing now, you know, are the remnants of vagrancy laws, of rounding people up in order to have forced labor,” said McClure.
McClure went on to argue that cash bail policies in states such as Alabama and Georgia have driven up high incarceration rates “by making pretrial freedom contingent on wealth rather than safety.”
“Essentially, you have a two-track justice system. You have folks that are pleading guilty just to get out of jail when they might not be. You have folks that are sitting and losing everything,” she said.
Cunningham, who leads ACLU Alabama’s parole watch program and launched the statewide initiative Atone in Alabama, which helps educate the families of incarcerated individuals on navigating the parole and pardon process, led the panel’s discussion of conditions inside Southern prisons.
“Healthcare is at a minimum, especially mental health. The prison conditions are inhumane. In Alabama, the prisons are overcrowded,” she said. “They’re sleeping on the floor. They don’t have bedding to even put on the floor, so they’re just sleeping on the bare floor.”
“In the summer, excessive heat. In the winter, very cold. It’s just very inhumane, and it’s not good prison conditions. And then when you’re up for parole, you’re being denied, which is leading, just to the prisons just staying overcrowded,” Cunningham added.
Johnson pointed to a 2019 U.S. Department of Justice study, which determined that Alabama had the most dangerous prisons in the country.
“As a result of the high murder rate and the conditions of Alabama prisons, one of the things that the Department of Justice suggested was that they go in and make some changes to the prisons,” she said. “So go in and put in some various cameras. Change the way the doors are set up. Both prisons now have pod-type systems.”
Johnson went on to describe Governor Kay Ivey’s 2021 proposal to build four new prisons in the state in response to the report, which were to be run on a 30-year lease agreement with the private corrections company, CoreCivic.
In response to the proposal, Johnson’s organization, alongside ACLU Alabama, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and additional grassroots organizations, formed the coalition Communities Not Prisons, which advocated against the facilities.
Alabama is currently constructing a $1 billion prison in Elmore County. Johnson, however, criticized the Alabama Department of Corrections and lawmakers’ reluctance to commit to transferring populations from and closing existing prisons in the state to correct overpopulation and violent conditions.
“Our murder rate is still the same. We’re still understaffed. People are still not being let out on parole. And if you ever heard the saying, ‘If you build it, they will come.’ Alabama is literally building prisons, in an attempt to fill them up, for them to pay for themselves,” she remarked.
Describing the state of prison labor in Alabama, Johnson highlighted that prisoners on work release in the state must yield the majority of their paychecks to the prison, which is also paid by the companies that contract prison labor.
“The state is making, like a goo gob of money. And y’all excuse my language, sometimes I just use everyday terminology,” she told the forum. “But they’re making tons of money from these people.”
“[Prisoners are] working in the community. They may be at a local restaurant, they may be at a local veterinary facility, and so they’re at the facilities during the day, and they’re working with everyday individuals,” Johnson added. “However, when it’s time for them to come on up for parole, they’re denied parole.”
Cunningham added that, over recent years in Alabama, moderate-risk individuals are paroled less often than low-risk prisoners on work release.
“If we look at the numbers in Fiscal Year 23, they only allowed 31 percent of incarcerated in low-risk, which are in work release, to be released, versus 42 percent in a moderate. And so, it’s like, what is going on?” she said. “You can only equate that it’s a money grab.”
Further highlighting prison labor’s importance to the state, Cunningham added that the majority of furniture used in Alabama’s statehouse, as well as by the parole board, was made by incarcerated individuals.
Shifting to a discussion of programs that benefit Alabama’s prisoners, Cunningham argued that incarcerated individuals too often lack access to the state’s existing reentry programs.
“It’s not enough. And what I find in when I’m going to parole hearings, typically, the board may ask family members about certain things, and they don’t have the certification. And the reason that they don’t have the certification is because it’s a wait list for this program that they need in order to parole out,” Cunningham told panelists.
She added that women prisoners do not have access to Alabama’s 90-day Parole Reentry Program Academy, which prepares male prisoners to transition into the free world.
Panelists also discussed multiple bills filed in the Alabama and Georgia legislatures’ 2026 sessions.
Johnson pointed to Alabama’s Senate Bill 240, sponsored by Senator Will Barfoot, R-Pike Road, which would authorize inmates’ remote participation in parole hearings.
“Our hope, or our prayer, or our ultimate goal this legislative session is to actually get this virtual presence bill across the finish line,” she said.
“We had to push it in such a way that made it be beneficial for both the defendant’s family and for the victim’s family, because now the victim’s family—they no longer have to come to these parole hearings,” Johnson continued. “They can appear virtually as well, as well as the defendant. So now we have everybody at the parole hearing, and they’re virtually, so they don’t have to stand before their accuser anymore.”
SB240 has received approval from the Senate Judiciary Committee and is currently pending a vote from the Senate.