With 898 inmates per 100,000 Alabama residents, the state has the sixth highest incarceration rate on the planet, according to a Prison Policy Initiative report published in June.
“It is usually a mix of southern states kind of jockeying for those top few spots, and Alabama always does get up there, along with Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Arkansas,” said Wanda Bertram with the Prison Policy Initiative. “That’s something that more or less holds true every single time we do the report.”
Bertram pointed out that Alabama is building a new prison — a 4,000-bed facility in Elmore County that will cost more than $1 billion — and said the state instead should be looking for ways to decrease the inmate population.
The Prison Policy Initiative calculates incarceration rates by comparing the number of people in state prisons, county jails, juvenile detention and immigration facilities per capita. The report compared the rates in each U.S. state to the rates in countries with more than 500,000 residents.
Only five states lock up a higher percentage of their populations than Alabama. They are Louisiana (1,067 inmates per 100,000 residents), Mississippi (1,020 per 100,000), Arkansas (912 per 100,000) and Oklahoma (905 per 100,000).
The overall rate in the United States is 614 inmates per 100,000 residents. According to the study, that means the U.S. as a whole has the fourth highest incarceration rate among nations over 500,000. It trails only El Salvador, Cuba and Rwanda.
El Salvador has the highest incarceration rate with 1,086 people locked up for every 100,000 residents. The central American country is home to roughly 6.3 million people.
“It would be one thing if all of a sudden our incarceration rates drop such that we were now getting beaten out by Belgium, but El Salvador is a country that has been run as a police state over the last few years,” Bertram said. “That’s not something that the U.S. is dealing with, so those are the rough inconsistencies and irregularities here.”
Data from the Alabama Department of Corrections shows the state is actually sending fewer people to state prison than it was 10 years ago. The Department of Justice is suing, saying Alabama’s prisons are unconstitutionally and dangerously overcrowded.
In 2013, there were about 32,400 people serving time in prisons in Alabama, according to the state prison system. This does not include those in county jails or other facilities.
In 2023, there were just more than 27,000 state inmates. That’s roughly 5,400 fewer people, a 16 percent decrease in 10 years.
Carla Crowder, executive director of the nonprofit Alabama Appleseed, said that’s because of reforms, such as setting statewide sentencing guidelines.
“You wouldn’t have somebody serving 40 years out of Mobile County for the same offenses that somebody would get a five-year sentence for out of Lauderdale,” Crowder said. “Also – the creation of diversion programs, drug courts and community corrections where people could serve their sentences in the community and just report and be monitored.”
But Alabama needs more reforms, Bertram said — specifically, the state needs to grant parole to more more people who are eligible.
Last year, the state granted just 8 percent of paroles, according to the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles. In fiscal year 2023, there were 3,583 parole hearings. Just 297 were granted.
“A lot of folks inside have been there since, you know, the 90s or the 80s, and unless you’re going to change your parole policies or your good time credit policies or your compassionate release policies, all of those people are just going to remain there,” Bertram said.
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