By C1 Staff
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A prison reform bill born of the Alabama Prison Reform Task Force is seeing some opposition now that it’s passed the House and Senate.
WSFA reports that the bill makes man changes to the Alabama prison system, such as adding more than 100 new parole officers, limiting incarceration time for non-violent offenders, increasing supervision over released inmates and creates a class D felony, which is a lower-level felony with a smaller punishment.
But some outside of the Statehouse see the bill as only the first step in a long process of overhauling the prison system.
“This bill is not going to solve the prison crisis in Alabama, all we’ve really done is kick the can down the road,” said Richard Cohen, President of the SPLC.
“It took the state a long, long time to muster the political will to address these issues, and what I’m afraid of is that so many people are going to say been there, done that, let’s move on,” he said. “The class D felony, I understand the thinking behind it, some of those class D felonies ought to be misdemeanors. There ought to be some reforms of the habitual offender act that is filling our prisons.”
He also believes more people should be concerned with the cost of the bill, which is expected to run upwards of $26 million a year for the next five years. A second bill currently moving through the legislature to allow construction to create more beds will cost $60 million over the next five years.
“Why are we about to plunge the state deeper into debt by adding more beds when there are other things we can do to reduce the prison population,” Cohen said.
The prison reform bill has reached the governor’s desk but has not yet been officially signed.