MONTGOMERY, Ala. — For well over an hour Wednesday, Alabama Board of Pardons and Parole Chair Leigh Gwathney was grilled by state lawmakers over the board’s low rate of following its own parole guidelines, as well as its failure to update those guidelines as required by law.
Gwathney was questioned by the Joint Prison Oversight Committee during a hearing at the State House, questions that she frequently failed to answer to the satisfaction of the body.
“Madam chair, I’m very frustrated,” said Sen. Clyde Chambliss, R-Prattville, the chair of the committee, who noted that many of the questions lawmakers were asking her Wednesday were given to her in January. “…Your counsel wrote them down when we met. He was sitting right beside you.”
Gwathney’s appointment as the board’s chair in 2019 coincided with a dramatic decline in the state’s parole grant rate, dropping that year from 53% in 2018 to 31%, and from 31% to just 8% in 2023.
Shortly after her appointment, there were a series of reforms that imposed guidelines to be considered, at the board’s discretion, when considering the release of an inmate on parole. Those guidelines use a set of weighted criteria to score inmates on the potential risk they might pose were they released.
Those guidelines, however, were rarely followed, the source of much of the questioning Gwathney received.
“If we develop the guidelines and say what the guidelines are, it seems like we should be hitting them more than 20%, 25% of the time,” Chambliss said. “From my perspective, from a technical perspective, you have a guideline, a standard, and if you can’t hit that standard but 25% of the time, something’s wrong with the standard.”
Gwathney said that none of the three members of the current board wrote the rules.
“But what we do, to the best of our ability, is to look at every individual that comes before us, and as long as I am on this board, that is what I will do,” she said.
“I will never make a decision based upon a quota, a statistic, a number, I mean what would happen if we paroled 80%, and number 81 got before us, and I said well, that’s not going to happen today?”
Those 2019 reforms also required the board to review its parole guidelines every three years, to take public comment on said guidelines, and then develop, adopt and publish a new set of guidelines based on public feedback and past data. Since Gwathney’s appointment, the board has yet to publish a new set of guidelines.
“You’re about two years overdue,” said Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, who was also critical of Gwathney’s inability to, when asked, tell the committee who wrote the board’s existing guidelines.
When asked when the board would produce an updated set of guidelines, Gwathney said “very soon.”
“Yes, this board is responsible and plays a role in these guidelines,” Gwathney said. “We have been working for 18 months in a very methodical way, along with statisticians, to figure out, as the board, what are the right amendments. We think that takes a long time to get that right, not an overnight process.”
Chambliss pressed Gwathney on the matter of the board’s low rate of actually conforming to those guidelines. In fiscal year 2023, for instance, the board conformed to its own guidelines at a rate of just 12%. That figure has improved somewhat in recent months, however, with the board conforming to its guidelines at a rate of 25% this fiscal year as of July.
“You set the rules, the board sets the rules, they’re called parole guidelines, and I’m just having a hard time understanding conformance to your own rules as in the twenty percentile,” Chambliss said. “Why is that, if you actually write the rules yourself?”
Gwatheny reiterated that the board makes its parole decisions on an individual basis, and does not take into account quotas or numbers or statistics. While unfavorable to England, another committee member, Rep. Matt Simpson, R-Daphne, praised the board’s individual approach to parole considerations, and argued that “the guidelines don’t tell the full story.”
A prosecutor, Simpson pointed to an inmate with a 2013 murder conviction where the guidelines said that inmate should have been paroled.
“That’s a problem with the guidelines,” Simpson said. “People with these sentences, they’re the worst of the worst and the guidelines say they have to get out. So, I understand why they’re not following it, but we have to fix the guidelines.”
Also brought to light during the hearing was the fact that Gwathney occasionally alters the score that the guidelines produce for inmates, though she said she had only done so to the benefit of the inmate being considered for release.
“I don’t think the public knows that not only do we have (parole) guidelines that aren’t being used right now, but that you, as one of the people who actually assess the applicant, can change it,” England said.
“If you’re saying that you have to amend the guidelines to benefit the applicant, and it only gets to (an) 8% release (rate), there is a problem in the system.”
Chambliss concurred that the board’s non conformance with its own guidelines indicated an issue. Whether that issue would be resolved with legislation remains to be seen, he told Alabama Daily News after the meeting, though did suggest it was being considered.
England has already sponsored legislation that would provide additional oversight for the Parole Board, an effort he’s pushed for three years. After Wednesday’s hearing, England said he had reason to believe his proposal may be better received by his legislative colleagues this time around.
Chambliss gave the board until the end of November to answer the questions posed to it at the beginning of the year.