MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Municipalities across Alabama will be required to start reporting more local court data to the state by Wednesday under a unified reporting system.
It’s information state leaders could play a significant role in improving public safety.
“I think this is going to have a huge impact by giving us a bigger and clearer picture of what we’re seeing in criminal justice data,” said Cam Ward, director of Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles, speaking with Alabama Daily News on Monday.
The mandate was established with the passing of Senate Bill 203, sponsored by Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, and adopted in 2022. Beginning in 2023, municipalities had to tell the state how many court cases they handle each year and the amount of revenue generated for the cities by those cases. The use of a judicial information system for reporting court data was delayed until 2025 to give cities and the state time to prepare. Municipalities that do not comply with the reporting mandate within 60 days forfeit fees collected by the court until compliance is met.
For years, many Alabama municipalities have underreported crime data to the state, more specifically, the Administrative Office of Courts, which serves as the central database for court records across the state. For Alabama’s ongoing initiative to cut recidivism in half by 2030, this underreporting has posed a challenge.
“(Data from municipal courts will) be a huge help because the clearer picture you get of what’s going on out there, the better you can propose or implement policy to tackle it,” Ward said.
Ward also said having a more detailed dataset could help more generally with public safety, and used the fatal shooting of Deputy Brad Johnson as a prime example. Johnson was fatally shot in 2022 by 26-year-old Austin Hall, a former inmate who was recently released on good behavior.
Critics of Hall’s release, which include members of law enforcement, say it was a mistake for Hall to have been released from prison given he had led police on a chase in a stolen vehicle in 2019 after escaping from prison, something that by state law should have precluded him from early release.
With a more unified reporting system, Ward said mistakes like the early release of Hall could be more easily prevented in the future.
The implementation of the reporting mandate, according to Rob Johnston, a member of the legal team for the Alabama League of Municipalities, is going smoothly.
“The municipalities are working with (the Administrative Office of Courts) on that, and AOC is really the front runner for that based on what the law says,” Johnston told ADN Monday.
“… We certainly encourage everyone to be compliant with state law,” he said.
By Wednesday, all Alabama municipalities will be required to have transitioned to either the court information system that had been approved for the Unified Judicial System, or a similar, compatible system. Costs of the transition, per the bill, are to be covered by the municipalities themselves.