In the News
Follow the coverage of Alabama Appleseed’s work, news mentions and opinion editorials written by staff members. If you’re interested in speaking with Appleseed, please email megan.cheek@alabamaappleseed.org.
1/9/2023 | Kim Chandler
On Monday, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey announced new rules for prison “good time” incentives that allow some inmates to shorten their prison stays based on their behavior.
Ivey signed an executive order that she said will provide “clear rules” for prison staff and inmates on how much “good time” credit will be lost for different categories of offenses and how an inmate can restore the credit.
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However, the order “essentially ends good time or makes it extremely difficult for anyone to earn it given the brutal conditions across the prison system,” said Carla Crowder, executive director of Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice.
“This is absurd and reflects state leadership that is completely out of touch with the public safety crisis in Alabama prisons .. It would be laughable, if it weren’t so sad and dangerous, that anyone believes harsher punishments will fix this crisis and make anyone safer,” Crowder said.
12/23/2022 | Evan Mealins
Dec. 16, 2020 was, to most people, unremarkable. But Ronald McKeithen didn’t see the world how most did that day. He studied the squirrels walking the power line and saw acrobats on the high wire. A breeze blew through dry leaves, and he heard music. He didn’t sleep; he hugged his mattress and looked out the window at the Birmingham light. At 3 a.m. he did what he hadn’t in almost four decades. He left.
For the first time since he was 19, Ronald McKeithen could leave. He could walk to the corner store in the middle of the night and buy shaving razors, could talk to strangers, could do anything. He was free after 37 years in prison, a sentence served for a robbery he committed where no one was harmed.
11/14/2022 | John H. Glenn
Nearly a quarter of Alabama’s incarcerated population is older prisoners, placing strains on an already faltering correctional system and making it harder to manage prisons as a result, according to the results of a recent study from Alabama Appleseed.
The study, released earlier this month, shows that older incarcerated individuals are no longer a small group within the total prison population but a substantial cohort whose growth dwarfs the also increasing general prison population.
11/9/2022 | Evan Mealins
Alabama’s prison population is getting older and older, and it’s costing the state a pretty penny.
That’s what Alabama Appleseed, a Montgomery-based nonprofit, found in a newly published report analyzing Alabama’s “increasing trend of keeping the elderly behind bars.” The trend is unsustainable, the organization wrote.
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