Entries by Carla Crowder

Welcome Summer Intern London Breedlove

My name is London Breedlove and I am so excited for the opportunity I have been given to intern with Alabama Appleseed this summer! A Mississippi native, I was brought to Alabama on a tennis scholarship at the University of Montevallo. There I am a rising senior majoring in Political Science and minoring in prelaw. I […]

Welcome Legal Extern Tayler Walton

  My name is Tayler Walton and I have the absolute privilege of working for Alabama Appleseed this summer as their legal intern. I am a rising 3L at Cumberland School of Law and I could not be more ecstatic to be working for an organization like Appleseed. I went into law school wanting to […]

“I just want to know what happened to my son.”

Grieving family left without answers after Alabama’s scandal-plagued Department of Corrections fails to investigate the cause of incarcerated man’s death and suspends some autopsies  By Eddie Burkhalter, Appleseed Researcher In the hours after Alonzo Nathaniel Williamson died after being found in respiratory distress at Limestone Correctional Facility on May 8th, the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) […]

Legislative 2024 Recap: Hope is our superpower and we plan to keep using it.

By Elaine Burdeshaw, Appleseed Policy Associate This session certainly came with highs and lows; we experienced great wins and disappointing losses. At the start of the session Appleseed aimed to address the excessive sentences of individuals serving life without the possibility of parole for crimes that involved no physical injury, the lack of state funding […]

Three Years of Freedom for “Shoe”

Michael Schumacher was supposed to die in prison. Now he’s a husband doing yard work, a grandpa rocking his grandson, and a valued hospital employee. By Michael “Shoe” Schumacher Live from New Jersey, April 9, 2024 –It’s hard to believe that it’s been 3 years since my release from the hotel after 36 years of […]

Five Years Ago, the United States Department of Justice Declared Alabama Prisons Unconstitutional, Unsafe, and Harmful. They Still Are.

By Eddie Burkhalter, Appleseed Researcher It was five years ago today that the U.S. Department of Justice released a report detailing violations of the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment for incarcerated men in Alabama prisons, and since then more than 1,000 people have died in state prison custody.  The Alabama Legislature’s Joint […]

The Alabama Department of Corrections is desperate for officers and fired hundreds in recent years 

By Eddie Burkhalter, Appleseed Researcher Alabama’s prison staffing crisis has an outsized role in the violence and record number of deaths seen across the state’s prisons, most everyone agrees. New data obtained by Appleseed shows yet another reason prison staffing remains dangerously low: the large number of terminated prison employees – 366 Department of Corrections […]

Birmingham Re-entry Alliance is hiring a Case Manager

The Birmingham Re-entry Alliance is an innovative, collaborative reentry support and case management system for individuals returning to Birmingham following incarceration in state prison. Our network will combine the necessary services for some of Alabama’s most marginalized people – indigent, formerly incarcerated people with felony records – to thrive following incarceration. The organizations involved have […]