Entries by Carla Crowder

, ,

Alabama Appleseed Applauds Agreement for a Prison Oversight Pilot Program

Years of relentless advocacy by families of incarcerated Alabamians has resulted in a new prison oversight pilot program to create transparency and accountability at the Alabama Department of Corrections. Sen. Larry Stutts, R-Tuscumbia, who sponsored SB 316, the prison oversight bill, announced this development Wednesday on the Senate Floor. Stutts and Senate Pro Tem, Garlan […]

, ,

SB 316, Alabama’s Prison Oversight Bill, Has Been Filed. Now Let’s Get It Passed.

More oversight, transparency, and accountability could be coming to the Alabama Department of Corrections under SB 316, filed last week by Sen. Larry Stutts, R-Tuscumbia. This bill is the result of years of investigations, litigation, and escalating prison expenditures that have failed to alleviate extreme violence, dysfunction, and the highest prison death rates in the […]

,

Families from Florence, Dothan, Tuscaloosa, Prattville and Countless Places In Between Line the Alabama Capitol Steps Honoring the Hundreds of Lives Lost in Alabama State Prisons

By Eddie Burkhalter, Appleseed Researcher Stephanie Lewis stood in front of the Alabama State Capitol steps with hundreds of others on Wednesday and pleaded for the system that allowed her husband to die to change.  “It has to change. I know his life was not in vain,” Mrs. Lewis said of her husband’s January death […]

,

Chronicle of Philanthropy calls Appleseed “one of the South’s most unexpectedly effective advocacy groups.”

Alabama Appleseed has been featured in the prestigious Chronicle of Philanthropy! Here’s what they’re saying: “In a state dominated by a Republican supermajority and long resistant to criminal-justice reform, Alabama Appleseed has become one of the South’s most unexpectedly effective advocacy groups.” The article traces Appleseed’s leap into legal and reentry services, beginning with the […]

,

Another deadly year in Alabama prisons claims 202 lives

By Eddie Burkhalter, Appleseed Researcher More than six years after the State of Alabama was put on notice that its violent and dangerous prisons violate the United States Constitution, the death toll inside state prisons was nearly three times the national average. At least 202 people died inside Alabama prisons in 2025, Alabama Appleseed discovered […]

Saving Lives While Serving Life Without Parole

By Carla Crowder and Carl Green Carl Green learned how to provide emergency medical care to his fellow prisoners after they were beaten, stabbed, and cut inside Donaldson prison. Sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for a series of fast food restaurant robberies, Carl served 36 years in prison. No one counted exactly how many […]