For the past year, Alabama officials have been discussing ways to reduce overcrowding of prisons, and reform the entirety of state prisons. Early this year, Alabama created a bill that would reduce overcrowding and keep the prisons run on the state level. The senator of Alabama, Cam Ward, led the bill. In this bill, more than 100 parole officers would be hired to spread out and increase the supervision of inmates released. This bill would also limit incarceration time for non-violent offenders by creating a new class of felonies, which would be known as Class D Felonies. Overall, this bill would slowly reform prisons in Alabama no longer having overpopulation an issue. Although this bill would greatly help reform prisons, some citizens
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I agree that this prison reform bill should be passed because it will help upgrade Alabama prisons to accommodate for the larger inmate population. Creating a Class D felony, nonviolent offenses would fit into this category. The class D felony would allow these lower end crimes to have a minimal sentence or other sentence (SOURCE). The class D felony group will decrease the amount of population in prisons because some offenses will be able to be dealt with by fines, or being put into community correctional services …show more content…
Currently for every officer, they deal with 192 offenders (SOURCE). An officer cannot effectively devote enough time for each offender, and some of the offenders will be neglected by their officers making it more difficult for them to get the help they need, and make sure each offender stays on a clean and safe path. The bill would increase the amount of parole and probation officers, allowing each officer to have a smaller caseload and be able to focus on the offenders more intensely, and can increase supervision of both offenders still serving their sentence, or those that are on probation. Adding at least a hundred officers would significantly lower the officer to offender ratio, making it easier for communication between officers and offenders easier then ever
I agree that this prison reform bill should be passed because it will help upgrade Alabama prisons to accommodate for the larger inmate population. Creating a Class D felony, nonviolent offenses would fit into this category. The class D felony would allow these lower end crimes to have a minimal sentence or other sentence (SOURCE). The class D felony group will decrease the amount of population in prisons because some offenses will be able to be dealt with by fines, or being put into community correctional services …show more content…
Currently for every officer, they deal with 192 offenders (SOURCE). An officer cannot effectively devote enough time for each offender, and some of the offenders will be neglected by their officers making it more difficult for them to get the help they need, and make sure each offender stays on a clean and safe path. The bill would increase the amount of parole and probation officers, allowing each officer to have a smaller caseload and be able to focus on the offenders more intensely, and can increase supervision of both offenders still serving their sentence, or those that are on probation. Adding at least a hundred officers would significantly lower the officer to offender ratio, making it easier for communication between officers and offenders easier then ever