Alabama ACLU Proposes Plan to Cut Mass Incarceration
The American Civil Liberties Union earlier this month announced an ambitious goal of releasing 50 percent of Alabama prisoners by the year 2025 through a report aimed at tackling mass incarceration. These reforms range from addressing state legislation, drug sentencing and racial disparities in sentencing.
Many of the reforms in the ACLU report target laws and policies that send more people to jail and impose long sentences. The report also says for-profit bail systems mean that people who haven’t been convicted for a crime are often locked up because they can’t afford bail. It estimates that more than 70 percent of inmates in Alabama county jails are awaiting trial.
Practices likes these disproportionally affect the poor and people of color, officials with the ACLU say. The ACLU’s report is included in a nationwide project to address mass incarceration. The goal is to have at least 12,500 fewer people in Alabama prisons. That would mean hundreds of millions of dollars freed up to spend on schools and other resources.
A proposed Bessemer data center faces new hurdles: a ‘road to nowhere’ and the Birmingham darter
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Birmingham Museum of Art’s silver exhibit tells a dazzling global story
Silver and Ceremony is made up of more than 150 suites of silver, sourced from India, and some of their designs.
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Hundreds of people across Alabama await a spot in the state’s increasingly limited facilities, despite a consent decree requiring the state to address delays in providing care for people who are charged with crimes but deemed too mentally ill to stand trial. But seven years since the federal agreement, the problem has only worsened.
Ivey appoints Will Parker to Alabama Supreme Court
Parker fills the court seat vacated by Bill Lewis who was tapped by President Donald Trump for a federal judgeship. The U.S. Senate last month confirmed Lewis as a U.S. district judge.
How Alabama Power kept bills up and opposition out to become one of the most powerful utilities in the country
In one of the poorest states in America, the local utility earns massive profits producing dirty energy with almost no pushback from state regulators.
No more Elmo? APT could cut ties with PBS
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