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For years, Alabama’s parole system has faced scrutiny, as the rate of prisoners granted parole has plummeted since Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles Chair Leigh Gwathney came to power in 2019. Despite Alabama’s long-documented prison overcrowding crisis, the parole rate has fallen from just over 50 percent in 2018 to a meager 8 percent in 2023.
This issue has culminated in the U.S. Department of Justice’s ongoing lawsuit against the state, which argues that Alabama’s prisons are so overcrowded, understaffed, and violent that they violate the “cruel and unusual punishment” clause of the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment.
Despite this, parole continues to be a rare privilege granted to exceedingly few inmates. In 2023, all 10 inmates over 80 years old who were up for parole were denied. In Fall of 2023, Gwathney voted to deny medical parole to Thomas Owens, “a nonviolent offender who is a quadriplegic, completely bedridden, and spends most of the day in a catatonic state” — Owens narrowly received parole on a 2-1 vote.
But, according to Attorney General Steve Marshall, “there is simply nobody else to ‘reform'” and “dangerous offenders are largely the only ones left behind bars.” Alabama must have an abnormally large number of dangerous prisoners who simply refuse to be reformed — many of whom just so happen to also be seriously ill.
Indeed, medical parole is so rarely granted that prisoners and the Department of Corrections are now forced to subvert the board in order to get ill inmates the proper medical attention they deserve, and to free up much needed space in the prisons.
Leola Harris, a wheelchair-bound 72-year-old with end-stage renal disease, was denied parole in January of 2023 after serving two decades in prison. However, she became one of four prisoners freed by the DOC through the little-known process of medical furlough this year.
The law, enacted in 2008, allows for the “discretionary release” of some inmates according to Alabama DOC Commissioner John Hamm.
“The Medical Furlough Act allows the ADOC to release certain geriatric, permanently incapacitated or terminally ill inmates to family members under certain conditions. These inmates are better served in this capacity, and it allows more resources for the disruptive inmates,” he told AL.com.
Harris had expected to die in the infirmary of Julia Tutwiler Prison in Wetumpka, which she described as “a nursing home with no care.”
And many are dying in Alabama prisons, so much so that commissioners like Hamm must now take matters into their own hands. The medical furlough process is being used as a last-ditch effort to effectively work around a parole board that refuses to grant adequate medical parole and seems completely satisfied with maintaining overcrowded, unsafe environments that harm inmates and state employees alike.
Another wrinkle: Alabama relies heavily on the cheap labor supplied by its inmates. Incarcerated Alabamians are farmed out by the DOC to private corporations like McDonald’s and Wendy’s to serve as mandatory workers. These inmates work long shifts while forking over 40 percent of their paycheck to the state before taxation — if they file complaints about their working conditions or find themselves unable to attend their job, they can face solitary confinement and other punishments.
These inmates are deemed reformed enough to work long hours alongside the general public through the work-release program, yet continue to be denied parole as supposed “dangers to society.” Some inmates in the program are even allowed 72-hour periods at home on the weekends. Alabama State Rep. Chris England calls it a “completely broken system” and says that the parole board uses “no guidelines” when making its parole decisions.
Leola Harris agrees. “I don’t think they read nobody’s file,” she said of the board.
Alongside inmates like Harris who are finding freedom through the medical furlough program, the parole board does appear to be slowly increasing its granted parole rate — AL.com reported that January of this year saw a parole rate of 19 percent. However, these developments are not nearly enough. For every Thomas Owens and Leola Harris who gets lucky enough to leave prison with the chance to receive decent, humane medical care, there are countless others who remain in custody, waiting to die.
