Seeking redemption for aged and infirm prisoners amid Alabama's high bar for parole
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Across the U.S., prison populations are getting older and sicker. A legal nonprofit in Alabama called Redemption Earned is working to get those inmates out of the state's overcrowded and dangerous lockups. Organizers say it's an effort to counter a broken parole system that leaves people to languish for decades in a prison system that courts have found to lack adequate medical care or protection from violence. NPR's Debbie Elliott reports.
DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINE: Doug Layton Jr. works at a glass shop outside Birmingham.
DOUG LAYTON JR: This is the fabrication shop, where...
ELLIOTT: He's proud to have a key to show me around after hours, that his new employer has given him such responsibility.
LAYTON: And I've just - I haven't felt that in - God, since I was 15, you know, 16, to where somebody just really trusts me.
ELLIOTT: Layton is 56 years old and spent nearly 20 years in prison for reckless murder in a hit-and-run killing. Because of prior felony convictions, he was sentenced to life in prison. Even with a clean record behind bars, five years at a work-release camp and support from the victim's mother, he was denied parole and had given up hope.
LAYTON: What kind of message is that sending to somebody that's trying so hard to focus on their life, their character and their remorse - everything? And so when it comes down to getting out, and you keep ripping the hope out of there, that just - it's very depressing.
ELLIOTT: The legal nonprofit Redemption Earned put Layton's case before a judge, including testimony from the mother of the man he killed.
LAYTON: And she hugged me, and she says, I forgive you, and I want you out of prison. That day changed my life forever.
ELLIOTT: That was in March, and the judge granted him release. Redemption Earned helped him find housing and get settled outside of prison.
SUE BELL COBB: We believe in redemption. We believe in second chances.
ELLIOTT: Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb founded the group.
COBB: Redemption Earned was created to fill an enormous gap in services to the least, the last and the lost, which are the worthy, aged and infirmed incarcerated adults in Alabama prisons.
ELLIOTT: So far, in three years of operation, the group has won release for seven clients. Cobb, who also served on the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals, says people who show evidence of rehabilitation behind bars are provided legal aid to help win their release. Cobb says Alabama's tough-on-crime politics have resulted in a corrections system that's more about vengeance than justice.
COBB: Alabama has the lowest parole rate in the United States of America. Even though we have the most dangerous and overcrowded prisons, our present parole board - they simply do not grant parole.
ELLIOTT: Last year, the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles had a 10% parole grant rate compared to guidelines that recommend 80%. Redemption Earned is currently trying to help 71-year-old grandmother Leola Harris, who was denied parole in January.
COBB: All right. Here we are. Ms. Harris. Hello, this is Sue Bell Cobb.
ELLIOTT: Harris calls in from Tutwiler Prison, where she's serving a 35-year sentence for murder. She's been there for 20 years and is being treated for high blood pressure, diabetes and kidney failure.
COBB: I want to know how you're feeling today.
LEOLA HARRIS: Well, today is one of my good days.
COBB: Good.
HARRIS: It's not a dialysis day so...
COBB: Yeah.
HARRIS: ...I'm in one piece today.
COBB: In one piece. OK (laughter).
ELLIOTT: After Harris was denied parole, Redemption Earned is now petitioning a judge to release her. They found a nursing home placement but are also trying to piece together a support system that could care for her at home. That's what Harris wants.
HARRIS: I know I'm slowly dying. So, you know, I would like to go home and die, and I would like to have some decent food, you know, and actually be treated like a person, not just a number.
ELLIOTT: Harris says it's absurd to think she's a threat to public safety.
HARRIS: I'm 71 years old, in a wheelchair. Can you imagine me wheeling myself down the road to try to get somebody? And I had to try to get up out the chair to do it. Can you imagine that? I can't.
ELLIOTT: Harris is on dialysis three days a week and sometimes needs help from her fellow prisoners tending to basic sanitation needs. She says the experience is like being dead but not buried. But victims rights advocates in Alabama are skeptical of Redemption Earned's efforts on behalf of Harris and other offenders.
JANETTE GRANTHAM: Just because they're elderly does not mean that they should be released.
ELLIOTT: Janette Grantham is with VOCAL, Victims of Crime and Leniency. The group sends representatives to parole hearings to oppose parole for violent offenders, no matter how old they are. Grantham says her compassion lies with victims, not prisoners.
GRANTHAM: The way I look at it, they chose to go to prison. And the prisons is a bad place, I can tell you. You got to think of all the murderers and the rapists and the robbers. All of them are in one place, penned up. Of course it's violent. Don't go there. Everybody has a choice. And when you choose to go to prison, you got to live with the consequences.
ELLIOTT: That's a political sentiment that's prominent in Alabama, says Cam Ward, director of the Bureau of Pardons and Paroles, which supervises people on parole.
CAM WARD: There is a tough-on-crime environment. We're a very red state, and that's where we are. And that's OK, and that's how it goes.
ELLIOTT: Ward, a former state senator, chairs a criminal justice policy board of the National Council of State Governments. He says it's a passionate issue where emotions tend to drive policy.
WARD: Data is saying one thing, public perception is another.
ELLIOTT: Alabama's parole rate dropped dramatically after 2018, when a parolee murdered three people eight months after his release. The chairwoman of the independent board that makes parole decisions declined NPR's request for an interview. Ward says it would make more sense to parole people under the watch of his agency than to let them get out of prison at the end of their sentence with no supervision. Alabama Representative Chris England, a member of the state's prison oversight committee, agrees.
CHRIS ENGLAND: We've basically become an old folks home where we're basically caring for people who are no longer a threat to society, which means that they cost more, we spend more resources on incarceration than we do on rehabilitation, and ultimately it becomes unsustainable.
ELLIOTT: As evidence, he points to the state's new prison health care contract. Its cost? A billion dollars.
Debbie Elliott, NPR News, Montgomery.
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