OFFENDER ACT PRODUCING UNDESERVED PRISON TIME

In 1979, the Alabama Legislature passed the Habitual Felony Offender Act.
For the quarter century, this law has sentenced to life in prison people
with three "priors," regardless of the seriousness of offense.

In a nutshell, this means that Alabama is, literally, locking up and
throwing away the key for people convicted of writing multiple bad checks
or getting caught with a joint three times.

Twenty-five years ago, politicians promoted the Habitual Felony Offender
Act as a way to reduce recidivism and make clear that Alabama is tough on
crime and doesn't coddle criminals. But like gas-guzzling cars, feathered
hair and pet rocks, the Habitual Felony Offender Act from inception was a
bad idea without usefulness or merit.

The law has also cost the state untold millions and is a key culprit behind
Alabama's fiscal distress. Here's why.

Alabama's prison system is notoriously overcrowded and over budget. In
1979, Alabama's prisons held fewer than 6,000 people. Today, the prison
population has skyrocketed to 29,000 people -- much higher than the rate at
which national incarceration figures have increased.

How do these numbers translate into human lives? According to the Alabama
Attorney General's Sentencing Commission, 72 percent of the people
incarcerated in Alabama are serving time for non-violent, low-level drug
and property offenses.

A significant majority of Alabama's prisoners don't need prison time, at a
cost to the state of $9,000 a year; they need drug treatment, which costs
dimes in comparison to the dollars needlessly spent on imprisonment.

Alabama's overcrowded prisons are in crisis. Designed to hold 12,000
inmates, the state's prison system is now operating at 185 percent of
capacity. Of the 29,000 people serving time in Alabama's prisons, 8,000
have been sentenced under the Habitual Felony Offender Act, meaning that
they will likely spend the rest of their lives behind bars for petty,
non-violent and victimless crimes.

The Habitual Felony Offender Act is not only expensive, but more important,
it also undermines democracy. No one has been hit harder by this law than
communities of color, and poor people who often can't vote their way out of
this public policy mo rass because of Alabama's felony disfranchisement laws.

According to the Washington-based Sentencing Project (a member of the
National Right to Vote Campaign), about 212,000 adults are disfranchised
due to Alabama's laws that deny voting rights to people with felony
convictions. About 111,000 of these are African-Americans.

In fact, 14 percent of Alabama's African-American population is
disfranchised, creating a glaring deficit in the state's democracy.

Nationwide, there are nearly 5 million voters disfranchised due to an array
of state laws like Alabama's that deny democracy to American citizens. Laws
like the Habitual Felony Offender Act in Alabama and its cohorts in other
states are only increasing the numbers of citizens that our democracy will
leave behind.

On April 17, people affected by Alabama's expensive and wrong-headed
incarceration craze will take a stand against the Habitual Felony Offender
Act and its relationship to the wholesale disfranchisement of
African-Americans and other disproportionately poor Alabamians.

Reminiscent of the Freedom Rides of the civil rights movement, community
members from Mobile, Selma and Birmingham who have connected the dots will
converge on Montgomery for a Freedom March to oppose expensive
over-incarceration and to call for full restoration of voting rights to all
of Alabama's citizens.

We encourage anyone interested in this subject to attend this Freedom March.