EXPANDED PAROLE DOCKET GOOD STEP

The weekly special dockets instituted by the state Board of Pardons and
Paroles are a useful step in working to ease the horrific overcrowding of
Alabama's prisons.

The weekly special dockets instituted by the state Board of Pardons and
Paroles are a useful step in working to ease the horrific overcrowding of
Alabama's prisons. The kinds of cases the board is considering in these
special dockets underscore again the needlessly high number of people
incarcerated in the state for crimes that don't necessarily warrant
incarceration.

The board got a $1 million emergency appropriation in February that allowed
it to hire some additional parole officers to supervise persons paroled
from the special dockets.

Inmates convicted of Class A felonies involving violence or of domestic
violence or drug trafficking are not eligible for the special dockets, nor
are inmates with disciplinary charges within the past six months.

That leaves primarily the nonviolent drug and property offenders, the very
offenders for whom incarceration often is a costly and unproductive option
for society to choose.

Many of these inmates could be released from prisons into the supervision
of the board without posing any appreciable physical threat to the
citizenry. At the special docket hearings held this week, for example, 31
of the 34 inmates considered for parole were paroled.

The special dockets are an important short-term measure. Their greatest
value, however, may well lie in the questions they raise about why some of
these people were in prison instead of serving sentences in more productive
and less costly ways.