The Alabama Sentencing Commission said Alabama’s already overcrowded prisons could see inmate populations rise by nearly a third by 2030 due to new punitive laws passed by the Legislature.
The commission and Applied Research Services, a research firm that studies criminal justice, estimated the population in custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections could grow from almost 22,000 to between 24,000 and 28,000 inmates. That depends on the number of people the Alabama Department of Corrections admits each month on average.
Those numbers, if reached, would come near or exceed Corrections’ record inmate population, set 16 years ago. They would also further strain the state’s General Fund. The state’s prisons have taken up an ever-larger share of the budget over the past two decades.
“The system, even before all the changes that happened, was already trending up,” said Bennet Wright, executive director of the Alabama Sentencing Commission, on Friday. “All the things that I discussed, and that is not to say they are good or bad, but they are going to adjust the track up more.”
Wright said the projections factor several changes implemented by the Alabama Legislature, from increasing the number of judges assigned to oversee cases to changes in statute related to split sentences, to a law passed in 2023 that further restricted the use of good behavior to reduce incarceration time.