What does accountability look like?

In Alabama, it's chaos in a cage.

(Alabama L-R: Parole board chair Leigh Gwathney, Attorney General Steve Marshall, Governor Kay Ivey)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about accountability and what that looks like in Alabama. It’s a word tossed around by tough-talking politicians like Gov. Kay Ivey and AG Steve Marshall, but their idea of what exactly accountability means and how it applies to themselves remains unsaid.

Two of Ivey’s supporters who chimed in on her recent executive order regarding “good time” in prison invoked “accountability” in their statements of approval on the changes that make it harder for people to get out of prison alive. Ivey’s order expands the ways a prisoner can lose good time, sometimes permanently.

“Our goal is always to stand with crime victims to make sure criminals are more accountable,” said executive director of VOCAL, Janette Grantham. VOCAL, which stands for “victims of crime and leniency,” is the group that opposes parole in every case, the first to speak in opposition to sentencing reforms. I wonder how Ms. Grantham figures that keeping people locked up in overcrowded, drug-filled, violent dungeons increases accountability? Other than vengeance, what does this practice of chaos in a cage accomplish for crime victims?

“Being accountable for our actions is the hallmark of an orderly and fair society,” said Montgomery County District Attorney Darryl Bailey. “When our actions violate others’ safety and security, we expect to be held accountable for that destructive behavior.” Does Mr. Bailey seriously believe that any inch of space inside Alabama prisons represents something even close to orderly or fair? And if what he says is true, why does the state of Alabama refuse to accept its own accountability in the record number of prison deaths due to violence, overdose and suicide?

If I could sit down and talk with these leaders, I would ask them what accountability means to them. How do they imagine the current dangerous environment inside the Alabama Department of Corrections helps to facilitate accountability? And how much accountability does the state bear in traumatizing the people in its prisons, worsening drug addiction, mental illness and despair?

I’m also still thinking about the ridiculous statement Sen. Clyde Chambliss made in support of Ivey’s grab on good time. Chambliss suggested the changes were needed to punish prisoners who were “gaming the system,” and “hold back those that are not learning their lesson.”

Sen. Chambliss, no doubt, is aware that the parole board has now denied 90 percent of people eligible for release, a new low. That this board even denied release to a wheelchair-bound, elderly and dying Black woman, even after prison officials cleared her for medical release and an organization called Redemption Earned secured her a spot at a nursing home. Is that what accountability looks like? Who gets held accountable for this cruelty?

If you want to see a real example of gaming the system, look at the parole board members’ abysmal conformance rate with their own board guidelines. Sen. Chambliss knows good and well, just like Ivey, Marshall and every other leader in Montgomery, that hundreds of qualified people each month are denied parole, despite fulfilling every mandate set forth in their sentence. Where is the accountability when system actors in power game the system by changing the rules while pretending it’s all orderly and fair? If I could sit down and talk with them, I’d ask them these things. I’d also like to know if they’ve considered the question—what would Jesus do?