Aug 28, 2024

A state commission hopes to slice recidivism in half before the decade is over.

That and more are in today's report. Thank for reading,

Ike Morgan

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The Alabama Commission on Reentry, or "Reentry Alabama," has made it a goal to cut the recidivism rate in half by 2030, reports AL.com's Mike Cason.

States figure their recidivism rates differently, so it's hardly worth comparing Alabama to the nation. Here, the rate is determined by people who were re-incarcerated within three years of being released from prison. And Alabama's rate (as of 2018) was 29%. Back in 2008 it was 34%.

Cam Ward is the director of the Bureau of Pardons and Paroles.  He said the problem is a complicated one that will require several agencies working together. He also advocates for criminal-justice reform and chairs Reentry Alabama.

Among the efforts to fight recidivism, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency is figuring out how to provide released inmates with driver license or some other form of state identification. The Alabama Labor Department created a career center at Julia Tutwiler Prison last year, and it may do the same at other prisons in order to give inmates job prep leading up to their releases. And Ward said he wants a central database so agencies can identify the needs of those inmates (think drug dependency or mental illnesses).

Reentry Alabama plans to meet monthly to prepare strategy for February's legislative session.

Keeping gambling machines from being used in Alabama looks an awful lot like swatting skeeters in Alabama. There are always more of them -- and sometimes you're swatting at the same skeeter.

Recently the state attorney general's office seized a bunch of gambling machines and shut down several establishments in Selma that were allegedly running gambling operations.

Now, AL.com's Howard Koplowitz reports that the AG's office has confirmed that some of those same illegal gambling machines were found in a room at J's Charity Bingo in Lipscomb -- and they still had the stickers identifying them as evidence in the Selma case.

See, the Selma facilities had been locked up, but authorities say they saw machines being slipped out of one.

You never know who you're going to run into on campus.

The new president of Iceland is a graduate of Auburn University in Montgomery, reports AL.com's Amber Sutton.

Halla Tomasdottir graduated from AUM in 1993 after studying Human Resource Management. She's been a climate-change activist, businesswoman and nonprofit CEO. She was sworn in as president of Iceland on Aug. 1.

School spokesperson Troy Johnson said he believes she is the first head of state to have graduated from AUM. He said he'd like to see the university invite Tomasdottir back to visit campus.

“The South is always in it. It’s in the molecules.”

Brittany Howard, on her music, during an event that bestowed Alabama Humanities Fellows on her and Jason Isbell.

Reporter and WNSP sports radio host Mark Heim joins us to talk college football.

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