Did an over-crowded correctional system lead to the early release of four convicted killers sentenced in Limestone County Circuit Court to life in prison?

Inmates granted parole Tuesday by the Alabama Board of Pardons and Parole in Montgomery were Charles Farinelli, 44, of Arab; Perry Lee Fleming, 64, of Tanner; Joseph Twarog, 45; and James Willie Harris, 41, of Athens. All four were either convicted of murder or pleaded guilty to murder in separate cases.

District Attorney Kristi Valls, who wrote letters opposing parole for the inmates, said Wednesday she is unaware if they were released because of overcrowding , good behavior or another reason.

“They come up for parole every so often,” said Valls. “We just get a form that says they’ve been paroled.”

Sheriff Mike Blakely, who also spoke out against the four inmates’ parole, says it’s because Gov. Bob Riley refuses to build more prisons.

When Alabama’s new prison commissioner, Richard Allen, accepted the post early this year, Riley mandated that he take charge of correcting overcrowding, personnel shortages, aging and poorly maintained facilities, and soaring inmate health care costs.

“When Governor Riley appointed me commissioner, he have me a written mandate that can be summarized in two words—‘ fix it’—pledging his full support,” said Allen recently.

Part of the fix has been in sentencing reform, giving judges more leeway in alternative corrections, such as community centers. Blakely has been vocal in criticizing the community centers, saying they are just “Band-Aid solutions” that place the public at risk from repeat offenders.

According to a May story in the Birmingham News, Alabama has more inmates locked up for violent crimes, 57 percent of the state’s prison population compared with 50.5 percent of the inmate population nationally.

The growth in inmates, as well as their advancing age, has been the result of longer sentences as the state shifted toward a punitive system and away from a rehabilitative one, a trend that mirrors what’s happened nationwide, according to the story.

Alabama has had a much larger proportion of inmates serving long sentences than the national average, according to the Criminal Justice Institute’s Corrections Yearbook for 2002. That year, 40.3 percent of Alabama prisoners were serving sentences of 20 years or more. Nationally, only 20.4 percent were.

Allen said that a Riley-ordered overview of the Department of Corrections shows that, on average, each month about 700 medium and higher security inmates enter the system and only about 581 leave, requiring an additional 119 beds each month, or the prisoners back up in county jails.

“Unless the 119 number can be reduced to a negative number, all solutions, including squeezing more beds into existing space, outsourcing to private prisons, and building new facilities are only temporary fixes,” said Allen. “Eventually, all space fills up and more must be procured.”