Criminal Law

• Traffic Violations
  For members of the public buying a Blizzard at Dairy Queen or having their cars worked on in a local garage, it can be hard to distinguish incarcerated employees from their civilian counterparts. In most cases, they dress in the same clothes or uniforms. And even those clearly identified as prisoners doing more traditional jobs like road work go unnoticed by most busy motorists speeding down the state’s roads.
• Robbery
  A storm was looming when the inmate serving 20 years for armed robbery was assigned to transport fellow prisoners to their jobs at private manufacturers supplying goods to companies like Home Depot and Wayfair. It didn’t matter that Jake Jones once had escaped or that he had failed two drug and alcohol tests while in lockup — he was unsupervised and technically in charge.
• Assault
• Murder
  That’s because in Alabama the department determines which prisoners are employed off site largely based on how well they’ve behaved behind bars, instead of what put them there. Those working among the civilian population include men and women with records for violent crimes like murder and assault. Many are serving 15 years or longer.
• Hit and Run
  And then it was confirmed: Her son had been struck by a tractor-trailer in a hit and run along the side of Interstate 65.