Prison overcrowding has significantly frustrated the criminal justice system in Alabama as well as most other states. Sentencing judges generally can only speculate as to what their sentences mean. This uncertainty operates to undermine the credibility of the sentencing process. For appropriate defendants, judges are encouraged to fashion sentences utilizing alternatives other than basic probation and long-term institutional confinement. More likely result in the defendant's rehabilitation than incarceration.
Prisons serve as training camps for crime, especially for young offenders.
Judges who have alternatives available to them are likely to move to the middle ground provided by the alternatives, whereas judges who must choose between the extremes of incarceration or probation, when they choose differently, create the perception of disparity.