The Alabama Board of Pardons and Parole is on track this year to release the smallest percentage of eligible prisoners on parole in over a decade, granting parole to just 7.5% of the 2,332 prisoners eligible for release as of Thursday.

While Alabama’s parole grant rate has been on a sharp decline for the past five years, it had experienced steady growth since 2013 before taking a nosedive in 2019.

Sentencing reforms in 2015 led to a gradual increase in the state’s parole grant rate as well as a decrease in prison population, peaking in 2018 with a roughly 53% parole grant rate.

In 2019, however, that number dropped to 31%, coinciding with reforms to the Pardons and Parole Bureau that imposed stricter guidelines for granting prisoners’ release. In 2020, that number dropped again to 20%, and then to 15% in 2021, settling at 10% in fiscal year 2022.

From Jan. 1 of 2023 to Thursday, July 27, the Pardons and Parole Bureau held 2,332 parole hearings for prisoners eligible for release, granting parole to 176 of them for a denial rate of 92.5%. Of the 176 prisoners granted parole, 50 were granted release on conditions that they live at a halfway house for a set period of time, 42 were ordered to undergo a mental health evaluation, and 38 were required to be employed within 30 days.

The decrease in the state’s parole grant rate has, unsurprisingly, correlated with an increase in prison population, which had decreased sharply in 2015 following the sentencing reforms approved by then-Gov. Robert Bentley. In 2019, however, that rate began to climb, with the state having an incarceration rate of 938 per 100,000 by 2021, the sixth-highest rate in the country.