EJI Challenges Homelessness and Permanent Punishment Caused by Alabama’s Community Notification Act

11.18.09

EJI is working to assist people who have been forced into homelessness, denied critical medical care, and subjected to permanent imprisonment as a result of Alabama’s Community Notification Act.

One of the harshest such laws in the country, Alabama’s law applies residency restrictions to every person convicted of a sex offense, regardless of the nature of the offense and without taking into account factors like poverty, illness, and advanced age, which make compliance with the restrictions impossible for some people.

EJI is confronting cases in which people have been prosecuted and sentenced up to 10 additional years in prison because they lacked the resources to identify, from prison, an address where they could live upon their release that would comply with the Community Notification Act. The CNA makes it a felony offense to fail to find a compliant address 180 days prior to release from prison.