After observing Alabama’s news cycle for a few years, I've seen a recognizable problem emerge surrounding the state’s criminal justice approach. It seems lawmakers, judges, and corrections officials actively attack and prosecute symptoms, while the root causes are rarely addressed and left to fester and grow worse.
Two recent stories highlight this, the first from 1819 News:
Bailey Hart was arrested Monday after Escambia County Sheriff’s deputies pulled her over for driving erratically on Nine Mile Road. Deputies discovered 20 grams of cocaine in the vehicle and arrested her.
Hart was at the center of a months-long investigation in Baldwin County in 2024 that ended in one of the largest fentanyl busts in county history.
According to deputies, Hart was living in a home that was raided on Jan. 9, 2024. Investigators found more than 2,000 fentanyl tablets in the home. Hart was arrested and charged with trafficking dangerous drugs (fentanyl), possession of marijuana and tampering with physical evidence. Matthew Lyle Crider was also arrested in the raid.
Released from jail in February 2024, Hart was ordered into drug treatment program, but later thrown out. Since then, Hart has had a series of Alabama arrests for drug possession, leading to this most recent Florida arrest.
The second story comes from Alabama Daily News:
A judge has ordered a new trial for an Alabama woman who was sentenced to 18 years in prison following a stillbirth that her attorneys argued was caused by an infection rather than drug use.
Lee County Circuit Judge Jeffrey Tickal vacated Brooke Shoemaker’s 2020 conviction for chemical endangerment of a child resulting in death. Tickal said Shoemaker’s attorneys presented credible new evidence that the infection caused the stillbirth.
‘Should the facts had been known, and brought before the jury, the results probably would have been different,’ Tickal wrote in the Dec. 22 ruling ordering a new trial.
What joins these two cases? Shoemaker’s initial conviction illuminates the connection.
In 2017, Shoemaker had a stillbirth at about 24 to 26 weeks into her pregnancy. She admitted to medical staff that she used methamphetamine during her pregnancy.
The state medical examiner found methamphetamine present in the fetus’ bloodstream but listed the cause of death as undetermined.
Shoemaker’s attorneys argued that there is no proof that the drug use caused the pregnancy loss. In her appeal, her attorneys submitted an expert’s opinion, based on a review of of pathology slides, that a genetic abnormality and severe infection caused the demise of the pregnancy.
Shoemaker’s and Hart’s cases appear different on the surface, but substance abuse and addiction are the common threads precipitating the alleged criminal behavior of both.
The photos of both women in the linked articles show how young they are, Hart particularly. What occurred in their thus-far short lives which caused them to forge a path leading to where they are now? These young women are not isolated cases, so it could be beneficial to study the whys of their issues before getting into the hows of legal strategies and treatment.
According to the most recent report from The Alabama Opioid Overdose and Addiction Council, these questions are not being asked. Instead, women continue receiving Band-Aids to address the symptoms, rather than workable solutions preventing the root causes leading to addiction, which almost always leads to criminality.
The health and wellness site Innerbody Research reported that the increase of women becoming addicted to substances has increased, but women may be more susceptible to cravings, relapse, and fatal overdoses than men.
Ultimately, women face different obstacles when overcoming substance use disorders, making treatment more challenging for many. Some of the key takeaways of these gender differences include:
- -Hormonal differences may make it more difficult for women to overcome drug and alcohol cravings.
- -Women may be more vulnerable than men to environmental cues that may trigger a relapse.
- -Women develop dependence more quickly than men do.
- -Psychologists developed traditional addiction treatment programs based on research on men.
- -Women often incur the medical and social consequences of addiction faster than men.
Yet the main solution to drug crimes and convictions is incarceration, which grossly fails to address these concerns. If anything, it exacerbates the drug abuse and criminality problems.
A July 2025 ABC News report on the conditions at the oldest women’s prison in Alabama shows that throwing any more Brooke Shoemakers or Bailey Harts into these environments solves nothing and fails at one of the goals of imprisonment: rehabilitation.
WATCH:
Rachel Elledge, featured in the above video, served time in 2021 for a drug charge and was only helped by Lovelady Center in Birmingham. Now she is a counselor working to help other women, telling ABC, “The waitlist for in-prison treatment for those seeking recovery is more than a year.”
“There's no way you can get clean in the conditions they live in,” another speaker in the video said. So, why is immediate incarceration and further exposure to violence and criminality the default, particularly for someone like Shoemaker?
Both Hart’s and Shoemaker’s case highlight the focus on conviction rates without factoring in the merits and basis of each case and the rehabilitation potential for the subject. Was justice truly served in either case? Shoemaker, at least, is getting a second chance to have those merits tested.
In 2024, the state succeeded in passing a law which defined what a woman is, while also protecting women’s spaces. Using that same fervor to distinguish and define the reality that women require a different approach, it’s now time to help women combat addiction and avoid incarceration. That starts in the home and our faith communities first – by the time women get to prison, it is often too late.
Jennifer Oliver O'Connell, As the Girl Turns, is an investigative journalist, author, opinion analyst, and contributor to 1819 News, Redstate, and other publications. Jennifer writes on Politics and Pop Culture, with occasional detours into Reinvention, Yoga, and Food. You can read more about Jennifer's world at her As the Girl Turns website. You can also follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Telegram.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to [email protected].
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