Facts and Policy Reforms for Georgia
Like most states, Georgia’s prison population has exploded in recent decades, more than quadrupling between 1980 and 2017.
In 2016, the state had the fourth largest prison population in the country. Recently, Georgia’s per capita imprisonment rate has declined following reforms. Despite this positive shift, Georgia remains an outlier in terms of the number of people in prison, in jail, and under community supervision like probation or parole. For example, in 2015, the number of people under correctional control throughout Georgia was larger than the entire population of Atlanta.
Drug-related offenses are a leading contributor to new prison admissions in Georgia, accounting for one in five admissions in 2017. Of that group, 31 percent had been convicted of drug possession, and 19 percent were admitted for a marijuana offense.
Incarceration in Georgia has a profoundly disparate impact on Black communities. In 2016, the imprisonment rate of Black adults in Georgia was more than three times that of white adults in the state. Although they made up just 31 percent of the state population in 2016, Black people accounted for 61 percent of the prison population across the state in the same year. Reducing incarceration rates alone is a critical – although insufficient – step towards addressing racial disparities in Georgia’s criminal justice system as well as its broader society.
Women are also being sent to prison in Georgia at alarming rates. Between 1980 and 2016, the number of women in prison increased 567 percent, rising significantly faster than the number of men in prison over the same time period.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Georgia can dramatically reduce its prison population by implementing just a few sensible reforms:
- Promoting alternatives to incarceration like substance abuse treatment, mental health care, and other programs.
- Reclassifying drug and minor property offenses as misdemeanors rather than felonies.
- Reforming mandatory minimum and severe sentencing enhancement laws, especially its “habitual” enhancements.
- Giving judges the ability to use options other than incarceration rather than being mandated by the legislature to send people to prison for certain crimes.
- Improving community supervision and release policies to ensure that more eligible people are released earlier from prison and probation.
If Georgia were to follow these and other reforms outlined in this Smart Justice 50-State Blueprint, by 2025 it could have 25,610 fewer people in its prison system, saving over $1 billion that could be invested in schools, services, and other resources that would strengthen communities.
For more information, along with detailed breakdowns of Georgia’s prison population and the reforms needed to reduce it, click here.