In Case You Missed It: How Republican-controlled Georgia became a national leader in criminal justice reform

Fusion Media Network: "Not too long ago, the state was the epitome of tough-on-crime policies: A 2009 Pew study found that one in 13 Georgians was under criminal supervision (in jail, on probation, or on parole), the highest rate of any state. In the early ‘90s, legislators guaranteed life without parole for a variety of repeat offenders. The state prison population ballooned from about 20,000 in 1990 to more than 50,000 in 2004. As of 2010, African-Americans made up 58% of the prison population, even though they’re only 31% of the state population.
 
"In the last five years, however, Georgia has started a U-turn. Since 2011, Gov. Nathan Deal and the legislature have completely rewritten the adult and juvenile justice codes, creating new opportunities to divert nonviolent offenders from prison or detention. Deal took executive action to “ban the box,” removing a check-box on state job applications where people have to report if they have a criminal history. And a new law passed last year gave lifers like Barker a second chance to get out of prison.
 
"Already, the prison population has seen modest, yearly declines from its peak in 2009, even as the state’s overall population has grown. Several prisons and juvenile detention centers have been closed. At the same time, more people charged with drug crimes are getting treatment, not prison. Cost savings have been higher than predicted, and are being reinvested into alternative programs like substance abuse counseling or mental health treatment. Crime rates overall have even gone down in the past few years.

"Notably, all these reforms have passed unanimously or almost unanimously in a legislature that has been controlled by Republican supermajorities in both houses, and with a conservative, Republican governor in office.
  

"'This kind of reform is not a partisan issue,’” Deal told me in a phone interview. “If you look at it through a partisan lens, you’re not going to get something that works.”
 
While a lot of attention has been paid to criminal justice reform on the national level, there’s only so much that President Obama and Congress can do. Fewer than 10% of America’s prisoners are in federal prisons; a large majority of our incarcerated population is instead housed in state prisons. That makes reform at the state level even more important.
 
It’s said that state governments are laboratories for the country. If that’s true, then Georgia is at the cutting edge.

Read the rest of the story by Casey Tolan here.