By Megan Matteucci
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
DEKALB, Ga. — Nonviolent criminals could soon get more community service and other punishments besides jail time under DeKalb County’s new district attorney. Robert James, who was sworn in Monday, pledged to look at alternative sentences to help restore justice in DeKalb.
“We need to look at appropriate sentence recommendations,” James told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Nonviolent offenders are clogging our dockets and filling our prisons.”
According to James, 88 percent of Georgia’s inmates are high-school dropouts. By intervening earlier with felons who commit shoplifting, minor drug offenses and petty thefts, the county can begin to change that number, James said.
Earlier this month, James, the county’s former solicitor-general, defeated Decatur attorney Constance Pinson Heard for district attorney. He takes over the vacancy left by Gwen Keyes Fleming, who resigned in September to take a job with the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
James, 38, plans to implement the Jobs Not Jail program, which he started in the solicitor’s office and provides first-time offenders with opportunities to complete their education and get a job.
“Once they commit an armed robbery it’s too late. Once they murder someone it’s too late,” James told a crowd of about 300, according to a spokesman from the solicitor-general’s office.
The crowd, which included DeKalb Sheriff Thomas Brown, Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard, legislators, judges and county commissioners, watched as James swore to uphold the constitution and treat everyone fairly. James held his 3-year-old daughter Brookelyn as Superior Court Judge Mark Anthony Scott administered the oath.
“I’m inheriting a great responsibility,” James told the crowd. “We got drug dealers on our corners, gangs in our schools and women who are prisoners in our own home. ... It’s happening right under our noses.”
Copyright 2010 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution