By Carrie Teegardin, Bill Rankin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ATLANTA — Leading Georgia conservatives, including Gov. Nathan Deal, are proposing a new approach to justice: Thousands of drug addicts, thieves and small-time offenders should be punished, but not imprisoned. And prisons, the most expensive punishment, should be reserved for the most dangerous criminals.
Proponents of reform say the state’s billion-dollar corrections system has two strikes against it: It costs too much, and it often doesn’t work. The new approach, expected to be proposed in the General Assembly this week, would demand personal responsibility and offer a shot at redemption to nonviolent offenders in a state that has long preferred to lock such people up.
“The smart on crime approach saves tax dollars, improves our rehabilitation rate and keeps Georgians safe in their communities,” Deal said in a statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday. “We have one of the highest incarceration rates in the nation, and at an average cost of $18,000 per prisoner, we’re looking at an unsustainable cost curve.”
Deal is following conservatives in other states, such as Texas and South Carolina, who found that the “tough on crime” sensibility of the 1990s was too tough on taxpayers in the 2000s. Strict laws with colorful names like “Two Strikes and You’re Out” and the “Seven Deadly Sins” succeeded in locking up thousands more people in Georgia, but they also cost millions of dollars to sustain.
The “smart on crime” bill is expected to relax laws on theft, shoplifting and forgery by changing dated thresholds at which those crimes become felonies. For example, a shoplifter currently is guilty of a felony for stealing $300 or more in merchandise; the proposal is expected to set that threshold at $750. The bill also is expected to:
- Impose, in burglary cases, harsher sentences on someone who breaks into a house than someone who breaks into a barn or tool shed.
- Create new ranges of sentences for drug possession, with less severe punishment for small quantities of drugs and more severe punishment for larger quantities.
- Grant early release to state prisoners who take steps to improve themselves while behind bars, but longer terms for those who don’t.
According to the Pew Center on the States, one in 13 Georgians is behind bars, on probation or on parole --- the highest rate of correctional control in the nation and more than double the national average of 1 in 31.
The proposed transformation of that system arises from work done by the Special Council on Criminal Justice Reform for Georgians, a group of judges, attorneys, lawmakers and other officials appointed by the General Assembly last year.
‘Accountability courts’
Deal has already proposed changes to the state budget to beef up what are known as “accountability courts” for drug addicts and people with mental health issues.
“We already have some drug courts in Georgia, and they have seen remarkable success rates; giving a drug offender a chance at treatment has proven much more likely to prevent recidivism --- at a lower cost --- than sending someone to prison,” Deal said. The governor’s son, Superior Court Judge Jason Deal, presides over two North Georgia drug courts.
If lawmakers do not embrace Deal’s proposals, they know they will have to keep expanding the prison system. The price: an additional $264 million over the next five years that will have to come out of other state programs. Georgia ranks ninth among the states in population, but it has the fourth-largest prison system in the nation.
The council recommended no changes to Georgia’s tough laws for violent criminals. “As I said in my State of the State address, this is not a ‘Get Out of Jail Free Card.’ If you commit a violent crime in Georgia, you’re going to prison, and we’ll have more cells to keep you there for as long as needed.” Deal said.
Georgia began its journey toward reform last year, when the General Assembly approved legislation to create the Special Council. It found that if Georgia’s current policies remain in place, the state’s prison population will increase by 8 percent --- to almost 60,000 inmates --- by 2016. The group also found that state prisons aren’t jammed only with violent thugs who were the targets of former Gov. Zell Miller’s popular “Seven Deadly Sins” and “Two Strikes” laws passed by the General Assembly in 1994.
Drug and property offenders make up almost 60 percent of all prison admissions and many of those offenders are rated as low-risk, the council found. The average time spent behind bars for drug and property crimes more than tripled between 1990 and 2010, the council reported.
‘They were good men’
Members of the council argued that many of these offenders could be better served elsewhere. And many lawmakers agree.
“We can take a burden off of many aspects of state government by taking these low-level offenders who are tax burdens and giving them the help they need so they can become tax payers who are taking care of themselves and their families,” said Rep. Jay Neal, R-LaFayette, who sponsored last year’s legislation that created the Special Council. “If we miss an opportunity to do that, we’ll miss an opportunity to move Georgia forward in a very positive direction.”
Neal, a Christian minister, didn’t always think this way.
“I was that guy who couldn’t understand why addicts and alcoholics couldn’t go to work and take care of their families,” he said. “I just felt like they had behavioral issues and we needed to punish the behavior. I was one of those who said ‘Lock them up and if they don’t get the message, lock them up longer.’”
Then something changed. About a decade ago, Neal was pastor of a church that one Sunday drew a large group of visitors from a local residential recovery center. The men trying to beat their addictions wanted to come to the church regularly. And after some soul-searching, Neal said, the congregation enthusiastically welcomed the new parishioners.
The new members “changed the heart of our church,” Neal said --- and completely changed Neal himself.
“I began to see that these individuals wanted as much as anybody else did to be contributing members of society,” he said. “They wanted to take care of their wives and they wanted to take care of their children and they cried over how they had failed their children. They were good men. I began to realize that this addiction was a lot more than a moral failure and a behavioral problem.”
Neal soon went to a conference to learn more about the science of addiction. Today, he’s the director of the north campus of Penfield Christian Homes, a treatment program for men addicted to drugs and alcohol. It’s a job Neal says he wouldn’t even have imagined for himself a decade ago.
‘Georgians understand this’
While such proposals may have been viewed as politically risky in the past, especially for Republican officials, Neal said the average Georgian is ready for a new approach too.
A poll conducted for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Georgia Newspaper Partnership found that 64 percent of those polled support shortening prison sentences for nonviolent offenders and diverting drug offenders to treatment programs.
“Georgians understand this,” Neal said. “Everywhere I go across the state and every time I talk to people about criminal justice reform, they agree that this is something we need to do.”
For James E. Donald, chairman of the state Board of Pardons and Paroles, the proposed changes are a welcome development.
A retired Army general, Donald was until 2009 the head of Georgia’s Department of Corrections. While running Georgia’s prisons, he became a strong advocate for the need to develop alternatives to the state’s expensive lock-ups. He supported the creation of a network of “day reporting centers,” a community-based option for errant probationers who aren’t violent but who would otherwise take up expensive prison space after violating the terms of their probation.
Donald said he is “delighted” to see Georgia on the cusp of embracing a range of options that, he believes, will help keep communities safer.
“You have heard me say it over and over again,” Donald said, “If we are afraid of them, lock them up. Indeed, if we’re afraid of them, throw away the key. But if we’re just mad at them, then there ought to be alternative sentences. If they are no longer preying on our children and families and the crimes are petty crimes, we have to have alternative sentencing options.”
The Special Council recommended a slate of changes that could reduce projected growth in the prison population by more than 3,000 inmates.
“That’s two prisons worth,” Donald said. “That’s almost $60 million there.”
Community-based programs are a tough course in change, Donald said, since they require offenders to stay sober, hold down a job and stay out of trouble.
That’s more challenging, in many ways, than spending time behind bars, since a community program requires them to walk by drug dealers every day and live in family settings that can be stressful, Donald said. Through the community supervision programs and the support of religious organizations and nonprofits, he said, many offenders can turn their lives around.
“Ultimately, they do come home and their ability to stay out of prison will depend on how they’re able to survive in the community,” he said.
Copyright 2012 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution