Governor’s initiative has Georgia leading the nation

Gov. Nathan Deal was in town for a short while Tuesday morning to speak at the state’s first Reentry Summit. He also signed three bills into law while he was here. If anyone doubted the governor’s passion for the task of criminal justice reform listening to him speak would have changed that doubt into belief.

Georgia leads the nation in criminal justice reform and, quite frankly, if not for the governor, we doubt all the various state agencies would have pulled together to make the effort. Not because they didn’t want to, but because what is happening now is so out of the box only a dedicated-to-the-cause-governor could pull the various state agencies and some federal, together to make it happen.

The fact is, what this state and most others have been doing for countless decades hasn’t worked. Locking folks up, mostly nonviolent offenders and throwing away the key is expensive both in terms of money and in human capital. And eventually, those offenders will be returning citizens and walk out of a state facility and back into their communities. Trouble is, statistics said that 30 percent would find themselves back behind prison walls again. How do we stop that vicious cycle? That’s what the Reentry Summit was all about. It was part celebration and part rejuvenation.

The governor explained that when he first took office in 2011, he was told that before his first term ended he was going to have to build two new prisons to house 5,000 inmates at a cost of $264 million. He decided to try something different and launched the Georgia Council on Criminal Justice Reform and charged it with coming up with recommendations to reform the system.

With unanimous support from the General Assembly the governor started implementing those recommendations. He formed a new state agency, the Department of Community Supervision and strange things have started to happen. From accountability courts — drug, veterans, mental health, etc. — to keep nonviolent offenders out of jail and to get those in prison the help they need. Many inmates, the governor explained, are functionally illiterate. If they walk out of prison the same way they walked in, chances are they’ll soon walk in again. Adult basic education, GED and GED testing is offered. There are even two charter schools in state facilities for inmates 18-22 years of age. There have been 1,650 GEDs completed in fiscal year 2017. There are also career and technical programs and job training courses available.

Has it worked? According to the “Report of the Georgia Council on Criminal Justice Reform — 2016”: “There is mounting evidence that the reforms enacted to date are improving the effectiveness of Georgia’s criminal justice system and producing benefits for taxpayers as well as offenders and their families. On the adult side, one key indicator is the continuing decline of Georgia’s prison population, which stood at 51,822 at the end of 2015 — down from a peak of 54,895 in July, 2012.

“Annual commitments to prison have dropped substantially as well. In 2015, Georgia recorded 18,139 commitments, the lowest number since 2002 and down from a peak of 21,655 in 2009...

“In addition, the ongoing reforms continue to produce a substantial decline in the number of African-American adults incarcerated in Georgia.... Overall, the number of African-Americans committed to prison in 2015 — 9,983 — was at its lowest level since 1988.”

Gone are the days in Georgia when returning citizens were given a $25 check on their release, but the question must be asked, why haven’t we been doing this all along?

The governor’s efforts are to be applauded. He could have — and did — tout the fact that not building new prisons saved taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, but he displayed his heart while talking about a drug court graduation he attended. Deal suggested we should all attend such an event. Maybe that would help us look at the past offenders anew and rather see the returning citizens. Because if we don’t prepare them for reentry, we are preparing them for recidivism.

This story was originally published May 11, 2017 at 9:00 PM with the headline "Governor’s initiative has Georgia leading the nation."