Georgia's chief justice on Wednesday called on lawmakers to enact sentencing reforms that steer nonviolent offenders away from costly prison sentences, saying, "we now know that being tough on crime is not enough."
In a 25-minute address before a joint session of the Legislature, Chief Justice Carol Hunstein asked lawmakers to adopt proposals by the Special Council on Criminal Justice Reform that studied Georgia's sentencing and corrections system. The state can no longer afford to spend more than $1 billion a year to maintain the nation's fourth-highest incarceration rate, she said.
The initiative, supported by Gov. Nathan Deal and Democratic and Republican leaders, calls for increased funding for drug, mental health and veterans' courts across the state and for other alternatives to prison. Legislation is being drafted and will be introduced in the coming weeks, said Brian Robinson, a spokesman in the governor's office. Deal's budget plan already asks for $10 million for new accountability courts.
Hunstein, a member of the special council, said its members "began united in our belief that warehousing nonviolent offenders who are addicted to drugs or are mentally ill does nothing to improve the public safety. Indeed, in the long run, it threatens it."
Accountability courts address the roots of crime and reduce recidivism, she said. "If we simply throw low-risk offenders into prison, rather than holding them accountable for their wrongdoing and addressing the source of their criminal behavior, they merely become hardened criminals who are more likely to re-offend when they are released."
Hunstein cited a series published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last fall that found jails are the state's new asylums, with more mentally ill people locked up behind bars than all those being treated in state psychiatric hospitals.
"That is costing our taxpayers millions of dollars, from which they get little return on their investment," she said.
The chief justice asked lawmakers to begin considering reforms for juvenile sentencing, noting that over the past three years, almost two-thirds of the more than 10,000 juveniles locked behind bars were diagnosed with substance abuse problems and a third had mental health conditions.
There are better alternatives than locking up children in Youth Development Campuses, where they are exposed to violence and abuse, Hunstein said. "We must face the reality that for many of these children, Georgia's youth prisons are mere incubators for adult crime."
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