Georgians can expect a flurry of bills this year from Republicans who say they are working to combat crime in Atlanta and across the state.
Ever since Gov. Nathan Deal left office in 2019 — after spending the bulk of his two terms working to overhaul the criminal justice system with the expansion of accountability courts, the addition of education and job training to state prisons, and redesignating some felony classes as misdemeanors — Republican lawmakers have taken small steps that opponents say chip away at his legacy.
Deal’s goal was to decrease the overcrowded prison system by keeping nonviolent offenders out of long incarcerations and easing away from mandatory minimum sentences, leading to more offenders being sent to accountability courts instead of state prisons.
But in the years after he left office, murder rates began to increase across the state, and Georgia saw what the GBI has called “logarithmic growth” in gang violence. Lawmakers say steps are needed to get crime under control. The spike in murders during the COVID-19 pandemic has calmed down some, and early numbers show a decrease in the murder rate in Atlanta and across the country last year.
“When crime reports come out, every time, somewhere between 70% and 90% of every violent crime in the nation is done by a criminal street gang member,” said Senate Public Safety Chairman John Albers, a Roswell Republican. “It is the single biggest threat to society.”
Albers said he plans to put more focus on mandatory-minimum sentencing for gang-related crimes. This year, Gov. Brian Kemp signed a law that requires judges to sentence anyone convicted of recruiting members to a street gang to five to 20 years in prison. That time would be served after any additional sentence for a gang-related crime, and the recruitment sentence cannot be reduced for good behavior.
The law increases the minimum sentence for gang recruitment to at least 10 years and makes it a felony conviction if the person being recruited is under 17 or has a mental disability.
“The majority of every violent crime we’re feeling is coming from a criminal street gang member,” Albers said. “They’re an army that we need to fight back.”
Also still in play is a bill that would overhaul the state’s bond system, more than doubling the number of offenses that would require judges to issue some form of cash bond.
Senate Bill 63 would add dozens of new offenses, such as trespassing and forgery, that would require cash bail to get out of jail.
The bill’s sponsor, Senate Majority Whip Randy Robertson, a Cataula Republican, said the legislation aims to ensure that people who have been arrested and released on bond return for their trial.
“I will continue looking to adjust legislation and laws that protect victims’ rights while bringing as much of a hammer down on violent criminals as possible — with the key that are being ‘violent,’ ” he said.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia has worked to end mandatory-minimum sentencing and opposed Robertson’s bill last year.
The group recently released a study looking at people being held in the Fulton County Jail because they are unable to afford bond. The number of people being held because they can’t pay their bond as well as the amount of time from arrest to indictment has decreased in the past year.
“At some point over the past year there’s been an increased effort to assess and release those who are in custody on bonds that they simply can’t afford,” said Ben Lynde, a lobbyist with the ACLU. “That said, we still found 155 individuals who had these low bonds that they should be able to afford if they were a normal person, that were still in custody after 90 days. ... These individuals haven’t been convicted; they’ve had a judge say that they’re not a threat to society and they are simply in jail because they could not afford their bond.”
Robertson is also leading a Senate panel investigation of issues at the Fulton County Jail that was established in October in response to the deaths of 10 people this year while being held at the jail.
While the Fulton County Commission is in charge of things such as the funding and infrastructure of the jail, there are things that can be done at the state level that could reduce overcrowding and the backlog of cases.
For example, both the Fulton County sheriff and the executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia said additional court staff could help. They said the additional judges and attorneys could help move people who’ve been arrested through the system more quickly.
“It would be helpful to have more judges,” Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat told a panel of senators last month. “And specifically night court judges.”
And Pete Skandalakis, executive director with the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council, said that if lawmakers consider adding judges to certain districts, additional assistant district attorneys and staff would also be needed to help lawyers deal with the backlog of cases that existed before the pandemic but has compounded since then.
“And it’s an antiquated formula for ADAs and public defenders when you add a new judge to a circuit. The formula has been one ADA and one public defender per circuit court judge,” he said. “I think 2 ADAs per courtroom is a good working model.”
Robertson said the lawmakers would consider the increase in court staffing.
“If our capital county jail is handicapped by an antiquated code, that’s something we need to look at and see if that’s something we can fix,” he said.
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