A Republican Governor Is Leading the Country's Most Successful Prison Reform (Gov. Deal of Georgia)

[TENBILLIONDOLLARS 216]

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Over the last four years, mandatory sentencing minimums have been modified, and judges’ discretion in sentencing has been expanded. The adult prison population has been given enhanced access to educational resources, including a program that enables two charter schools in the state to go into prisons to teach inmates, and those participating earn a high school diploma instead of a GED.

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In addition, inmates with felonies applying to work for the state no longer have to check a box on their job applications that discloses their criminal histories and would often disqualify them from being considered for a job from the outset. “We banned the box,” said Deal. “It is not going to affect them getting an interview.” The state has also invested $17 million into measures aimed at reducing recidivism and rehabilitating low-risk, nonviolent offenders—including expanding accountability courts like those for drug use and DUIs, and funding community-based programs that have already proven to be more cost-effective than a prison sentence and are designed to reduce crime in the long run.

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Since he was elected at the end of 2010, Georgia’s incarcerated population dropped from an estimated 56,432 to 53,383 at the start of this year. That reduction virtually slashed the state’s backlog of inmates in county jails who were waiting to be transferred to a prison or probation detention center. Keeping inmates in local jails typically cost the state $20 million annually. Without the backlog, the cost associated with transferring inmates “plummeted to $40,720,” per the Georgia Council on Criminal Justice Reform February 2015 report.

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“Because it has had a disproportionately high incarceration rate, because it’s in the South, because it’s Republican,” Holcomb [national director of ACLU’s Campaign to End Mass Incarceration] said, “people aren’t expecting criminal justice reform to come out of states with those characteristics.” But Georgia has indeed become what she calls “a leader state.”

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121425/gop-governor-nathan-deal-leading-us-prison-reform

[TBoneTX 43,042]

Good for him/them.