In two years, the legislature went from denial to doing something
about the unsupportable costs of Georgia’s prison system.
The Georgia prison population is already plumetting, and will drop more.
This makes a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia an even worse business deal.
If it ever opens, it probably will close.
Two years ago the Georgia legislature was in denial,
as Carrie Teegardin wrote for the AJC 4 April 2010,
Georgia prison population, costs on rise,
As Georgia lawmakers desperately search for ways to slash spending,
they are not debating an option taken by other states: cutting the
prison population.
Georgia operates the fifth-largest prison system in the nation, at a
cost of $1 billion a year. The job of overseeing 60,000 inmates and
150,000 felons on probation consumes 1 of every 17 state dollars.
The state’s prison population has jumped by more than a quarter in
the past decade and officials expect the number of state inmates to
continue to creep upward. Georgia has resorted to measures other
than reducing the prison population to keep corrections spending
under control.
19 months later, things had changed,
as the Atlanta Business Chronic reported 15 December 2011,
BJS: Georgia prison population drops in 2010,
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Remember the Georgia legislature was considering sentencing reform? Now it's passed the Special Joint Committee on Georgia Criminal Justice Reform.
