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"How can Georgia turn lawbreakers into taxpayers?"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the headline of this interesting new piece from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which is a companion to this broader article on the budget burdens of incarceration levels in Georgia.  The main piece starts this way: As states across the nation recognize that prison costs are busting tight budgets and doing little to reform offenders, many governors and legislators are thinking outside the cell. Mississippi lawmakers decided in 2008 to cut prison costs by allowing all nonviolent offenders to be considered for parole after serving 25 percent of a sentence instead of 85 percent.  In Texas, a bipartisan effort in 2007 avoided $2 billion in costs to build and operate new prisons by spending $241 million on alternatives: stepped-up probation and parole programs, new halfway houses and specialty courts devoted to offenders with drug issues and mental health problems...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on May 31, 2010 (boomark / email).