GAINESVILLE, Ga. – Gov. Nathan Deal signed legislation Friday that would create a panel to study Georgia’s criminal justice system with an eye toward overhauling the state’s tough sentencing laws.
The laws have left the state with overcrowded prisons and taxpayers with an annual corrections bill that tops $1 million.
The legislation creates a 13-member commission that would study sentencing reforms in hopes of offering alternative sentences for some drug addicts and other nonviolent offenders. The panel would have to report its findings by early 2012, in time for lawmakers to act on them in the next legislative session.
“We must do a better job rehabilitating lives. We know that drug addiction is the root cause of much crime,” the governor said at a signing ceremony at the Hall County Courthouse. “Our entire society benefits if we can turn these tax burdens into taxpayers. I look forward to working with this council to make Georgia corrections work better for Georgians.”
The measure was adopted overwhelmingly by Georgia lawmakers and from leaders of all three branches of state government as a way to slash the state’s incarceration rate, which is the highest in the nation, according to a study by the Pew Center on the States.