Georgia’s Criminal Justice Crossroads: Post-Conviction Issues in the Peach State
This is part of a series on crime and justice in Georgia. Read the other posts here: Pre-Arrest, Pretrial.
Georgia rightly boasts its reign as the best place for business for 10 straight years. While this is a proud distinction, the state holds several less-than-proud distinctions as well—particularly regarding its justice system.
The state made notable progress toward a generally fairer justice system over the years, predominantly under Republican former Gov. Nathan Deal, who made justice reinvestment a cornerstone of his tenure. He established a Council on Criminal Justice Reform in the state to make system-improvement recommendations, seeing many of them into adoption before his two terms ended in 2019. The sentencing reforms, expansions of parole eligibility, probation modifications, juvenile reforms, and reduced barriers to reentry that Deal spearheaded significantly improved Georgia’s justice system by reducing the prison population and improving outcomes.
However, as of 2024, the Peach State still had the nation’s seventh-highest incarceration rate, with 881 Georgians per 100,000 behind bars. This represents a higher rate than any country in the world, save for El Salvador. While its state prison population, which hovers around 47,000, is lower than projected for 2018 at the outset of the Deal administration, the fact that Georgia remains so high on the country (and world) incarceration list indicates the state still has a major problem.
Incarceration rates aside, the prisons themselves are problematic. Georgia has seen a shocking surge in homicide behind bars. Conditions are so abhorrent in some institutions that the U.S. Department of Justice looked into the matter, finding “long-standing, systemic violations stemming from complete indifference and disregard to the safety and security of people Georgia holds in its prisons.” The state also has the highest community supervision rate in the nation, with roughly 1 in 23 Georgians under government purview on either probation or parole in 2022.
Notably, the Peach State reports a recidivism rate of around 27 percent—well below the national average. Experts credit this relatively low rate to the effectiveness of justice reinvestment efforts in the state, including its second chance program and the removal of some barriers to work for individuals with criminal records. There is still obvious room for improvement, however. Even a 27 percent recidivism rate means that more than one out of every four people incarcerated in the state eventually end up back in the cycle of crime, creating more victims and a greater burden on communities.
Due to the state’s high incarceration rates, far too many Georgians—4.2 million of roughly 11 million total residents—have criminal records that affect their lives far beyond time served. Although the majority of these individuals are rehabilitated and have been crime-free for years, their backgrounds cause them to face challenges both on and off community supervision. Criminal records prevent many people from obtaining gainful employment or attending college, which can drive them back to crime as they attempt to make ends meet. Simply put, Georgia needs more smart post-conviction reforms that both limit the number of individuals incarcerated and allow those individuals to succeed upon release.
Danger in Detention: Conditions Behind the Wall
According to the Georgia Department of Corrections, the Peach State houses around 47,000 individuals in 34 prisons spread across the state, and investigative journalists and the U.S. Justice Department have found disturbing trends within these institutions.
The Department of Justice found that the state fails to protect individuals in medium- and close-security facilities from widespread physical violence; that it subjects individuals to unreasonable risk of harm from sexual abuse; and that gangs are allowed to exert improper influence on prison life, harming both incarcerated people and the public.
In addition to violence, abuse, and gang activity, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) has been following another problem inside Georgia’s prisons: a surge of homicides. “Overall last year,” reads the newspaper, “the Georgia Department of Corrections told the AJC it investigated 66 prisoner deaths deemed to be homicides … The 2024 figure greatly exceeds 2023’s record of at least 38 killings.” Between Jan. 1 and Feb. 4, 2025, 13 deaths in Georgia’s prisons were investigated as possible homicides.
According to consultants for Gov. Brian Kemp’s administration, staffing vacancies at the majority of the state’s 34 prisons have reached “emergency levels,” that guards face “constant fear and fatigue,” and that 82.7 percent of newly hired staff leave within the first year of employment. Lawmakers have acknowledged these deplorable realities, allocating an additional $250 million to improve prison conditions and hire 700 more corrections officers; however, only time will tell how effective these measures are in addressing them.
Locked Up Too Long: Lengthy Prison Sentences and Over-Incarceration
Georgia has one of the largest prison, probation, and parole populations in the country. At the same time, research shows that people tend to age out of crime and that prolonged justice system involvement often causes more harm than good. For those reasons—and even for fiscal ones alone—the state should seriously consider responsible ways to reduce the number of people under government custody or supervision.
In 2019, Georgia spent about $65.58 per day per inmate when factoring in the costs of medical and maximum-security units. Multiply that by 365 days and around 47,000 inmates, and the costs reach well over $1 billion a year. However, a number of these inmates have been rehabilitated, aged out of crime, or are simply elderly and no longer pose a threat to society due to medical and physical limitations.
Other states facing similarly high numbers of incarcerated individuals serving sentences far beyond public safety needs have come up with creative ideas to lower these numbers. Statutes that allow for re-sentencing, such as “second look” laws, empower inmates who have already served much of their sentence to petition the court to review that sentence and consider modifying it.
Barred After Bars: Out of Prison, but Un(der)employed
With the exception of the most violent offenders, around 95 percent of incarcerated individuals will eventually return to society. It is in the collective interest that they do so successfully and do not ever find themselves back behind bars. Simply being incarcerated increases the likelihood of committing another crime; however, whether the formerly incarcerated are able to obtain a good job upon release influences their chance of recidivating.
Unfortunately, upward of 30 percent of professions in the United States require an occupational license to work, and many state laws empower licensing boards to reject applicants based on unrelated criminal histories and vague character and fitness standards. This limits the labor pool and eliminates options for those with marks on their record.
Georgia is no exception. The state currently has laws on the books that require individuals to meet nebulous character standards in order to be eligible for certain occupational licenses, and until recently, boards were still allowed to deny licenses solely on the grounds of previously committed crimes fully unrelated to the occupation in question. Thanks to a 2016 reform, the state now requires a direct correlation between the crime and the license sought to deny on those grounds. However, even for those professions that do not require a license at all, individuals with criminal records in Georgia still face barriers to gainful employment.
After fulfilling their court-mandated obligations to the state, many people who have been arrested must deal with that mark on their record for the rest of their lives—no matter how long they have stayed out of trouble, or even if they were never convicted of a crime. This can be personally destructive. Around 95 percent of employers and over 60 percent of colleges screen applicants’ backgrounds. A single arrest or minor offense conviction on someone’s background check can be the difference between attending college and obtaining a good job or not. For individuals with a criminal background, not being able to obtain employment can mean reverting to survival crime.
Georgia lawmakers have already begun to address the problem of criminal records that follow individuals into perpetuity, albeit primarily for those who committed offenses as minors. Generally, convicted minors’ records are sealed when they turn 18. Individuals can also apply for first-offender status after completing their sentence for certain crimes, which seals their record on a one-time basis. Those who were arrested years before but never took advantage of first-offender status can apply for it retroactively. While this is a good first step, lawmakers should consider expanding this type of relief to other adult populations or seek additional ways to reduce barriers to reentry.
Conclusion
Georgia is a proud national leader in many ways; unfortunately, it also tops national rankings for its problematic and bloated criminal justice system, which unnecessarily burdens taxpayers, encourages further crime, and makes it difficult for rehabilitated offenders to reintegrate back into society. The Peach State would do well to turn an eye toward adopting some of the solutions spearheaded by similarly situated states in order to relinquish these dubious honors and improve public safety in the process.