Study: Georgia's inmate growth nearing crisis

ATLANTA - Next to the federal prison system, Georgia added more prison inmates in 2000 than any other system in the United States, despite a decline in crime, according to a report that warns of an impending crisis in the prison population. <br> <br> The study, done for the state parole board, concluded that Georgia must bring statewide uniformity to sentencing, develop alternatives to prison and help inmates to avoid future criminal behavior. <br> <br> Otherwise, the $1-billion-a-year corrections system will need to start building more prisons, said the report prepared by Wayne Garner, a former state senator, corrections commissioner and parole board chairman. <br> <br> ``The state needs to begin looking at some bed space, trying to figure out something to do,&#39;&#39; Garner told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which obtained a copy of the report after an open records request. <br> <br> The findings were disputed by the Department of Corrections. <br> <br> ``We are not in a crisis,&#39;&#39; spokesman Scott Stallings said. <br> <br> Stallings said although there are almost 1,650 convicts waiting in county jails for space in the state prison system, the backlog was larger in the mid-1990s. <br> <br> ``It&#39;s trending in the right direction,&#39;&#39; he said. <br> <br> The study by Garner, who was paid up to $48,000 for his work, found that Georgia had the ninth-largest state prison population and the fifth-highest rate of incarceration behind Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi and Oklahoma. <br> <br> The report said one in 10 adult Georgians can expect to spend time in prison, twice the national average. <br> <br> For black men, the proportion is 38 percent, compared to 9.3 percent for whites. And rural judges are almost a third more likely than urban judges to send people to prison. <br> <br> While Georgia&#39;s population increased 78 percent from 1970 to 2000, the prison population grew 417 percent, Garner said. In 10 years, the state added 20,282 inmates, 6,000 of them in 1999. <br> <br> Sentences of life without parole and mandatory prison terms put in place in 1995 are among the major reasons. <br> <br> ``Everybody has voted for all these ... laws to incarcerate everybody,&#39;&#39; said Rep. David Lucas, D-Macon, who is chairman of the House State Institutions and Property Committee. ``Everybody doesn&#39;t have to go to prison.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> Lucas is an advocate of diverting some criminals into less secure facilities that allow them to work and pay part of the cost of their detention. He also supports home arrest and electronic monitoring of parolees. <br> <br> Bob Keller, district attorney in Clayton County and co-chairman of a governor&#39;s task force creating sentencing guidelines, said the hard-line sentencing is not necessarily bad. <br> <br> ``One could say we&#39;re a more punitive state, or you could say we take a firm stand on people who violate the law,&#39;&#39; Keller said.

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