Panel recommends reforms to stem prison spending

Shortening sentences for some nonviolent offenses and creating a statewide network of accountability courts could help prevent Georgia taxpayers from spending more than $250 million to accommodate an expanding prison population, a state panel said Friday.

The Special Council on Criminal Justice Reform said changes are needed to control the unimpeded growth in state prison spending, which has doubled over the past two decades to $1.05 billion a year. The panel noted the growth is being fueled by drug and property offenders who account for about 60 percent of all prison admissions.

The council noted more than 3,200 offenders enter prison on a drug possession conviction each year and two-thirds of these inmates have been found to be low risks to offend again.  Read more...

Prisoners report beatings in retaliation for December protests

Inmate advocates and relatives said guards at one state institution have retaliated with violence against prisoners who staged a protest and refused to report to work details last month.

Marie Williams, whose son is at Smith State Prison in Tattnall County, said another inmate called her on her son’s behalf over the weekend to report what had happened.

“They said they [officers] were hitting inmates with hammers,” Williams told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Tuesday. “They [guards] said an inmate was trying to escape.”  Read more...

Convicted look to the state for forgiveness

Lovett, a convicted robber and drug dealer from Atlanta, said he needs a job; Adcock, a convicted drunken driver from Cartersville, wants to carry a gun.

Theirs are among the 2,067 pardon and restoration-of-rights applications pending before the state Board of Pardons and Paroles. Both men say they’ve been good for a good long time.

They have a decent chance of getting what they want.  Read More...

Family uses killer's letters to keep him behind bars

Billy Ray White vowed 20 years ago that when he got out of prison, he would track down the relatives of the man he'd murdered and subject them to gruesome deaths.

In a handwritten letter to J.D. Hall's daughter, the convicted killer promised to carve her up like a turkey and make her head into a flower pot. In another letter to Hall's son, he said he would put him through a meat grinder and force his relatives to eat him.

"You can run but you can't hide. You can go to the police, but they can't protect you. You can change your name, address, or even move, but I will always find you," he wrote in a letter postmarked May 15, 1989, to Hall's widow. "They can't keep me in here for the rest of my life."  Read More...