Program to help non-violent criminals get right in Georgia expands to rural areas

Non-violent criminals in remote areas of Georgia now have an opportunity to avoid jail time and enter a program to help them get their lives back on track. The state Department of Corrections already offered "intensive drug counseling and other services designed to keep probationers from reoffending," at 14 regional day-reporting centers in urban areas, but now rural offenders are getting the same opportunities to get a second chance with the opening of 11 rural centers, Adam Ragusea reports for Georgia Public Broadcasting. The program also saves the state money, with the cost of incarcerating prisoners amounting to more than $50 a day. (Ragusea photo: Probation Officer Christopher Burke talks to probationer Chet Mull, who is working on his GED)

House Bill 349, signed in April, "restores judicial discretion by allowing a departure from mandatory minimum sentences in some very limited circumstances," John Barker reports for Douglasville Patch, about 22 miles west of Atlanta. "As a result, judges now have the option to make more appropriate decisions in drug-related cases where the defendant is not the ringleader of the criminal enterprise, or in other cases where the prosecution, defense attorney and judge agree." Republican Gov. Nathan Deal said of the bill: “Public safety will be improved by giving prosecutors leverage in certain cases and by ensuring that our prison resources are reserved for the ‘kingpins’ while the ‘mules’ are given a chance at reform.”

The program, which costs $750,000 a year, allows participants to spend four days a week in group counseling, and allows officers to give individual extra attention, Ragusea writes. Ruthie Turner, a program counselor, told him, “We teach a class that helps them get ready to make a change in their lives,” by offering substance abuse programs and skills that help probationers re-enter society — “how to do a résumé, how to do a job interview, how to dress for those things." And the program has been a big success, Ragusea writes. "Of the 60 probationers who have graduated the DRC Lite program so far, corrections officials said, only three have gotten into serious trouble with the law again." To read more, or listen to the radio interview, click here.