In 2012, Georgia passed comprehensive criminal justice reform legislation. The reforms restructured offense classifications and sentencing policies for drug and property offenses with the goal of tailoring justice system responses to the severity of the offense committed. This brief analyzes trends in commitments, sentence length, and time served for offense categories affected by the reforms. Commitments to prison for these offenses declined 13 percent, and probation commitments fell 9 percent. Average sentence length for most affected offenses fell following reforms, and time served in prison and on probation began to decline as well.
Assessing the Impact of Georgia’s Sentencing Reforms: Justice Reinvestment Initiative (2017)
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