Estimated reading time: 18 minutes
Boys born into the poorest 10% of American families face 20 times higher likelihood of incarceration by age 30 than those from the wealthiest families—and Georgia has built the nation’s most aggressive machine to ensure they get there.
Georgia operates the world’s highest rate of correctional control while systematically extracting wealth from its poorest citizens through a criminal justice system designed not to prevent crime or promote public safety, but to criminalize poverty itself. The numbers tell a story of mathematical precision: poor Americans experience violent crime at 2.4 times the rate of high-income households, yet face dramatically higher odds of becoming defendants rather than receiving justice as victims. Once ensnared in Georgia’s system, they encounter cash bail requirements representing eight months of income, fines and fees practices operating at 20 times national averages, and a corrections apparatus that churns 236,000 different people through its jails annually.
This investigation is part one of a two-part series examining poverty as the driving force behind both mass incarceration and prison violence in Georgia. Part two, “Forced Criminality: Inside Georgia’s Prison Violence Factory,” will reveal what happens inside the system.
This isn’t dysfunction—it’s design. As the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute documents, Georgia has created “a state legal framework that has allowed localities to weaponize their criminal legal systems through abusive fines and fees practices that forcibly extract wealth from Georgians experiencing poverty.” The system profits from poverty at every stage, from initial arrest through conviction to incarceration, creating cycles that ensure the same families remain trapped across generations. And once inside Georgia’s prisons, the exploitation intensifies through mechanisms we’ll examine in a forthcoming investigation—but first, we must understand how poverty itself has been criminalized to feed this machine.
The Mathematics of Inequality: How Poverty Produces Crime
The correlation between poverty and crime operates with the precision of a mathematical formula, documented across decades of research and confirmed by current data. According to Bureau of Justice Statistics analysis spanning 2008-2012, poor households (those below the federal poverty level) experience violent victimization at a rate of 39.8 per 1,000 people—compared to just 16.9 per 1,000 for high-income households earning over 400% of the poverty threshold. That’s a 2.4-times multiplier that persists across crime categories.
For firearm violence, the disparity explodes to even more extreme proportions. Poor households face gun violence at 4.4 times the rate of wealthy households—3.5 incidents per 1,000 versus 0.8 per 1,000. These aren’t random variations but systematic patterns that reveal how economic deprivation concentrates both criminal victimization and, more critically for understanding mass incarceration, criminal defendants.
But victimization statistics represent only half the equation. The Brookings Institution’s comprehensive 2018 study “Work and Opportunity Before and After Incarceration” documented the staggering disparity in who actually goes to prison. Boys born into families earning less than $14,000 annually face a 9.6% incarceration rate by age 30, compared to just 0.49% for those from families earning above $143,000—a twenty-fold difference. For boys in the bottom 1% of income distribution, the incarceration rate reaches 11.5%, while those in the top 1% face only 0.29% odds—a forty-fold disparity.
These aren’t correlations suggesting poverty might influence crime—they’re demonstrations of causation traced through multiple mechanisms that social scientists have identified and tested. Economic deprivation theory explains how blocked access to legitimate means of achieving success drives people toward illegitimate alternatives. Strain theory documents the stress and frustration of economic marginalization producing anti-social behavior. Social disorganization theory shows how concentrated poverty destabilizes communities, weakening informal social controls that prevent crime.
When researchers at the University of Houston tested these theories in 2024 using contemporary data, they found unemployment serving as a significant predictor of violent crime while poverty and population density correlated significantly with property crime. Meta-analyses synthesizing over 200 studies identified “concentrated disadvantage”—the clustering of poverty, racial heterogeneity, and family disruption—as among the strongest and most stable predictors of crime rates across jurisdictions. States with poverty rates above 15% consistently show higher violent crime rates, with Louisiana’s 18.8% poverty rate corresponding to the nation’s highest homicide rate of 14.4 per 100,000 people.
The research consensus is clear: poverty doesn’t just correlate with crime—poverty produces crime through rational economic calculations made by people with limited options, through the destabilization of communities that lack resources for collective action, and through the psychological strain of perpetual economic insecurity. Georgia’s criminal justice system doesn’t address these root causes. Instead, it exploits them.
Georgia’s Incarceration Machine: World-Leading Correctional Control
Georgia holds the distinction of operating the number one jurisdiction in the world for percentage of population under correctional control. The state’s incarceration rate of 881 per 100,000 residents stands at nearly 2.5 times the national average of 350-400 per 100,000. To put this in perspective: if Georgia were a country, it would surpass even the United States’ world-leading incarceration rate. Georgia has built a prison system more aggressive than any nation on Earth.
The targeting is neither random nor colorblind. Nearly 60% of those incarcerated in Georgia are Black, despite African Americans comprising only 31% of the state’s population. This represents a 1.9-times overrepresentation that directly echoes Georgia’s historical use of criminal justice for racial control—from slavery through convict leasing (where 91% of leased convicts were Black) to chain gangs to contemporary mass incarceration.
The scale of Georgia’s system defies comprehension. At least 236,000 different individuals cycle through Georgia jails annually—not counting those in state prisons. That’s one in every 45 Georgia residents passing through jail each year. In seven rural Georgia counties studied in 2020, 56% of people booked were African American, with motor vehicle and traffic charges representing the most frequent offenses. These aren’t violent criminals but people caught in cascading debt spirals where unpaid fines lead to license suspension, driving with suspended licenses generates new citations, and inability to pay mounting fees results in arrest warrants.
At least 26 Georgia localities engage in fines and fees practices at rates 20 times higher than national averages, according to the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute. These jurisdictions operate what amounts to government-sanctioned loan sharking operations, extracting wealth from families already struggling with poverty while using the threat of jail to ensure payment. When people inevitably cannot pay—because a $1,000 traffic fine represents months of income for someone earning $15,000 annually—the system criminalizes that poverty through warrants, arrests, and incarceration.
The pretrial detention crisis illustrates this dynamic with particular clarity. Georgia operates a two-tiered justice system where wealth determines who sits in jail awaiting trial and who goes home, regardless of the charges or evidence. The consequences of this poverty-based detention system extend far beyond the jail cell, affecting conviction rates, sentence lengths, employment, housing, and family stability in ways that perpetuate cycles of poverty and criminalization.
Cash Bail: When Poverty Becomes Punishment Before Conviction
More than 70% of people in local jails nationwide are pretrial detainees—individuals legally presumed innocent who sit in jail solely because they cannot afford bail. The median bail bond of $10,000 represents eight months of income for the typical detained defendant, whose median annual pre-incarceration income of $15,109 falls at just 48% of the median for non-incarcerated people of similar age.
Research demonstrates that 65% of people in local jails unable to afford bail fall within the poorest third of society. This isn’t about danger or flight risk—it’s about economic status determining freedom. The Brennan Center for Justice accurately characterizes this as “a two-tiered system where ability to pay, rather than public safety, determines who stays in jail and who goes free.”
The cascading harms of pretrial detention based on poverty extend far beyond the immediate deprivation of liberty. Studies document a 6-9% increase in reoffending associated with cash bail detention, alongside devastating collateral consequences: job loss affecting approximately 50% of detained defendants, housing loss when people cannot pay rent while jailed, and family separation affecting over 50% of detained defendants who are parents of minor children.
The impact on case outcomes proves equally significant. Defendants released pretrial receive sentences 67% shorter than those detained pretrial, while conviction rates increase dramatically for defendants held in jail. Those forced to sit in jail lose their jobs, accumulate debts, face pressure to plead guilty just to get out, and lack the resources to mount effective defenses. Prosecutors exploit this vulnerability, offering plea deals to people who might beat charges at trial but cannot afford to wait months in jail for their day in court.
Racial disparities compound economic discrimination. In large urban areas, Black defendants face 25% higher likelihood of pretrial detention than white defendants even controlling for charges and criminal history. Bail amounts average $14,376 higher for Black defendants in jurisdictions like Miami and Philadelphia. Georgia’s system thus operates as a mechanism for extracting wealth from Black families—not as punishment for crime, but as the price of pretrial freedom for loved ones presumed innocent.
Despite the Supreme Court ruling in Bearden v. Georgia (1983) that detaining people for poverty violates the Constitution, judges rarely check defendants’ economic status before setting bail, and most defendants lack lawyers to assert these protections. The violation of constitutional rights occurs thousands of times daily in Georgia courtrooms, normalized as routine procedure rather than recognized as the wealth-based detention it represents.
Fines and Fees: Government-Sanctioned Loan Sharking
If cash bail criminalizes poverty at the pretrial stage, Georgia’s fines and fees system ensures the extraction continues through conviction and beyond. Incarcerated Georgians and their families paid more than $10 million annually in fees to the Georgia Department of Corrections each year from 2021-2023—fees for basic necessities, for phone calls to family, for medical care, for mere existence within the system.
Traffic offense fines can reach $1,000 for minor violations in Georgia. For someone earning the median pre-incarceration income of $15,109, that represents nearly a month’s gross pay—before accounting for rent, food, utilities, or any other expenses. The impossibility of payment is built into the system’s design.
Washington State data illustrate how these debts metastasize through compound interest and fees. Average legal financial obligations of $1,347 balloon through 12% annual interest rates plus $100 annual surcharges, causing amounts to double and triple when initial payment proves impossible. North Carolina charges defendants $60 before judges even consider appointing lawyers, plus hourly fees for appointed counsel, $10 daily for pretrial jail detention, and $600 for state crime lab testing—fees judges often cannot legally waive even when defendants clearly cannot pay.
The consequences of non-payment create new cycles of criminalization. Forty-four states suspend driver’s licenses for unpaid court debt, creating impossible situations where suspended licenses prevent employment necessary to pay fines, while driving with suspended licenses out of economic necessity generates new citations, more fines, and arrest warrants. Georgia documented this spiral in seven rural counties where motor vehicle and traffic charges became the most frequent reason for jail bookings—often stemming directly from unpaid fines leading to suspended licenses.
The Georgia Budget and Policy Institute’s comprehensive analysis found that Georgia’s fines and fees system operates as “regressive revenue that perpetuates poverty,” extracting wealth from those least able to pay while providing perverse fiscal incentives for localities to maximize collections. At least 26 Georgia jurisdictions generate revenue through fines and fees practices at rates 20 times higher than national averages—not because their residents commit more crimes, but because they’ve weaponized their criminal legal systems for wealth extraction.
This isn’t taxation—it’s criminalization. The difference matters: taxes apply universally based on ability to pay; criminal fines and fees target the poor through police practices, court procedures, and enforcement mechanisms that would never be tolerated if applied to wealthy communities. The result is a system where poverty itself becomes a crime, punishable by further impoverishment through an endless cycle of fees, interest, penalties, and ultimately, incarceration.
The Economic Logic: Why Georgia Criminalizes Poverty
Georgia’s approach to criminal justice makes perfect sense once you understand the economic incentives. The state operates the nation’s most aggressive incarceration system not despite its costs, but because of its benefits—not to the public, but to specific interests that profit from mass incarceration.
Localities generate revenue through fines and fees while prison labor provides free work for public projects and state operations. Private corporations profit from commissary sales, telecommunications services, and other contracts worth hundreds of millions annually. The Georgia Department of Corrections operates on a $1.5 billion annual budget while extracting additional revenue from prisoners and their families through fees, commissary markups, and kickbacks from private contractors.
The arithmetic is simple: criminalizing poverty produces a large, captive population that can be economically exploited in ways that would be illegal if applied to anyone with resources to fight back. Poor people cannot afford lawyers to challenge unconstitutional bail practices. Poor families cannot organize political opposition to commissary price gouging. Poor communities cannot mount effective resistance to fines and fees extraction when survival requires all available resources.
The system functions exactly as designed—not to reduce crime or promote public safety, but to extract maximum economic value from predominantly Black and poor populations while maintaining social control through criminalization. Georgia has perfected this model with world-leading efficiency.
Inside the Machine: What Happens Next
This investigation has examined how poverty outside prison drives people into Georgia’s criminal justice system through the mathematically precise targeting of poor communities, the weaponization of cash bail and court debt, and the economic incentives that make poverty itself profitable to criminalize.
But incarceration doesn’t end the exploitation—it intensifies it. Once inside Georgia’s prisons, those trapped by external poverty face a regime of internal poverty deliberately engineered to extract additional wealth while generating the violence that has made Georgia’s prison system the subject of federal investigation.
In our next investigation, we’ll document how Georgia’s policy of paying prisoners absolutely nothing for their labor, combined with inadequate nutrition and systematic price gouging, creates a survival crisis that forces inmates into underground economies that generate the violence Georgia officials claim to be addressing. The Department of Justice found 142 homicides in Georgia prisons from 2018-2023, with a 95.8% increase between the first and second three-year periods. That violence isn’t random—it’s the predictable consequence of deliberate policies that criminalize survival itself.
The poverty-to-prison pipeline doesn’t end at the prison gate. It continues through a system of forced criminality that ensures those who enter as products of poverty leave as experts in it—if they leave at all.
About This Investigation
This article is the first in a two-part series examining poverty as the driving force behind both mass incarceration and prison violence in Georgia. Part two, “Forced Criminality: Inside Georgia’s Prison Violence Factory,” will document how zero wages, starvation rations, and systematic price gouging create an impossible equation where survival itself requires breaking rules—forcing prisoners into underground economies that generate the violence the DOJ documented with 142 homicides from 2018-2023—a crisis that accelerated to 100 homicides in 2024 alone, according to GPS documentation.
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Continue the Investigation:
Part two of this investigation reveals how Georgia’s no-bid commissary contract extracts $18.7 million annually from families through 300-1,000% markups on expired products while paying inmates zero wages for their labor.
Punishment for Profit: How Georgia’s Justice System Makes Millions
In Georgia, being poor, mentally ill, or struggling with addiction isn’t just hard—it’s a crime. Instead of offering help, the justice system funnels thousands into prison for minor offenses while private companies and politicians profit.
The Felon Train: How Georgia Turns Citizens into Convicts
One in seven adults in Georgia is a felon. Overcharging, forced plea deals, probation traps, and a parole board that answers to no one—it’s all designed to keep Georgia’s prisons full and its citizens powerless.
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: You WILL be Found Guilty
With the highest felony conviction rate in the nation, 1 out of every 7 adults in Georgia are convicted felons. This isn’t just a statistic—it’s a warning sign that something is terribly wrong with Georgia’s justice system.
The First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All The Lawyers
Criminal defense attorneys demand massive upfront payments with no refunds. Judges and district attorneys profit from the same system they claim to regulate. Is Georgia’s legal system about justice, or is it a business designed to keep itself in power?
Georgia Prisoners’ Speak is an independent publication dedicated to exposing conditions in Georgia’s prison system through rigorous investigative journalism. Support our work at gps.press.
Complete Source List
FEDERAL/GOVERNMENT SOURCES:
Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Household Poverty and Nonfatal Violent Victimization, 2008-2012,” NCJ 248384, November 2014, https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/hpnvv0812.pdf
Office of Justice Programs, “Crime Rates and Poverty – A Reexamination,” https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/crime-rates-and-poverty-reexamination
U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, “Investigation of Georgia Prisons,” October 1, 2024, https://www.justice.gov/crt/case-document/file/1607991/download
U.S. Department of Justice, “Report and Recommendations Concerning the Use of Restrictive Housing,” Office of the Deputy Attorney General, 2016
U.S. Department of Justice Office of Inspector General, “Challenge 1: The Ongoing Crisis Facing the Federal Corrections System,” 2024
Georgia Department of Corrections, Annual Statistical Reports, http://www.dcor.state.ga.us/Research/Annual
RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS:
Brookings Institution, “Work and Opportunity Before and After Incarceration,” March 2018, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/es_20180314_looneyincarceration_final.pdf
Brookings Institution, “The Unequal Burden of Crime and Incarceration on America’s Poor,” https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-unequal-burden-of-crime-and-incarceration-on-americas-poor/
Brennan Center for Justice, “Debunking Myths About Bail Reform and Crime,” https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/debunking-myths-about-bail-reform-and-crime
Brennan Center for Justice, “How Cash Bail Works,” https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/how-cash-bail-works
Brennan Center for Justice, “How Atrocious Prison Conditions Make Us All Less Safe,” 2020
Vera Institute of Justice, “Incarceration Trends in Georgia,” https://trends.vera.org/state/ga/
Prison Policy Initiative, “Detaining the Poor: How money bail perpetuates an endless cycle of poverty and jail time,” May 2016, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/incomejails.html
Prison Policy Initiative, “Georgia profile,” https://www.prisonpolicy.org/profiles/GA.html
Prison Policy Initiative, “Following the Money of Mass Incarceration,” 2017
Prison Policy Initiative, “The Company Store: A Deeper Look at Prison Commissaries,” 2018
Prison Policy Initiative, “Research Roundup: Incarceration can cause lasting damage to mental health,” 2021
Prison Policy Initiative, “How much do incarcerated people earn in each state?” 2017
GEORGIA-SPECIFIC:
Georgia Budget & Policy Institute, “Regressive Revenue Perpetuates Poverty: Why Georgia’s Fines and Fees Need Immediate Reform,” 2022, https://gbpi.org/regressive-revenue-perpetuates-poverty-why-georgias-fines-and-fees-need-immediate-reform/
Georgia Budget & Policy Institute, “Georgia Criminal Legal Systems Budget Primer for State Fiscal Year 2024,” https://gbpi.org/georgia-criminal-legal-systems-budget-primer-for-state-fiscal-year-2024/
Georgia Budget & Policy Institute, Various reports on prison labor and economic exploitation, 2022-2024
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Investigative series on Georgia prisons, contraband, and exploitation, 2022-2024
Southern Center for Human Rights, Georgia prison conditions documentation and advocacy
ADVOCACY ORGANIZATIONS:
ACLU, “How Georgia’s Probation System Squeezes the Poor and Feeds Mass Incarceration,” https://www.aclu.org/news/criminal-law-reform/how-georgias-probation-system-squeezes-poor-and-feeds-mass-incarceration
ACLU, “Captive Labor: Exploitation of Incarcerated Workers,” 2022
Fair and Just Prosecution, “Addressing the Poverty Penalty and Bail Reform,” https://fairandjustprosecution.org/issues/addressing-the-poverty-penalty-and-bail-reform/
Human Rights Watch, “The Need to Abolish Extortionate Criminal Fines and Fees,” October 2020, https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/10/01/need-abolish-extortionate-criminal-fines-and-fees
Human Rights Watch, “Prison Conditions in the United States,” 1991
Fines and Fees Justice Center, “The Price of Justice: Fines, Fees and the Criminalization of Poverty,” https://finesandfeesjusticecenter.org/
Worth Rises, “The Prison Industry: Mapping Private Sector Players,” Corporate Database, 2020
Worth Rises/Edgeworth Economics, “Cost-Benefit Analysis: Ending Slavery in Prisons,” 2024
Worth Rises, “#EndTheException Campaign,” materials and research
Economic Policy Institute, “Forced Prison Labor in the ‘Land of the Free,’” 2024-2025
Equal Justice Initiative, Historical research on convict leasing, chain gangs, and modern slavery
Equal Justice Initiative, Mass incarceration advocacy and documentation
ACADEMIC:
Illinois Wesleyan University, “How are violent crime rates in U.S. cities affected by poverty?” 2020, https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1530&context=parkplace
ScienceDirect, “Economic correlates of crime: An empirical test in Houston,” 2024, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047235224001557
PsyPost, “The combination of poverty and inequality predict homicide rates in the United States,” https://www.psypost.org/the-combination-of-poverty-and-inequality-predict-homicide-rates-in-the-united-states/
University of Wisconsin IRP, “Connections Among Poverty, Incarceration, and Inequality,” https://www.irp.wisc.edu/resource/connections-among-poverty-incarceration-and-inequality/
BYU Ballard Brief, “Effects of Chronic Poverty on Youth in the United States,” https://ballardbrief.byu.edu/issue-briefs/effects-of-chronic-poverty-on-youth-in-the-united-states
Journal of Human Resources, “Minimum Wage, EITC, and Criminal Recidivism,” 2023
Haney, Craig, “The Psychological Impact of Incarceration: Implications for Post-Prison Adjustment,” Report for U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, ASPE, 2001
Lankenau, S., “Smoke ’Em If You Got ’Em: Cigarette Black Markets in U.S. Prisons and Jails,” Journal of Prison & Jail Health, PMC2117377, 2001
Skarbek, David, “Prison gangs, norms, and organizations,” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Volume 82, 2012
Baranyi, G. et al., “The impact of imprisonment on individuals’ mental health and society reintegration,” BMC Psychology, Volume 11, Article 252, 2023
Sykes, Gresham M., “The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison,” Princeton University Press, 1958
Clemmer, Donald, “The Prison Community,” New York: Rinehart, 1940/1958
Blackmon, Douglas A., “Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II,” Pulitzer Prize, 2009
LeFlouria, Talitha, “Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South”
Oshinsky, David, “Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice”
Alexander, Michelle, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”
University of Notre Dame Fresh Writing, “Institutionalized: The Ever-Current Condition of the Formerly Incarcerated”
Columbia Legal Services, “Overcharged: Coerced labor, low pay, and high costs in Washington’s prisons,” 2024
Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, “How better access to mental health care can reduce crime,” 2020
Council of Economic Advisors, “Economic Perspectives on Incarceration and the Criminal Justice System,” White House Archives, 2016
INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM:
The Appeal, “Locked In, Priced Out: Prison Commissary Investigation,” April 2024
Filter Magazine, Georgia prison commissary investigations, 2024-2025
Prison Legal News, Commissary markups report, January 2025
Prism Reports, Prison telecom investigation, 2024
Grady Newsource (UGA), Prison phone fees investigation
Reform Georgia, Platform documents on telecommunications exploitation
The Marshall Project, Various prison economics reporting
Georgia Recorder, Commissary inflation reporting
NPR/Marshall Project, Prison economics collaborations
PBS, “Slavery by Another Name” documentary
Corrections1.com, Georgia prison labor reporting, 2011
DOCUMENTARY:
DuVernay, Ava, “13th,” Netflix documentary, 2016
ADDITIONAL SOURCES:
New Georgia Encyclopedia, Convict lease system comprehensive documentation
Georgia Archives, Convict labor photographs and historical records
National Correctional Industries Association, Recidivism data for correctional industries participants
FWD.us, “Every Second: Impact on Families,” Mass incarceration family costs study, 2024
Walk Free organization, Reports on forced labor and prison slavery
International Labour Organization, “Forced Labour Convention,” 1930
United Nations, “Basic Principles for Treatment of Prisoners”
Congressional bills: S.516 Fair Wages for Incarcerated Workers Act (118th Congress)
State legislative records: New York S.439, S.1208; California AB 248, ACA 8/Proposition 6; Nevada SB 187; Colorado SB22-50; Connecticut HB 5033
National Institute of Corrections, Georgia prison data 2019
Get Safe and Sound, State crime rate comparisons, 2025
Open Cash Advance, Poverty and crime correlations by state, 2021
History Channel, 13th Amendment and convict leasing historical documentation
Northwestern Law Review, 13th Amendment legal analysis
Cambridge Core, International Labor and Working-Class History journal
American Journal of Public Health, “Mental Health of Prisoners,” 2014
The Lancet Psychiatry, Fazel et al., “Mental health of prisoners,” 2016
SAGE Journals, Criminology research on deprivation theory
Various academic journals: Journal of Criminal Justice, Criminology & Public Policy, Prison Journal, Incarceration journal