Research explainers formatted for legislators and policy staff.
Research shows 11.6%–15% of sexual assault convictions are wrongful. Georgia’s broken post-conviction system compounds the human and fiscal cost.
Georgia is building the nation’s first centralized prison surveillance system at a cost exceeding $150 million — distributed across budget bills in ways that prevent comprehensive legislative oversight.
Georgia extracts $164+ million annually from unpaid prison labor. A 160-year research document traces direct continuity from convict leasing to modern forced labor.
Georgia’s four-year habeas deadline costs taxpayers $105,000+ per year per wrongfully imprisoned person. Every recent Georgia exoneration exceeded the deadline. Major states impose no such limit.
Families of incarcerated people bear a $350 billion annual burden — nearly four times the $89 billion taxpayers spend on prisons. Georgia families face commissary markups up to 161% and phone kickbacks flowing into unaudited funds.
The Supreme Court ordered California to remove 46,000 people from its prisons. Georgia’s system mirrors pre-litigation California. What legislators must know about the legal, fiscal, and public safety implications.
Georgia’s Department of Corrections misclassified at least 44 deaths. Drug overdoses labeled ‘natural causes.’ No state law requires accurate public reporting. Here’s what legislators need to know.
Georgia spends $1.62B on corrections yet drugs flow freely through all 38 state prisons. At least 49 people died from overdoses in 2019–2022, and GDC misclassified at least 44 of those deaths.
Georgia has only 3 Conviction Integrity Units covering 3 of 159 counties, while wrongful imprisonment costs taxpayers $75,000/year per person in compensation liability alone.
An estimated 2,500 innocent people are imprisoned in Georgia. With 51 documented exonerations and a new $75,000/year compensation law, the fiscal and human costs demand legislative action.