Let Them Go Home: Georgia Spends Its Most Expensive Dollars on the People Least Likely to Reoffend

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Georgia is spending $70,000 a year to incarcerate a 65-year-old man who, according to every credible study on aging and crime, has less than a 4% chance of committing another offense. That same $70,000 could fund a teacher’s salary in a Title I school. It could pay for a year of community mental health services for dozens of at-risk youth. It could house a returning citizen in transitional housing for three years. Instead, it pays for a prison bed, a mounting stack of medical bills, and the slow warehousing of a human being who poses virtually no threat to anyone.

This is not an abstraction. As of March 2026, Georgia holds 12,958 people aged 50 and older in its prisons — more than one in four of the entire incarcerated population. 1 Among them are 5,663 people over 60 and 8,026 people serving life sentences with an average age of 48.3 years. 2 These are the most expensive people in the system and, by every available measure, the least dangerous. Yet Georgia keeps them locked up while its prisons collapse around the people who remain inside.

The state has poured more than $700 million in new corrections spending into its prison system since FY2022 — a 44% budget increase in four years — and every measurable outcome has gotten worse. 3 Homicides have surged. Staffing has collapsed. The U.S. Department of Justice found constitutional violations. 4 The question is no longer whether Georgia can afford to release its aging prisoners. The question is whether Georgia can afford not to — and what that money could do instead.

The Science Is Settled: People Age Out of Crime

The relationship between age and criminal behavior is one of the most established findings in all of criminology. It is not debated. Criminal activity peaks in late adolescence and early adulthood, then declines steeply and consistently with age. This pattern holds across every offense type, including violent crime.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission’s landmark 2017 study tracked 25,431 federal offenders released in 2005 over eight years. The findings were unambiguous:

  • People released before age 21 were rearrested at a rate of 67.6%
  • People released between 21 and 29 were rearrested at rates between 53% and 63%
  • People released at age 60 or older were rearrested at a rate of just 13.4%
  • For those 60 and older with minimal criminal history, the rearrest rate fell to 11.3%

5

The pattern only strengthens with further age. Nationwide, just 4% of people over 65 who are released from prison return for new convictions. Less than 2% of people aged 55 and older who served time for violent offenses return to prison for new crimes. 6 In New York State, less than 1% of parolees over 65 were returned to prison for a new conviction within three years. 7

A 60-year-old who committed a crime at age 25 is a fundamentally different person. The science does not suggest this. It proves it.

Georgia’s own parole data reinforces this reality. The 72% successful completion rate for Georgia parolees in FY2024 exceeded the national average of approximately 60%. 8 The people the state does release tend to succeed — the problem is that the state releases almost no one.

Georgia’s Aging Population: The Numbers

Georgia’s prison system holds 52,780 people in total GDC custody as of March 14, 2026 — spread across state prisons (35,010), private prisons (8,066), county prisons (4,084), transitional centers (2,751), and probation facilities (2,868) — with another 2,360 convicted people waiting in county jails for transfer into the system. 9 Here is who they are by age:

  • Under 20: 302 people (0.59%)
  • Ages 20-29: 9,666 people (18.84%)
  • Ages 30-39: 15,660 people (30.53%)
  • Ages 40-49: 12,714 people (24.78%)
  • Ages 50-59: 7,295 people (14.22%)
  • Age 60 and over: 5,663 people (11.04%)

More than one in four people in Georgia’s prisons — 25.26% — is over the age of 50. The 8,026 people serving life sentences have an average age of 48.3 years. Another 2,336 people serve life without parole at an average age of 44.9 years. 1

These numbers did not arrive by accident. They are the direct product of policy choices — specifically, the collapse of Georgia’s parole system. In 1993, Georgia’s parole rate stood at 69.9%. By 2025, it had fallen to 37.5%. 10 For lifers, the rate is catastrophically lower: in FY2024, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles considered 2,046 life sentence cases and granted parole to just 93 — a 4.5% approval rate. 11 The average lifer now serves 31 years before release, up from 12.5 years in the early 1990s. 12

Someone convicted at 25 under today’s parole regime will not walk out of a Georgia prison until age 56 — emerging with decades of institutional trauma, chronic health conditions, and no work history. And the data shows they were almost certainly safe to release years or even decades earlier.

The Cost of Warehousing the Elderly

Georgia taxpayers are paying a staggering premium to incarcerate people who pose minimal risk. The Georgia Department of Corrections’ own aging inmate population report documents a 9-to-1 medical cost ratio: the state spends $8,500 per year on medical care for prisoners over 65, compared to $950 per year for younger inmates. 13 National studies put the full cost of incarcerating an elderly prisoner at $60,000 to $70,000 per year — roughly double to triple the average cost for younger prisoners. 14

Consider the math at scale:

The GDC’s health appropriation for Amended FY2026 is $417.3 million — nearly a quarter of the total $1.8 billion corrections budget. 15 The aging population consumes a vastly disproportionate share of that spending. Nearly 32% of people in Georgia’s prisons have documented chronic illnesses requiring ongoing management. Five people are currently classified as terminally ill with less than six months to live. 1 The longer Georgia holds these individuals, the more their medical costs escalate — and the less money is available for everything else.

Meanwhile, parole supervision costs Georgia just $3.13 per person per day, compared to $68.51 per day for incarceration — a 22-to-1 ratio. 16 In FY2024 alone, the Parole Board’s releases produced an estimated $343 million in cost avoidance for the state. 8 Imagine what that number would look like if Georgia released even a fraction of the elderly prisoners it currently warehouses.

Stolen From the Future: What the Money Could Buy

Every dollar Georgia spends on incarcerating a 60-year-old who will never reoffend is a dollar that does not go to the things that actually reduce crime, improve public safety, and break the cycle of incarceration. The opportunity cost is not theoretical — it is measurable and devastating.

For People Still Inside

Georgia’s prisons are in crisis because they are overcrowded and understaffed. The system holds more than 52,000 people with roughly 3,500 active correctional officers — a ratio of approximately 1:15, far above the federal standard of 1:8 to 1:10. First-year CO turnover stands at 82.7%. 17 Releasing even 3,000 elderly prisoners would improve the staffing ratio and reduce the violence, chaos, and death that define daily life in Georgia’s prisons. It would make the system safer for the younger people who remain — the ones who will eventually return to communities and whose rehabilitation actually matters for public safety.

The money saved could fund rehabilitation and education programs that Georgia has systematically defunded. The GDC operates at a budget of $1.8 billion per year, yet the overwhelming majority goes to security, healthcare, and infrastructure — not to the vocational training, substance abuse treatment, educational programming, and cognitive behavioral therapy that research consistently identifies as the most effective tools for reducing recidivism. 18

For Communities Outside

The downstream effects reach far beyond prison walls. Georgia’s communities — particularly the rural and predominantly Black communities that bear the highest incarceration burden — are starved of the resources that prevent crime in the first place. Schools in these communities are underfunded. Mental health services are scarce. Substance abuse treatment is inaccessible. Workforce development programs are skeletal.

Releasing 2,000 elderly prisoners at an estimated savings of $120 to $140 million annually would fund transformative community investments:

  • Approximately 1,400 teacher positions in high-need schools
  • Community mental health centers serving thousands of at-risk youth
  • Evidence-based violence interruption programs in the cities that need them most
  • Transitional housing and reentry services that reduce recidivism for the people who are released
  • Substance abuse treatment beds that divert people from the criminal legal system entirely

For the Next Generation

The most important investment Georgia is not making is the one that would keep the next generation out of prison entirely. The research on this is as clear as the age-crime curve: early childhood education, family economic stability, mental health access, and community-based youth programs are the most powerful predictors of whether a young person will enter the criminal legal system.

Georgia’s juvenile justice system has already proven this works. Nationwide, juvenile confinement dropped 75% from its 2000 peak with no increase in youth crime. 19 The Annie E. Casey Foundation found no correlation between juvenile confinement rates and violent youth crime. The states that reduced youth confinement the most saw the greatest declines in juvenile violent crime.

Georgia could choose to follow this evidence. Instead, it chooses to spend $70,000 a year on a 65-year-old man who poses no danger to anyone.

The National Evidence: Decarceration Does Not Increase Crime

Georgia’s leaders may resist releasing aging prisoners out of political fear. But the evidence from across the country — and across the political spectrum — is unambiguous: states that have reduced their prison populations have not seen crime increase. In most cases, crime has continued to decline.

The United States reduced its total prison population by 25% between 2009 and 2021. During that same period, violent crime rates fell 53% below their 1991 peak and property crime rates fell 66%. 20

New York cut its prison population in half between 1999 and 2023 while violent crime fell 28%, closing more than a dozen prisons and saving tens of millions. 21

New Jersey holds 37% fewer people in state prisons than it did in 2019 — the largest reduction of any state — while violent crime fell 30% and property crime fell 31%. 21

California reduced its prison population by over 40,000 people following the Supreme Court’s order in Brown v. Plata. Researchers found no evidence that the reduction caused increases in violent crime. 22

Five politically diverse states — Connecticut, Michigan, Mississippi, Rhode Island, and South Carolina — reduced prison populations by 14-25% through the Justice Reinvestment Initiative, the same framework Georgia used successfully under Governor Deal before abandoning it. All five achieved reductions without adverse public safety effects. 23

The Brennan Center for Justice analyzed over 40 years of data from 50 states and concluded that since 2000, increased incarceration has had a negligible effect on crime. Other factors — policing strategies, economic changes, and demographic shifts — played far larger roles in the crime decline. 24

Georgia Knows Better — It Did Better

This is not foreign territory for Georgia. Under Governor Nathan Deal, a conservative Republican, Georgia enacted evidence-based criminal justice reforms through the Council on Criminal Justice Reform between 2012 and 2017. SB 174 and SB 105 shortened probation terms, expanded alternatives to incarceration, and reduced the prison population — while saving an estimated $264 million and reinvesting $57 million in recidivism reduction programs. Georgia was nationally recognized as a model for bipartisan reform. 25

That model was abandoned under Governor Kemp. Every trend line reversed. The prison population grew. Staffing collapsed. Violence surged. And the state responded not with evidence-based reform but with the largest corrections spending increase in state history — $634 million in new spending approved in 2025 alone — with zero dollars allocated to parole reform, zero dollars for expanded release mechanisms, and zero accountability for outcomes. 26

The Southern Center for Human Rights put it plainly: “Pouring more money into a system without implementing solutions that prioritize decarceration is merely putting a Band-Aid on the problem.”

What Georgia Should Do

The evidence base is clear. The policy mechanisms are tested. What Georgia lacks is political will.

Presumptive Parole for People 55 and Older

Georgia should establish automatic parole eligibility review for all prisoners aged 55 and older who have served their minimum sentence, with a presumption of release unless the Board can articulate specific, documented public safety reasons for denial. The Board already has the legal authority to release any prisoner over age 62, including those sentenced to life without parole. It exercises this authority almost never. The recidivism data demands that it start.

Restore the Parole System

The collapse of Georgia’s parole rate from nearly 70% in 1993 to 37.5% today — and under 5% for lifers — is not the result of evidence. It is the result of political fear. The Guidehouse consultants hired by Governor Kemp specifically identified the 38% decline in parole releases between 2019 and 2023 as contributing to population pressure and the violence crisis. Restoring parole rates even to 2019 levels would release several thousand additional people annually.

Expand Compassionate and Medical Release

Georgia should broaden eligibility for compassionate release to include terminal illness, serious chronic conditions, and advanced age. The current process is so slow and restrictive that people die before their applications are processed. Five people in GDC custody are currently classified as terminally ill with less than six months to live — a number that almost certainly undercounts the reality.

Reinvest Every Dollar Saved

This is the critical step. Decarceration without reinvestment is a half-measure. Every dollar saved by releasing elderly, low-risk prisoners must be reinvested in three areas:

  • Inside the prisons: Staff salary increases to close the competitive gap, facility repairs, rehabilitation and educational programming for younger prisoners who will return to communities
  • Reentry support: Transitional housing, employment assistance, healthcare continuity, and community supervision that actually works
  • Community prevention: Early childhood education, mental health services, substance abuse treatment, violence interruption programs, and workforce development in the communities most affected by incarceration

The Moral Case

Behind every statistic in this article is a person. A 62-year-old grandfather who has served 30 years and wants to meet grandchildren he has only seen in photographs. A 58-year-old woman whose chronic conditions are being managed by a prison healthcare system that the DOJ found violates constitutional standards. A 70-year-old veteran whose parole has been denied eight times despite decades of clean disciplinary records.

These are not abstractions. GPS’s own analysis shows that 98.9% of lifers currently on parole were born before 1980, with an average age of 63.9 years. 11 They aged out of crime decades ago. The state knows this. The data proves it. And yet Georgia continues to spend its most expensive incarceration dollars on the people who need incarceration least — while the young people still inside are denied the programming, staffing, and safe conditions they need to have any chance at a different life.

The choice is not between public safety and releasing elderly prisoners. The evidence shows those goals are aligned. Every credible study, every state-level experiment, every data point on the age-crime curve leads to the same conclusion: letting these people go home does not make Georgia less safe. It makes Georgia more just, more fiscally responsible, and — by freeing resources for the investments that actually prevent crime — genuinely safer.

Georgia can choose to follow the evidence. Or it can continue spending $70,000 a year per person to warehouse the elderly while its prisons burn and its communities starve. The data has been clear for decades. The only missing ingredient is courage.

Call to Action: What You Can Do

Georgia is spending $70,000 a year on prisoners with a 4% reoffending rate while 5,663 people over 60 sit in cells that cost more than teacher salaries. If you just read about elderly people dying in prison for crimes committed decades ago, the least you can do is share it.

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Awareness without action changes nothing. Here’s how you can help push for accountability and real reform:

Join the GPS Advocacy Network — Sign up at https://gps.press/become-an-advocate/ and we’ll advocate on your behalf every week. GPS identifies your state legislators, crafts personalized letters on the most pressing prison issues, and sends them directly to the representatives who represent you. You receive a copy of every letter. It takes two minutes to sign up — we handle the rest.

Tell My Story — Are you or a loved one affected by Georgia’s prison system? GPS publishes first-person accounts from incarcerated people and their families. Submit your story at https://gps.press/category/tellmystory/ and help the world understand what’s really happening behind the walls.

Contact Your Representatives — Your state legislators control GDC’s budget, oversight, and the laws that created these failures. Find your Georgia legislators at https://gps.press/find-your-legislator/ or call Governor Kemp at (404) 656-1776 or the GDC Commissioner at (478) 992-5246.

Demand Media Coverage — Contact newsrooms at the AJC, local TV stations, and national criminal justice outlets. More coverage means more pressure.

Amplify on Social Media — Share this article and tag @GovKemp, @GDC_Georgia, and your local representatives. Use #GAPrisons, #PrisonReform, #GeorgiaPrisonerSpeak.

File Public Records Requests — Georgia’s Open Records Act gives every citizen the right to request incident reports, death records, staffing data, medical logs, and financial documents at https://georgiadcor.govqa.us/WEBAPP/_rs/SupportHome.aspx.

Attend Public Meetings — The Georgia Board of Corrections and legislative committees hold public meetings. Your presence is noticed.

Contact the Department of Justice — File civil rights complaints at https://civilrights.justice.gov. Federal oversight has forced abusive systems to change before.

Support Organizations Doing This Work — Donate to or volunteer with Georgia-based prison reform groups fighting for change on the ground.

Vote — Research candidates’ positions on criminal justice. Primary elections often determine outcomes in Georgia.

Contact GPS — If you have information about conditions inside Georgia’s prisons, reach us securely at GPS.press.

Further Reading

The Illusion of Parole

A comprehensive analysis of Georgia’s parole system, documenting how the collapse of parole rates from 70% to under 5% for lifers created the population crisis driving every failure in the system.

Decarceration IS Inevitable — Georgia Can Choose How, or Let the Courts Decide

GPS’s foundational argument that Georgia’s prison population must come down, either through proactive policy reform or through the federal courts — with the evidence showing voluntary reform produces far better outcomes.

$700 Million More — And Nothing to Show for It

An accountability analysis of Georgia’s historic corrections spending infusion, documenting how $700 million in new spending produced worsening outcomes across every measurable category.

The Reform That Worked — and the Governor Who Killed It

How Governor Deal’s evidence-based criminal justice reforms reduced Georgia’s prison population, saved $264 million, and were nationally recognized as a model — before Governor Kemp abandoned the framework.

Truth in Sentencing Broke Parole. Georgia Is Paying the Price.

An investigation into how Truth in Sentencing policies destroyed Georgia’s functioning parole system and created the conditions for overcrowding, violence, and the staffing collapse.

Brown v. Plata: A Legal Roadmap for Georgia’s Prison Crisis

An analysis of the Supreme Court case that ordered California to reduce its prison population, and what it means for Georgia as the DOJ investigation moves toward potential enforcement.

Research Explainers

GPS Research Explainers distill complex data and legal research into accessible briefings. These explainers are directly relevant to the issues covered in this article:

The Case for Reducing Georgia’s Prison Population: What the Evidence Actually Shows

A data-driven explainer drawing on the GPS Research Library’s decarceration evidence base, covering the age-crime curve, state case studies, and the fiscal case for reducing Georgia’s prison population.

Georgia Spent $700 Million More on Prisons. Every Outcome Got Worse.

A research explainer documenting how Georgia’s $634 million corrections spending infusion failed to produce measurable improvements in safety, staffing, or conditions — and what the evidence says should have been done instead.

Explore the Data

GPS makes GDC statistics accessible to the public through several resources:

How to Use GPS Data with AI Tools (https://gps.press/how-to-use-gps-data-with-ai-tools/)

A step-by-step guide showing researchers, advocates, families, and journalists how to use GPS’s machine-readable data pages with AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini to analyze Georgia prison conditions, statistics, and policy.

Contact GPS at media@gps.press for access to underlying datasets used in this analysis.

About Georgia Prisoners’ Speak (GPS)

Georgia Prisoners’ Speak (GPS) is a nonprofit investigative newsroom built in partnership with incarcerated reporters, families, advocates, and data analysts. Operating independently from the Georgia Department of Corrections, GPS documents the truth the state refuses to acknowledge: extreme violence, fatal medical neglect, gang-controlled dorms, collapsed staffing, fraudulent reporting practices, and unconstitutional conditions across Georgia’s prisons.

Through confidential reporting channels, secure communication, evidence verification, public-records requests, legislative research, and professional investigative standards, GPS provides the transparency the system lacks. Our mission is to expose abuses, protect incarcerated people, support families, and push Georgia toward meaningful reform based on human rights, evidence, and public accountability.

Every article is part of a larger fight — to end the silence, reveal the truth, and demand justice.

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Footnotes
  1. GDC Monthly Statistical Report, https://gps.press/statistics-data/ [↩][↩][↩]
  2. GDC Monthly Statistical Report – Active Lifers, https://gps.press/statistics-data/ [↩]
  3. GPS Analysis of $600M Spending Infusion, https://gps.press/700-million-more-and-nothing-to-show-for-it/ [↩]
  4. DOJ Findings Report Oct 2024, https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-finds-conditions-georgia-prisons-violate-eighth-amendment [↩]
  5. Effects of Aging on Recidivism Among Federal Offenders, https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/effects-aging-recidivism-among-federal-offenders [↩]
  6. The Aging Prison Population: Causes Costs and Consequences, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2023/08/02/aging/ [↩]
  7. Justice in Aging, https://council.nyc.gov/data/justice-in-aging/ [↩]
  8. Georgia Parole Board Annual Report FY2024, https://gps.press/the-illusion-of-parole/ [↩][↩]
  9. GDC Friday Report, https://gps.press/statistics-data/ [↩]
  10. GDC Length of Stay Calendar Year Report, https://gps.press/los-data/ [↩]
  11. GPS Parole Analysis, https://gps.press/the-illusion-of-parole/ [↩][↩]
  12. GDC Length of Stay Data, https://gps.press/los-data/ [↩]
  13. GDC Aging Inmate Population Report, https://gdc.georgia.gov/document/standing-special-analyses/standing-report-aging-inmate-population/download [↩]
  14. Costs of Incarcerating the Elderly, https://www.americanbar.org/groups/criminal_justice/resources/magazine/2024-summer/costs-incarcerating-elderly/ [↩]
  15. GDC Budget FY2026-FY2027, https://gps.press/statistics-data/ [↩]
  16. Georgia Department of Community Supervision, https://gps.press/statistics-data/ [↩]
  17. GPS Staffing Analysis, https://gps.press/statistics-data/ [↩]
  18. RAND Corporation Correctional Education Meta-Analysis, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR266.html [↩]
  19. America’s Incarceration Crossroads, https://www.sentencingproject.org/policy-brief/americas-incarceration-crossroads-reversing-progress-amid-record-low-crime-rates/ [↩]
  20. Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2025, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2025.html [↩]
  21. Fewer Prisoners Less Crime, https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/fewer-prisoners-less-crime-a-tale-of-three-states/ [↩][↩]
  22. Brown v. Plata PPIC Analysis, https://gps.press/brown-v-plata-a-legal-roadmap-for-georgias-prison-crisis/ [↩]
  23. Decarceration Strategies, https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/decarceration-strategies-how-5-states-achieved-substantial-prison-population-reductions/ [↩]
  24. What Caused the Crime Decline, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/new-jersey-increased-incarceration-had-limited-effect-reducing-crime-over [↩]
  25. GPS Analysis of Deal-era Reforms, https://gps.press/the-reform-that-worked-and-the-governor-who-killed-it/ [↩]
  26. GPS $600M Spending Analysis, https://gps.press/700-million-more-and-nothing-to-show-for-it/ [↩]

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