Shedding Light on the Darkness

As attention swarms this way, there will also be scrutiny. We may not want it, but we must be ready to talk about things that are uncomfortable to us. In this month in which we give gifts to friends and family and show charity to the less privileged, many of whom are incarcerated, we should reflect on the deterioration of our correctional system – prisons in particular – and what efforts we can make to help those who are incarcerated, especially in inner cities and rural counties.

Regardless how you feel about immigration, detention and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the relentless ads attempting to recruit new ICE officers in Georgia – promising $50,000 bonuses – represent a poaching of our current incarceration and public safety workforce just as it has stabilized from the COVID-19 years, and the efforts to hire 10,000 more deportation officers threaten to roll back the progress in rebuilding trust between law enforcement and their communities.

As public safety entities have done their best to rebound, Georgia’s incarceration system, which houses about 50,000 and employs about 9,000, remains in crisis. Notorious even before the federal administration began funding the nation’s largest deportation holding center near Folkston, we have seen a terrible history of dysfunctional incarceration throughout the state and a familiar pattern of deaths, staff vacancies and low worker morale at prisons and correctional facilities serving surrounding communities. In a perpetual cycle, overcrowded prisons strain communities by attracting payday lenders and other predatory entities. Furthermore, there is a shortage of public defenders to provide for due process and the real possibility that these centers are unnecessarily burdened with innocents.

While the state funded a whopping $600 million to increase new hires in the prison system in the 2025-26 budget, a study by an independent consulting team from Guidehouse Inc., The Moss Group and Carter Goble Lee appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp to do an in-depth assessment of Georgia’s prison system revealed more would be needed to bring the state out of crisis mode. It highlighted staffing shortages of 20% or 30% at many prisons, and a rise in deaths and homicides. More chilling, it also showed that many prisons are run by the gangs within, creating an overflow of gang activity in nearby communities and beyond.

How do gangbusters even approach these “gang factory” communities without prison reforms in place? It is like putting the cart before the horse, and you can say the same thing about deporting and arresting illegal immigrants without first reforming the system that obscures or denies their path to citizenship, making them criminals in the first place. When you look at the causes of financial instability that often lead to crime, it can be paperwork, not devious tendencies, that trap people in the system. Many people who are eligible for assistance aren’t aware of it or are intimidated by complex application processes.

Georgia’s continued success no longer feels assured. The bloated ICE facility in Folkston is already an embarrassment with its terrible conditions (echoing statewide prisons) exposed to the world. Closer to home, it casts a light on how virtually any immigrant can be rounded up, arrested and deported without due process. The way the Supreme Court is going, it may be enough to be suspected of being an immigrant, or harboring sympathies. It could be dissidents locked up here. A far cry from the cradle of civil and human rights; more like the gulag.

You can never build enough prisons. You will always have crime as long as there are places where it is the only means of survival. If you have faith – as many of us do, especially this month – that people are indeed good at heart, it becomes clearer to see that a system that only delivers for some and not others is perpetuating the crime it is all too convenient to blame on the criminals. It is harder to look in the mirror, but not impossible.

During this month of reflection, consider any impact you can have on those who have found themselves on the wrong side of the law, as well as on a system that often keeps them there. 

Ben Young is Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Georgia Trend. |  byoung@georgiatrend.com