The Effectiveness of Mandatory Minimum Sentences in Georgia

The State Justice Statistics (SJS) Program is designed to maintain and enhance each state's capacity to address criminal justice issues through collection and analysis of data. The SJS Program provides support to each state to coordinate and conduct statistical activities within the state, conduct research to estimate impacts of legislative and policy changes, and serve as a liaison in assisting BJS to gather data from respondent agencies within their states.

The Georgia Criminal Justice Coordinating Council's (CJCC) Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) will use SJS funds to support contractual services to assess the impact of enacted legislation related to mandatory minimum laws for conviction of serious offenses including murder, rape, armed robbery, aggravated child molestation, and voluntary manslaughter. The study will evaluate the legislation's effectiveness in reducing crime and recidivism rates of those offenders released without community supervision to follow. The analysis will focus on three main research areas: 1) Offenders who were released without any supervision (probation or parole); 2) Offenders who were released without any supervision but participated in a Corrections Transition Program; and 3) Offenders within the scope of the research but who had some supervision either through a split sentence or a sentence that was of greater length than the minimum. A detailed report outlining the major findings will be completed and made available to state policymakers to help inform decisions as they contemplate changes to Georgia's criminal justice system.

CA/NCF