FacingSouth reports on
TURNING THE LOCK-EM-UP TIDE: State prison populations decline for first time since 1972:

Locking people up in jails and prisons is expensive. State officials know this all too well: In a country that puts more people behind bars than any other — the U.S. has less than 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of its prisoners — over 91% of the incarcerated are under state or local supervision.

The lock-’em-up approach to criminal justice that took off in the 1980s
and ’90s may have helped a few political careers, but it has crushed state
budgets: By 2008, states
were spending over $50 billion a year on
incarceration.

What else can you do?

But as Facing South has been reporting (see here
and here),
the Great Recession helped change that, pushing states to
explore
less expensive (and often more effective) options
like alternative sentences for non-violent offenders and
streamlining probation and parole.

Today, the Pew
Center has released a report showing the shift in approach is bearing
fruit: For the first time in 38 years, state prison populations are
in decline.

Georgia, on the other hand, increased its prison population by 1.6%.
Maybe instead of making massive cuts in education, Georgia could do
something about the prison problem.