Yesterday, Douglas County learned that Governor Deal is appointing someone to the vacant District Attorney seat in Douglas County. The seat was opened due to the appointment of Brian Fortner, the former elected District Attorney, to an open State Court Judge seat. The Governor emailed a statement which included in part, “The governor looks forward
“Unless we provide the appropriate tools of supervision that facilitate a successful reentry into society, history has shown that offenders simply return to the prison population. Right now in Georgia, nearly one in three leaving our prisons are reconvicted within three years. We must shut this revolving door! This is something we can do and
The video of Scout Shultz, the Georgia Tech student is baffling. The actions of law enforcement should not be so predictable that suicide by cop can be an option. Is lethal force, excessive force, shoot-to-kill, the standard we want for American law enforcement? Are there other reasonable options for law enforcement in 2017? The case
When considering the number of residents in jail per 100,000 people in a state, New Mexico and Georgia are at the top of the list. The Prison Policy Initiative, a Massachusetts-based justice reform group, released its most recent study on Wednesday and the results were quite compelling for the Peach State. Whiel New Mexico had
On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee had a hearing on Marsy’s Law which would place crime victims’ rights into the constitutions of states that haven’t done so. Georgia is one of 15 states that has yet to do this with North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana passing the law overwhelmingly in November. State Senator John
As Georgia has made great strides with Governor Deal’s justice reform policies, there’s one place (well, maybe a few) that we’re still falling short. The death penalty. Georgia led the nation in executions in 2016 putting nine men to death by a lethal injection. Death penalty advocates say the increase is due to a back
This week’s Courier Herald column: A funny thing happened on the way to way to passing a constitutional amendment to fix Georgia’s failing schools. The NEA – the largest national teachers’ union – decided to send several million dollars to Georgia to kill the measure via a group called “Keep Georgia Schools Local”. Don’t let
Representative Buddy Carter was joined by many of Georgia’s congressional Republicans in deriding the Bureau of Prisons’ decision to shut down a private prison in Folkston. Carter, Senator David Perdue and Representatives Lynn Westmoreland, Tom Price, Austin Scott, Doug Collins, Jody Hice, and Rick Allen all criticized the BOP and the Department of Justice for
This week’s Courier Herald column: We’ve now clocked the fifteenth anniversary of September 11th. As is typical – and well deserved – we couple this remembrance of when terrorists killed over 3,000 on American soil with a recognition of the first responders that ran toward the danger rather than away from it. As a country,
The Albany Herald takes a look at a House Race in SW Georgia…and finds an interesting series of events as to how Democrats picked an independent to challenge the Republican with the longest record of service to the House of Representatives. The original Democratic challenger, James “I’m not Griftdrift” Williams, lost a post-qualifying challenge based
