Twenty-five years ago, Georgia created one of the most punitive juvenile justice systems in the nation. In a review of dozens of cases, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that juvenile justice in Georgia is “at once too lenient and too harsh,” barely holding many youths accountable even for repeated offenses but then confining them in brutal, chaotic juvenile prisons that end up turning them into worse criminals.
Georgia disproportionately imposes the toughest sentences on young African American males. Black teens account for about half of all juvenile arrests in Georgia but four-fifths of the youths convicted as adults. The state’s seven youth prisons recorded more than 3,400 physical assaults by inmates on other juveniles from 2015 through 2018. At least 150 more times, youths were sexually assaulted by other prisoners. More than 1,400 times, inmates attacked corrections officers. During the same period, state records show, authorities investigated about 1,600 misconduct allegations against juvenile corrections officers, including that they physically or emotionally mistreated inmates. By the time youths descend into the system, “they’re so far down the road that it’s hard to get them back,” said Danny Porter, the Gwinnett County district attorney. And by populating each juvenile prison facility with dozens of teens, all of them with raging hormones and time on their hands, Porter said, “you’ve just designed a gladiator pit.” The prisons are “more dangerous than the streets,” said Demetra Ford, an Atlanta lawyer who represents juvenile defendants. “Some of those kids actually come out in worse shape than they were going in, both physically and emotionally.”