The Need

Both in Georgia and in the nation, an increasing percentage of our population has been arrested and/or incarcerated.  It is important to understand that a criminal record is basically any contact with the judicial system.  Any individual, who is ever arrested, even if no charges are ever officially brought against them in court, will still have a criminal record.  An examination of the prison population by race and economic status reveals alarming numbers.  Currently, one out every six African-American or Hispanic males can be expected to go to prison at some point in their lives.  The current trend will see this number increase to almost one out of three over the next thirty years.  Currently, 80% of those incarcerated are classied as indigent at the time of their arrest.

Any criminal record creates barriers to employment, housing, public assistance and even the right to vote.  These often harsh consequences stand as substantial impediments to people who want to return to lives as contributing members of society.  In fact, these barriers may be so substantial that they are counter-productive, causing some of those released from incarceration to return to criminal activity in order to support their livelihood.  The overall impact of these roadblocks for ex-offenders constitutes a social and economic drain on our communities, our state and the nation as a whole.  The Legal Action Center in Washington ranked Georgia the third worst state, behind only Mississippi and Louisiana for barriers to successful reentry for individuals with  a criminal record.

Components of the Program

The Coming Home program seeks to provide justice to a group of people often overlooked within our system:  those who are facing barriers to re-entry into society after an arrest or conviction.  This program offers an innovative approach to the administration of justice for a population in dire need.  Many individuals who relapse and return to the cycle of poverty and crime do so out of desperation with the multitude of structural barriers that await them upon their release from prison particularly in the areas of housing, employment, public assistance, and voting rights, amongst others.

Coming Home directly responds to the call in Georgia for comprehensive reentry planning and the removal of legal and social barriers through three distinct tiers.  direct representation, education and policy.

• Direct Representation:  Coming Home enhances and expands services previously provided by GJP staff attorneys and is supported by volunteer lawyers from Atlanta-area law firms who play a pivotal role in the representation of clients through expungements, correcting criminal histories and advocating for sentence modifications.
• Education:  GJP also has a partership with Mercer Univerisity Law School where GJP teaches courses on Civil Consequences of Criminal Convictions and Poverty Law.  We also present reentry issues to attorneys, judges and community partners to build awareness of these issues.
• Policy:  GJP is currently working with other non-profits as well as individual legislators to develop strategies that will foster feasible administrative and legislative change in Georgia.

The individuals targeted in this program have had contact with the criminal justice system and deserve the justice it promises.  Justice means removing impediments that block an individual's attempts to provide for themselves and their family.  Justice means being able to find a place to live and a job when trying to start your life over.  Justice means not having to suffer consequences for a wrongful arrest.  Justice means not paying time and time again after serving a full sentence for a crime.  Coming Home offers hope for a criminal justice system that moves beyond harsh and punitive sentencing and instead focuses on a more purposeful objective - building capacity in our nation's underserved criminal and criminally accused population.  By empowering those who encounter the criminal justice system, we believe that, with the help of those who share ideologies and passion for change, GJP can stem the tide and move Georgia in a positive direction.

 

For more information on GJP's Coming Home program, contact Marissa McCall Dodson - Lead Coming Home Attorney