Many state Supreme Court Justices now give a state of the judiciary address to their legislatures. These speeches give the judiciary a platform used many times to highlight the budget needs of state courts. The Chief Justice of Georgia focused not on budget issues but the need for sentencing reform.  Coverage of the Chief Justice’s speech was in  this recent piece from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which gets started this way:

Georgia’s chief justice on Wednesday called on lawmakers to enact sentencing reforms that steer nonviolent offenders away from costly prison sentences, saying, “we now know that being tough on crime is not enough.

In a 25-minute address before a joint session of the Legislature, Chief Justice Carol Hunstein asked lawmakers to adopt proposals by the Special Council on Criminal Justice Reform that studied Georgia’s sentencing and corrections system.  The state can no longer afford to spend more than $1 billion a year to maintain the nation’s fourth-highest incarceration rate, she said.

The initiative, supported by Gov. Nathan Deal and Democratic and Republican leaders, calls for increased funding for drug, mental health and veterans’ courts across the state and for other alternatives to prison.  Legislation is being drafted and will be introduced in the coming weeks, said Brian Robinson, a spokesman in the governor’s office.  Deal’s budget plan already asks for $10 million for new accountability courts.

Hunstein, a member of the special council, said its members “began united in our belief that warehousing nonviolent offenders who are addicted to drugs or are mentally ill does nothing to improve the public safety.  Indeed, in the long run, it threatens it.”

Accountability courts address the roots of crime and reduce recidivism, she said.  “If we simply throw low-risk offenders into prison, rather than holding them accountable for their wrongdoing and addressing the source of their criminal behavior, they merely become hardened criminals who are more likely to re-offend when they are released.”