2026 LEGISLATIVE PRIORITIES

The Southern Center is committed to supporting legislators in understanding the root causes of the dysfunction in Georgia’s jails and prisons. We will continue to collaborate to refine recommendations that empower the General Assembly to effectively address and reduce harm in local jails and prisons. The Department of Justice Civil Rights Division’s 2024 reports detailing human rights violations in Georgia Department of Corrections Facilities and the Fulton County Jail provide lawmakers with a useful roadmap for the minimum remedial measures necessary to address ongoing abuses. We urge legislators to take measures exceeding minimum recommendations and stand ready to share best practices and connect lawmakers to impacted experts. This session, we will also support legislation protecting the civil right of religious expression while incarcerated.

The constitutional right to free speech is critical to every democracy. The Southern Center will continue to serve everyday people who find themselves in the crosshairs of the criminal legal system for exercising their right to political expression. We will continue to oppose legislation that criminalizes, punishes and chills protected speech – from criticizing public figures on social media to protesting on campus. We also provide technical policy assistance to lawmakers who wish to avoid drafting laws that abridge the First Amendment unintentionally.

The Southern Center will advocate for decarceral legislation and against bills that create new offenses, increase mandatory minimums, and establish new sentencing enhancements. We will also oppose legislation that restricts access to parole and support legislation expanding parole eligibility. This priority necessarily serves our other priority to improve conditions of confinement because one of the most significant underlying causes of the crisis in Georgia prisons is that the state will not be able to hire and retain enough prison staff to maintain safe and constitutional prison conditions attendant to the bloated and unsustainable prison population.

Wealth-based detention disproportionately impacts marginalized and low-income communities. This disparity perpetuates cycles of poverty in Georgia. Recent laws preempting local bail reform and requiring cash bail for a growing list of offenses have maintained and even exasperated economic crises not only for incarcerated people, but also the communities they leave behind. We will continue to work with local and statewide stakeholders to find innovative solutions that enhance public safety while addressing economic considerations. For example, we would like to work with lawmakers to draft legislation to address exploitative, counterproductive, and unjust imposition of fines, fees, and private probation in lower courts.

Our litigation units work closely with our policy team and other organizations laboring to ensure that Georgia treats children with a level of care reflecting their cognitive and emotional capacity. In addition to prioritizing ending juvenile life without parole, we will also continue to oppose any expansion of the circumstances in which children are tried as adults. We follow the lead of partners including Barton Child Law & Advocacy Center at Emory University and Deep Center in Savannah, who are experts in child law policy. We also defer to grassroots and direct service organizations that center the experiences of children when considering proposals and campaigns.