Recent polling indicates Georgia voters want a juvenile justice system that keeps communities safe and holds youth offenders accountable while helping them become productive citizens. Georgians strongly support proposals to reduce the size and cost of the juvenile corrections system and to reinvest savings into effective alternatives to secure facilities. Across party lines, voters support specific policies, recommended by the 2012 Special Council on Criminal Justice Reform for Georgians, that would divert youth offenders from secure facilities, shorten terms of out-of-home placement, and strengthen community supervision. This January 2013 issue brief contains information on a survey on public attitudes on the juvenile justice system in Georgia. These findings mirror voter attitudes toward adults in the criminal justice system as shown in our 2012 brief, Public Attitudes on Criminal Justice in Georgia.
On behalf of The Pew Charitable Trusts' public safety performance project, Public Opinion Strategies and The Mellman Group conducted a statewide survey in Georgia. The survey was conducted among 600 registered voters from January 9-13, 2013. The margin of error for a survey of this size is plus/minus 4.0 percent. The margin of error is higher for subgroups.