New SPLC Report Grapples with Aftereffects of Georgia’s School-to-Prison Pipeline

ATLANTA — Today, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) released a report denouncing the glaring racial disparities and systemic failures inherent within Georgia’s youth legal system. The report, Only Young Once: Dismantling Georgia’s Punitive Youth Incarceration System, examines how Georgia’s justice system fails and isolates youth by emphasizing incarceration over support and services. This prejudicial trend and the laws that support it undermine the future of countless Black children, who are disproportionately impacted by the state’s harmful youth legal system. 

“This report is a wake-up call,” says Delvin Davis, senior policy analyst, Southern Poverty Law Center, and the report’s author. “Georgia’s youth legal system, which was designed to incarcerate and punish, is not just outdated—its policies are actively harming our young people and communities. The SPLC’s Only Young Once report presents a clear path forward to creating a system that is fair, effective, and focused on rehabilitation.” 

Only Young Once seeks to inform the public about the intent that fuels Georgia’s school-to-prison pipeline, which include zero-tolerance disciplinary policies that ship students to alternative schools, inadequate funding for mental health and support services and racial bias in school discipline. These factors contribute to systemic school pushout, racial disparities in youth incarceration and a cycle of harm that can have long-term effects on Georgia’s most vulnerable families. 

“We only get one chance to invest in our young people’s futures. The SPLC’s Only Young Once report is a call to action for Georgia’s leaders, educators and community members to unite and reimagine its youth justice system, challenging us to uplift and empower our children rather than punishing and discarding them,” Davis concluded. 

Top findings from the SPLC’s Only Young Once report include:   

• Georgia is one of the few states in the U.S. that prosecutes 17-year-olds as adults and prosecutes children as young as 13 as adults for certain offenses – detaining them in adult facilities. 
• While Black children in Georgia’s schools make up 37.5% of students, they also make up well over half of all out-of-school suspensions, expulsions, and assignments to alternative schools. 
• Black youth in Georgia are more than twice as likely to be charged with an offense compared to their white counterparts, and more than three times as likely to be charged in court as an adult. 
• Black youth make up 35.5% of youth in Georgia, but comprise over 60% of all youth court referrals, delinquent adjudications, youth that are incarcerated and youth sentenced in adult court. 
• Georgia spends $217,517 annually to incarcerate a child in its prison system, only to produce a three-year recidivism rate of 35.1%. 

Read the report here. 

Editor’s Note: Georgia has a history of “tough on crime” laws that disproportionately punish Black students, even though youth crime decreased by 80% in the state between 2000 and 2020.