Coronavirus in rural America (Part LXXVII): Georgia's rural jails respond to the pandemic

This is the first in a two-part series on rural jail responses to the coronavirus pandemic.  Both this post and the next one are from scholars associated with the Vera Institute's rural jails project.  This post is by Amairini Sanchez (PhD student) and Sarah Shannon (Associate Professor of Sociology), University of Georgia Rural Jails Research Hub.

As the coronavirus pandemic threatens incarcerated populations across the country, media attention has overwhelmingly focused on jails in large metropolitan areas. Scant attention has been given to how rural jails are responding to this crisis. In this post, we use data from the NYU Public Safety Lab to show how jail incarceration rates have changed in Georgia in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. We also cull together evidence from news stories in rural Georgia jurisdictions to illustrate the strategies that local authorities say they are taking to lower jail incarceration in their counties. Our analysis shows that rural courts and jails in Georgia have responded strategically to lower jail populations as the current crisis has evolved.

The Georgia Supreme Court issued a Statewide Judicial Emergency order on March 14, 2020 which affected all courts and judicial proceedings across the state. To illustrate the effect of this order on jail populations in rural Georgia counties, we graphed the percentage change in jail populations before and after March 14, 2020. The yellow bars on the first graph show that prior to this order (from February 28 to March 14, 2020) many rural Georgia jail populations were increasing (12 out of 20 with available data). During the month that followed March 14th, sharp declines occurred in rural jail populations across the state as shown by the blue bars in the graph. Most rural counties with available data have experienced more than 20 percent drops in their jail populations. These declines erased and, in most cases, eclipsed any gains in population prior to the statewide judicial emergency order.

Local newspaper reports shed some light into the dynamics behind these reductions in jail populations. Some rural county sheriffs in Georgia are noting a decrease in crime, which they attribute to stay-at-home orders and other COVID-19 effects. For example, a report in The Polk County Standard Journal highlights how the local crime rate is significantly lower than this same time last year in Polk County, with overall arrests 45 percent lower than in 2019. Similarly, reports in both Bulloch and Habersham counties quote local officials describing that there are fewer traffic-related offenses due to fewer people on the roads.

Beyond changes in crime and traffic offenses, news reports detail how law enforcement agencies have made changes on the front-end during arrests and bookings. State troopers and local police departments report changing their arrest procedures and are prioritizing serious offenses. Bulloch County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Bill Black notes that his agency is “asking LEO's to issue citations where possible instead of transporting to the jail.”

On the back-end, there is also some evidence that rural county sheriffs in Georgia have been working closely with judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys to allow for more releases from jails. In Habersham County, Sheriff Joe Terrell indicates that probation and own-recognizance (OR) bonds have led to a decrease in the jail population. Similarly, in Lumpkin County, Sheriff Stacy Jarrard reported they have reduced their jail population by working with the courts to release individuals through OR bonds. In the Enotah Judicial Circuit, encompassing seven counties in northeast Georgia (Fannin, Gilmer, Pickens, Union, Towns, White, and Lumpkin), District Attorney Jeff Langley instructed county court officials to be “more flexible than normal” in issuing bonds, especially in cases where individuals are charged with nonviolent offenses and are unable to pay their bond. Similar measures have been taken in Bulloch County, particularly, granting releases only to people charged with non-violent offenses who are more vulnerable to the virus on a case-by-case basis.

Overall, the available data show that the COVID-19 pandemic is contributing to a significant decline in rural jail incarceration in Georgia. The Statewide Judicial Emergency order implemented on March 14th set these declines in motion, but news reports from select jurisdictions show that local officials in rural counties have subsequently employed several strategies to reduce bookings and increase releases. In light of the limited resources generally available in rural areas, funding and guidance to support sufficient measures to prevent the spread of the virus within the walls is of utmost importance, in addition to ongoing efforts to reduce populations overall.