Overview: 2022 Fiscal Year Budget for the Georgia Department of Corrections
For Fiscal Year (FY) 2022, Gov. Brian Kemp proposed a $1.12 billion budget for the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC), an agency charged with overseeing the state’s prison system. Between 1997 and 2007, Georgia’s history of tough-on-crime policies impacted the growth of GDC’s population and increased expenditures by $335.2 million annually.
Following Gov. Nathan Deal’s criminal justice reform efforts in 2012, a series of major legislative, programmatic and agency changes were implemented. These shifts were designed to reduce the length of incarceration while also expanding probation and parole eligibility. At the end of 2020, GDC reported a prison population totaling 47,033, a 15 percent decline since December 2019, following a modest population decline from 2012 to 2019.