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Request a Demo‘Come after our children and we’ll come after you’: State moves to crack down on gang recruitment
The Gist
State officials are seeking to disrupt criminal gang activity in Georgia through legislation that would require stiff mandatory minimum sentences for gang members who recruit other people, and especially children, into their gangs.
This comes at a time when violent crime is increasing across Georgia and local and state leaders are looking for solutions. But some lawmakers and human rights advocates say that harsher penalties will not curb gang-related crime, and urge legislators to address the underlying problems that lead young people into gangs and criminal activity.
What’s Happening
Last month the Senate passed an update to the Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act, calling for mandatory minimum sentences of five years for anyone who encourages, solicits or recruits another to become a member of a criminal street gang or to participate in gang activity. The bill, SB 44, has even harsher penalties for those who recruit a child under the age of 17, or someone who is disabled: 10-year minimum sentences for the first conviction, and 15-year minimum sentences for any subsequent convictions, with no possibility of probation or parole.
In presenting the bill to the Senate Judiciary Committee, its sponsor, Sen. Bo Hatchett, R-Cornelia, said he was doing so “on behalf of Gov. Brian Kemp, who has made tackling street gangs a priority” due to “the rising occurrence of gang members targeting children for criminal street gang recruitment.”
At a meeting of the Georgia Anti-Gang Network in Atlanta last month, Kemp said, “We’re making clear to gangs all across Georgia: Come after our children, and we will come after you.”
Hatchett said an investigation into gang activity in north Georgia that resulted in the indictment of 17 alleged members of the 183 Gangster Bloods in Barrow County last November found that “among other crimes, gang members were recruiting children using family-friendly events.” The attorney general’s office has reported that a block party organized by the gang, whose members are charged with murder, armed robbery and trafficking fentanyl and methamphetamine, used a bouncy house and an ice cream truck to recruit children into their criminal activities.
“Gangs are in the business of making money, and the lifeblood of their organization is recruitment,” said Hatchett, who observed that the reason gangs are trying to recruit young people is “they’re not as obvious a target for law enforcement officers, they can carry out the missions of the gang, and their penalties will be less. So you can send a 14-year-old kid to go rob several cars or carry drugs on their person, and they’ll be out in a couple of days. Whereas, if they’re older they’ll stay in longer.”
In advocating for the bill, Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) Executive Director John Melvin said, “What I’ve seen in the four years that I’ve been with the bureau is a logarithmic increase in the number of gang cases that the bureau is working and in gang problems statewide.”
Melvin noted that the legislation “gives the keys to the kingdom for a defendant willing to help the state.” A provision in the bill allows judges to lighten or suspend sentences for people convicted of recruiting adults into gangs, if they provide aid that results in the arrest or prosecution of fellow gang members or criminal accomplices. “It says, ‘Alright, if you want out from these mandatory minimums, then you help the D.A.,’” Melvin said.
Opponents of the bill point out that the “snitch” provision does not apply to people who recruit children into gangs, and that Georgia law already provides substantial penalties for recruiting minors into gang participation. They express concern that mandatory minimum sentences would unduly punish youth and young adult offenders caught up in gang life.
“We already have sentencing of five to 20 years” for gang recruitment of children, said Mazie Lynn Guertin, executive director of the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (GACDL). The key difference, she said, is that those laws “allow for judicial discretion. With this, the judge’s hands would be tied.”
“This bill will not stop individuals from preying on young, vulnerable children,” she said. “Instead it seems it will disproportionately harm teenagers and harm siblings … Oftentimes people join [gangs] coming from unstable homes or economic instability [and] they get a younger sibling to join. We know that in our system 17-year-olds are adults, so who’s going to be prosecuted is the 17-year-old adult who recruits their 14-year-old little brother.
“… This is going to be young people recruiting young people, and we’re going to talk about it like it’s a bunch of adults behaving badly, but every one of these people is under 25 years old. We’re going to think of them as predators, but really they’re just children themselves,” said Guertin.
During the Senate floor debate, Sen. Derek Mallow, D-Savannah, expressed concern about the “unintended consequences” of the bill, which he said could land young people who have otherwise not broken any laws in prison for engaging in self-preservation by joining a gang.
“I don’t know if you’ve ever been in poverty or impoverished or had the opportunity to live in the neighborhood that I grew up in, but there’s an opportunity in a gang, and that’s protection,” Mallow said. “If there’s a neighboring gang across the street, you better pick a side to be on because … that might determine life or death for you that day.”
GBI Special Agent in Charge Ken Howard, who oversees the GBI’s Gang Task Force, told State Affairs, “We in law enforcement, whether it’s within the Gang Task Force, or judges and prosecutors around the state, get in the game and use discretion. We’re not charging low-level actors with Gang Act crimes. We frankly don’t have time. We target the worst of the worst.
“We’re not going after that 18-year-old dude with no record who recruited somebody, or the kids on the corner in the city selling a dime bag of marijuana,” Howard said. “We recognize that they’re just cannon fodder for the older, smarter, higher-level members of the gang who are using them in their criminal enterprise. … We don’t want to bury that kid in a [correctional] system that may very well make him more of a predator, or more of a problem, than he already was.”
Why It Matters
While overall crime in the U.S. and Georgia has decreased markedly over the past 20 years, violent crimes have increased in both urban and rural areas of the state in the last three years. Murders, rapes, and aggravated assaults have risen, while robberies and most property crimes have declined.
Attorney General Chris Carr and other state officials attribute 60% of violent crime in the state to gang-related activity. Citing their own data and a 2018 survey of county and state law enforcement agencies by the Georgia Gang Investigators Association, the GBI reports that at least 100 criminal street gangs and 71,000 gang members are active in the state.
According to the GBI, the number of gang-related investigations led by the 20-member GBI Gang Task Force has increased from 208 investigations in 2020 to 317 investigations in 2022. In that period, they’ve seized $36 million in contraband — mostly drugs, weapons and money, in cases involving 44 death investigations, 115 drug trafficking investigations and eight human trafficking investigations. Several of its big busts last year targeted gang members running organized crime rings out of six Georgia prisons and one prison in New York.
The budget of the Gang Task Force has grown from $1.7 million in 2020 to almost $6 million in 2023.
“Criminal street gangs in Georgia are part of large, multi-billion-dollar enterprises, affiliated with national gangs like the Bloods and Crips, and prison gangs that have tremendous authority over the guys running the streets,” said Howard. “Many of them tie back to criminal cartels in Mexico. What we’re dealing with is organized crime, no different than what mafia families were doing in New York. Everything they do is for money, and their pursuit of it fuels other crime, and violence follows.”
The 12-member Gang Prosecution Unit in Attorney General Chris Carr’s office was created in July of 2022 to take on the surge in gang-related crime. Since then, it has charged 58 people with crimes including murder, racketeering, drug trafficking, human trafficking, armed robbery and fraud, and secured 15 indictments.
The Gang Prosecution Unit is seeking to more than double its budget from $1.3 million in fiscal year 2023 to $3.1 million in fiscal year 2024, mostly to pay for a $1.75 million digital evidence management system that it says will help prosecutors to store and process data and video evidence, such as video from body cameras of police officers and law enforcement vehicles, and surveillance video from municipal, business and private sources, including hotels, airports and doorbell cameras.
Violent crime is an escalating concern in Atlanta, where for the third straight year the number of homicides increased. The Atlanta Police Department investigated 170 homicides last year, the most since 1996.
The uptick in violent crime has reenergized the movement among some residents of Buckhead in north Atlanta to secede from the city of Atlanta, an effort that resurfaced in the Legislature again this year. Its proponents cite high crime rates and violent incidents in Atlanta as a top concern. (Two bills related to Buckhead cityhood failed in the Senate last week).
One such violent incident occurred last November, when a shooting on the 17th Street Bridge in Midtown killed 12-year-old Zyion Charles and 15-year-old Cameron Jackson. Investigators charged three teenagers with murder in that case, including a 15-year-old and 16-year-old who were students at Atlanta Public Schools. Both youth were charged with two counts of murder, aggravated assault and violation of the gang statute, police said.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is currently prosecuting the high-profile murder and racketeering case against Atlanta-based rap star Young Thug and two dozen other alleged members of the YSL (Young Slime Life) gang, called gangs “the number one threat against public safety” in Atlanta last year. She said gangs “are committing conservatively 75 to 80 percent of all the violent crime that we’re seeing within our community. And so they have to be booted out of our community.”
After another shooting last December that claimed the lives of a 14- and 16-year-old, an exasperated Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said in a press conference that ending gun violence is a “group project … It takes every single one of us to counter this plague in our community — from city government, to our police, to our schools, to clergy, to parents and to young people themselves; we must pledge not to accept this violence as normal and do all that we can to end it.”
Some lawmakers and many youth and human rights advocates are calling for less incarceration and more community-based solutions to gun violence and gang-related crime.
“We have numerous opportunities to address the actual underlying issue of trauma, of poverty, of mental health … but sentencing people to be incarcerated simply because they participated in street gang activity does not make street gang activity go away, it doesn’t make our communities safer, and it doesn’t get us to the point of restorative justice, which makes communities whole,” said James Woodall, a public policy expert at the Southern Center for Human Rights.
“Bills like SB 44 do very little to address the reason why people may be compelled to engage in gang activity,” said Brian Nunez, a policy associate for the Southern Poverty Law Center. “Lengthy and costly mandatory minimum sentences do not appear to reduce crimes … The best way to make communities safer is by investing in them. Evidence-based studies show that community mobilization and social interventions are far more effective than harsher punishments in reducing gang-related activity.”
One such evidence-based approach touted by criminal justice reform advocates is the Comprehensive Gang Model developed by the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, which relies on a coordinated strategy between law enforcement and educational and community groups to positively engage youth and others at risk of gang involvement. It has proven successful in reducing gang-related crime in several cities where it has been implemented, including Los Angeles, Richmond, Houston and North Miami Beach, according to the National Gang Center.
During the Senate Judiciary Committee discussion of SB 44 last month, Sen. Bill Cowsert, R-Athens, asked GACDL’s Guertin, “If this doesn’t help, what do you suggest? We’re dealing with a proliferation of gang activity, recruitment of young kids. What other tools do we have other than to get these people off the street? We’ve tried the rehabilitation route, we’ve tried three strikes you’re out, we’ve tried harsher penalties. If you were up here, what would you do to try to solve this problem?”
“I would be talking to my colleagues on the education committee, on the multiple health committees,” Guertin replied. “The issues that bring us here … it’s a lack of advantage, on any number of fronts — housing, education, access to employment — I just don’t believe that carceral measures are going to be the answer to any of this … Like you said, we’ve done this. We’ve done three strikes. The money is not being spent on the collateral matters that draw a child into a place where they find identity and camaraderie. It’s broken and it’s backward, but that’s what they’re finding there … in gangs. We’re not offering them much else.”
What’s Next
SB 44 was passed by the Senate on a 31-22 party-line vote, with most Republicans voting for it. The bill now awaits consideration in the House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee.
Have questions, comments or tips about gang-related activity or ways to curb violent crime in Georgia? Contact Jill Jordan Sieder on Twitter @JOURNALISTAJILL or at [email protected].
Twitter @STATEAFFAIRSGA
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Related:
Why is Georgia spending millions on a task force to fight criminal gangs? (State Affairs)
Profile: Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Michael J. Register (State Affairs)
Meet Chris Carr: Georgia's attorney general eyeing reelection (State Affairs)
Header image: Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum, Georgia Gang Prosecution Unit Section Chief Cara Convery, Attorney General Chris Carr and Gov. Brian Kemp join state and federal officials and law enforcement officers at a meeting of the Georgia Anti-Gang Network in Atlanta on Feb. 7, 2023, which focused on disrupting the recruitment of children and young adults into gangs. (Credit: Office of the Governor)
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House speaker Jon Burns hires new communications director
House speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, announced today that he has hired a new communications director. Kayla Roberson, who has served as press secretary at the Georgia Chamber for the past year or so, will now oversee all external communications, media relations and strategic messaging for Burns.
“I’m excited to welcome Kayla to our team,” Burns said in a statement. “Kayla has an excellent background, deep skill set and strong work ethic, and we’re excited to have her on board to continue getting our message out and sharing the House’s priorities ahead of and into the next session.”
A double major in political science and journalism at the University of Georgia, where she graduated in 2022, Roberson interned for U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde, a Republican in north Georgia’s 9th Congressional District, and worked as a consultant for GOP political candidates before joining the Georgia Chamber.
“I’m beyond grateful for the opportunity to work under the leadership of speaker Burns,” Roberson told State Affairs. “Whether it’s improving education opportunities, putting money back in the pockets of hardworking Georgians, creating jobs or supporting our rural communities, speaker Burns always prioritizes doing what is best, and what is right, for Georgia.”
Political strategist Stephen Lawson, who has held the top communications role for the speaker since last December, announced he’s joining Dentons, where starting today he’ll lead the global law firm’s public affairs efforts.
Have questions or comments? Contact Jill Jordan Sieder on X @journalistajill or at [email protected].
Global bird flu disrupts Georgia exports, costing chicken producers millions
ATLANTA — A global bird flu that has rapidly spread from birds to dairy cows, milk supplies and humans has cost untold millions of dollars in lost export business in Georgia, the nation’s leading poultry producer, officials with the state Department of Agriculture and poultry industry said.
Georgia has had only three reported cases of H5N1 avian influenza since it reemerged in 2022. The last of those cases was resolved in November 2023 but ramifications of those outbreaks continue to have a big effect on the state’s ability to export chicken and chicken parts, such as chicken feet, to different countries, including China, one of Georgia’s biggest export markets for chicken feet.
In 2022, frozen chicken feet, for example, accounted for more than 85% of all U.S. poultry exported to China, according to Farm Progress, publisher of 22 farming and ranching magazines.
The $30 billion poultry industry is Georgia’s largest segment in its No. 1 industry — agriculture.
China has also placed a ban on the import of chicken products from 41 other American states. The ban on Georgia products went into effect Nov. 21, 2023. Efforts to reach the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C. were unsuccessful.
Georgia Poultry Federation President Mike Giles estimates the state’s loss at “well into the millions of dollars.”
“It’s a significant amount in a significant export market for us,” he said. “Poultry paws [feet] immediately lose value because of the loss of demand.”
The ban has forced Georgia poultry producers to find alternative markets for their products that would normally be headed to China.
“Some are sold domestically, some are frozen and stored, hopefully to find markets later on, and some go to other countries,” Giles said.
This isn’t the first time China has banned U.S.-produced poultry products due to a bird flu outbreak. The country instituted a ban in January 2015 which lasted until November 2019 — even though U.S. poultry products were deemed free of the disease by August 2017.
After that ban was lifted, China’s appetite for American-produced chicken products became voracious.
In 2022, U.S. producers shipped nearly $6 billion in poultry meat and related products (excluding eggs) to over 130 countries. China has emerged as the second largest destination for U.S. poultry exports, increasing from $10 million in 2019 to a record $1.1 billion in 2022, according to Southern Ag Today.
Chicken paws, for instance, are eaten in many Asian countries, including the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and Korea.They can also be found on Chinese dim sum menus throughout the U.S. and are also popular in Jamaica, Trinidad, Russia and Ukraine in everything from soups and curries to fried snacks.
Three Georgia counties have reported H5N1 outbreaks since 2022. The most recent case was late last year. Henry, Sumter and Toombs counties each reported one case of H5N1 bird flu. Those outbreaks are resolved, poultry and state agriculture officials say.
“When HPAI cases are found in any state, that state is given a designation that could lead to foreign countries halting trade on poultry products from that state,” Georgia Department of Agriculture spokesman Matthew Agvent told State Affairs.
Not since 2016 has the United States experienced such a fast-moving case of the H5N1 avian influenza. In the last two months, the virus has spread in parts of the United States from birds to dairy cows, some milk supplies and humans. Two people — a Texas dairy worker and a prison inmate in Colorado who was killing infected birds at a poultry farm — are reported to have caught the virus, according to news reports. The outbreak is the largest in recent history, impacting both domestic poultry and livestock as well as wild birds and some mammal species.
State officials are continuing to monitor the national outbreak and its impact on Georgia.
Georgia’s poultry & egg industry: At A Glance
Annual economic impact: $30.2 billion
Percentage of the Agriculture industry: 58% *
Jobs: 87,900
Counties involved in poultry & egg production: 3 out of 4
National ranking in chicken broiler production: No. 1
Daily production of table eggs: 7.8 million
Daily production of hatching eggs: 6.5 million
Pounds of chicken produced daily: 30.2 million
Pounds of chicken produced annually: 8 billion
Number of chicken broilers processed each day: 5 million
Counties involved in poultry & egg production: 3 out of 4
Source: Georgia Poultry Federation; The Center for Agribusiness & Economic Development, University of Georgia, Ag Snapshots 2024; Georgia Poultry Federation.
Have questions? Contact Tammy Joyner on X @lvjoyner or at [email protected].
Is it safe to eat chicken and eggs and drink milk? Answers to your most pressing questions about the latest bird flu outbreak
A two-year-old strain of bird flu has heightened concerns in Georgia and the rest of the country after the virus recently spread to dairy cows. Here’s what you need to know about the virus and its impact on Georgia and the rest of the country. What are the symptoms of this flu in humans? Eye …
Kemp signs bills on education, health care, taxes
Gov. Brian Kemp signed a slew of bills over the past week or so, including the private school voucher bill long sought by Republicans and a bill that will ease regulations over the construction and expansion of medical facilities in rural areas.
His bill-signing events were clustered into themes: education, health care, military members, human trafficking and Georgia’s coastal communities.
Education
Among the education-related bills Kemp signed was Senate Bill 233, also known as the Georgia Promise Scholarship Act, which provides the families of Georgia students enrolled in underperforming school districts with $6,500 scholarships that can be used toward private school or homeschooling expenses, including tuition, fees, textbooks and tutoring.
“Georgia is affording greater choice to families as to how and where they receive their education, while also continuing our efforts to strengthen public schools, support teachers, and secure our classrooms,” Kemp said, and thanked leadership in the House and Senate for prioritizing passage of the bill, which had failed in a close vote in 2023.
Democrats and many public education advocates who opposed the bill argued it will drain resources from public schools and primarily benefit students from wealthy families.
Kemp also signed Senate Bill 351, sponsored by nine Republican senators, which will require social media companies, as of July 1, 2025, to verify their users are at least 16 years old unless they receive approval from a parent.
House Bill 409, sponsored by Rep. Lauren Daniel, R-Locust Grove, directs school systems to consider not having bus stops where a student would have to cross a roadway with a speed limit of 40 mph or greater. The bill also increases the penalty for passing a stopped school bus to $1,000 from $250.
Kemp noted that Ashley Pierce, the mother of Addy Pierce, an 8-year-old who was fatally struck by a motorist as she boarded her school bus, “passionately advocated for and was instrumental in the passage of this legislation.”
Senate Bill 395, sponsored by Sen. Clint Dixon, R-Gwinnett, states that no school visitor or personnel can be prohibited from possessing an opioid reversal drug such as Narcan and directs schools to maintain a supply. It also allows opioid antagonists to be sold in vending machines and directs certain government buildings to maintain a supply of at least three doses.
Senate Bill 464, also sponsored by Dixon, creates the School Supplies for Teachers Program to financially and technically support teachers purchasing school supplies online. It also creates an executive committee of five voting members within the Georgia Council on Literacy and limits the number of approved literacy screeners to five, one of whom must be available to schools for free.
Health care
The governor chose his hometown of Athens as the venue to sign several bills aimed at improving health care in rural and underserved communities.
Among them was House Bill 1339, sponsored by Rep. Butch Parrish, R-Swainsboro, which revises the Certificate of Need process by which the state determines if and how new medical facilities can be built or expanded. The bill provides for several new exemptions, including psychiatric or substance abuse inpatient programs, basic perinatal services in rural counties, birthing centers and new general acute hospitals in rural counties. It also raises the total limit on tax credits for donations to rural hospital organizations to $100 million from $75 million.
Senate Bill 480, sponsored by Sen. Mike Hodges, R-Brunswick, establishes student loan repayments for mental health and substance use professionals serving underserved youth in the state or in unserved geographic areas disproportionately impacted by social determinants of health.
House Bill 872, sponsored by Rep. Lee Hawkins, R-Gainesville, chair of the House Health and Human Services Committee, expands cancelable loans for certain health care professionals to dental students who agree to practice in rural areas.
Senate Bill 293, sponsored by Sen. Ben Watson, R-Savannah, chair of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, reorganizes county boards of public health and opens the qualifications for the CEO of each county board of health to include either licensed physicians or people with a master’s degree in public health or a related field.
Military members and veterans
Kemp on Wednesday focused on bills to improve military recruitment and provide more work opportunities for veterans and military family members.
House Bill 880, sponsored by Rep. Bethany Ballard, R-Warner Robins, allows spouses of military service members to work under a license they hold in good standing in another state while under the supervision of an existing Georgia medical facility or provider.
Senate Bill 449, sponsored by Sen. Larry Walker, allows military medical personnel to practice for 12 months while a license application is pending, including working as a certified nursing aide, certified emergency medical technician, paramedic or licensed practical nurse. The bill also creates a new advanced practice registered nurse license and makes it a misdemeanor to practice advanced nursing without a license.
Human trafficking
The governor on Wednesday was accompanied by first lady Marty Kemp and other members of the GRACE Commission for the signing of an anti-human trafficking package. It includes Senate Bill 370, which adds certain businesses to the list of organizations that must post human trafficking notices, including convenience stores, body art studios, businesses that employ licensed massage therapists and manufacturing facilities.
Sponsored by Sen. Mike Hodges, R-Brunswick, the bill also allows the Georgia Board of Massage Therapy to initiate inspections of massage therapy businesses and educational programs without notice and requires massage therapy board members to complete yearly human trafficking awareness training.
House Bill 993, sponsored by Rep. Alan Powell, R-Hartwell, creates the felony offense of grooming of a minor and creates new penalties for offenses relating to visual mediums depicting minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
House Bill 1201, sponsored by Rep. Houston Gaines, R-Athens, allows human trafficking survivors who received first offender or conditional discharge status to vacate that status for certain crimes, as long as the crime was a direct result of being a victim of human trafficking.
Coastal communities
Earlier today in Brunswick, Kemp signed legislation impacting Georgia coastal communities, including House Bill 244, which amends the laws around how wild game can be hunted and how seafood dealers operate, and House Bill 1341, which designates white shrimp as the state’s official crustacean.
Taxes
Earlier this month Kemp signed several bills related to taxation, including House Bill 1015, sponsored by Rep. Lauren McDonald, R-Cumming, which lowers the state income tax for tax year 2024 to 5.39%, accelerating a multiyear drop in state income taxes that started at 5.75% in 2023 and will continue through 2029.
The Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget estimates the tax cut acceleration will save Georgia taxpayers approximately $1.1 billion in calendar year 2024 and about $3 billion over the next 10 years.
Kemp also signed House Bill 1021, sponsored by Rep. Lauren Daniel, R-Locust Grove, which increases the state’s income tax dependent exemption to $4,000 from $3,000.
House Bill 581, sponsored by Reps. Shaw Blackmon, R-Bonaire, and Clint Crowe, R-Jackson, enables a constitutional amendment (House Resolution 1022) to let voters decide whether counties can provide a statewide homestead valuation freeze, which limits the increase in property values to the inflation rate.
The governor has until May 7 to sign or veto bills passed during the legislative session that ended on March 28. Those he takes no action on will automatically become law.
Legislation signed by Kemp is posted on the governor’s website.
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