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‘Come after our children and we’ll come after you’: State moves to crack down on gang recruitment
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)
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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Democratic incumbents vie for redrawn House district seat
ATLANTA — Democratic incumbents running in south DeKalb County’s newly drawn District 90 are in a political predicament: Longtime comrades, they now find themselves pitted against each other.
Reps. Saira Draper and Becky Evans met Wednesday on the debate stage at St. John’s Lutheran Church to make the case for why voters should choose them for the newly drawn district in the upcoming May primary.
Mike St. Louis, chair of the Druid Hills Civic Association and moderator of the hourlong debate, lamented the“gratuitous” pairing of two Democratic incumbents in the same district drawn by Republicans who controlled the special legislative session on redistricting last year. The process was an effort to comply with a judge’s order to add more majority-Black districts.
House District 90, which Draper represents, will still include the part of Atlanta that is in DeKalb County, as well as six new precincts in southwest DeKalb that were in District 89, where Evans serves. Each was elected in districts that were and remain majority-Black, solid-blue districts.
No Republican or independent candidates qualified for the 2024 election for the new District 90.
Draper and Evans began and ended Wednesday’s debate acknowledging their respect for each other, and their chagrin over their political predicament, while trying to draw distinctions on their legislative records and strengths.
“This was not something that either of us asked for. It’s not something that either of us wanted,” Draper said. “And to me, it really underscores the fact that we have to get the majority in Georgia.”
Draper, a civil rights attorney serving in the House since 2023, said what makes her “the best person for the job … really boils down to democracy and diversity.” She described herself as an elections and voting rights expert who helped to “flip Georgia blue for the first time in 30 years” during the 2020 presidential election and the 2022 midterms, when she said she “led the voting rights efforts” in Georgia for President Joe Biden and U.S. Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, for whom she oversaw campaign staff and thousands of volunteers.
Draper said she’s now fighting to bring Democratic majorities back to the state House and Senate, which she estimated will likely take four to six years.
In the meantime, she said she has worked to push through what legislation she can in the Republican-controlled House and cited as a small victory House Bill 1207, a bill she crafted that requires advanced proofing of ballots by candidates and election supervisors. Draper sought out five Republicans as co-signers to gain majority support for the bill, which passed in both chambers and awaits Gov. Brian Kemp’s signature.
Noting that “diversity is a central tenet to the Democratic Party,” Draper said, “as a woman of color and as an immigrant, I bring perspectives to the table that are underrepresented at the Capitol.”
Draper immigrated to the U.S. when she was 6 years old from England, where her Spanish mother and Pakistani father met. “That makes me Spakistani,” she said, eliciting laughter from the audience. “But it also makes me the only member of the Georgia General Assembly who is a member of the Hispanic caucus and the Asian American Pacific [Islander] caucus.”
Evans, a community organizer and political operative who has served in the House since 2019, emphasized her six years of experience building relationships with fellow legislators and delivering on measures to support education, the environment, gun safety and housing.
“And I’m 100% pro-choice, 100% pro-LGBTQ and 100% pro-health care expansion,” Evans said, adding she is proud of her work developing legislation to promote literacy among school children over the past two years, including writing a bill last year to create the Georgia Council on Literacy and another bill to ensure that children are screened for dyslexia and other reading challenges and that teachers are trained in evidence-based reading and writing instruction.
When her bills didn’t pass from the House to the Senate by the Crossover Day deadline in 2023, Evans said she persuaded Republican lawmakers in the Senate to adopt her legislation, which then passed. She now serves on the 30-member literacy council, which she said is working “to make sure that all of our children will have the broadest possible futures and that they can all learn how to read.”
Evans also said she was “proud to deliver this session $7.4 million in [federal] gun violence prevention awareness funds that will go out to community groups” and to support the passage of a bipartisan Senate bill that will give “[sales] tax breaks [on gun safety devices] where people are using their guns responsibly.” She said she also advocated for adding new funding for school security grants to the education budget, which was approved.
The candidates took similar positions on many issues, both decrying the private school voucher bill they said would drain funds from public schools, and the need for the state to better fund impoverished school districts. They described their individual efforts to curtail gun violence and promote voting rights, as well as detailed their years of experience in ground-level get-out-the-vote efforts in DeKalb County and metro Atlanta. Draper and Evans also expressed measured support of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, which they said is needed to train police and first responders.
Among the 40 or so people in the audience, Lora Wuennenberg, 68, a Kirkwood resident and program manager at the humanitarian nonprofit CARE, said she emerged from the debate torn between the two candidates. Noting they have similar positions on the major issues she cares about, including public education, she said Draper, her current representative, impressed her as an “an activist who can mobilize people and is willing to stand up and stand out on some of the issues that may not be getting enough attention.”
“Becky seemed more of a practical, behind-the-scenes organizer, someone who understands the bureaucracy of government and has a lot of established contacts,” Wuennenberg said, noting Evans has worked across the aisle and “found entry points” to get legislation passed. “In the Republican-controlled House, maybe she can be more effective than Saira.”
Wuennenberg said over the next few weeks she’ll follow the candidates and look to see “how Saira thinks she can mobilize support for the bread-and-butter issues that have an impact on people’s lives” in the next legislative session.
Arica Schuett, 36, a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Emory who lives in Druid Hills, said she also needs to spend more time studying the candidates.
She said Draper’s focus “on mobilizing voters and removing barriers to election participation resonated” with her, while Evans’ “experience and her ability to to work with constituencies that include Republicans is important. So getting a better understanding of how each candidate would manage their position in a really Republican Legislature is what’s important to me.”
Schuett said she plans to dive deeper into their proposed legislation and voting records. “I kind of want to look a little bit more at what they’ve done, right?”
The primary election will take place May 21.
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Barbershop talks and hip-hop summits: Georgia Black legislators’ group has big plans to build coalitions, boost voter rolls
The nation’s largest gathering of Black lawmakers is slated to meet in Atlanta this summer to discuss ways to boost voter participation nationwide ahead of the upcoming fall elections.
The Aug. 2-4 conference theme is “Testing 1, 2, 3.” The meeting will be the precursor to a series of events the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus plans to hold heading into the November presidential election.
“Because we’re the largest Black caucus in the nation, we’re reaching out to all of the caucuses from across the nation,” Rep. Carl Gilliard, D-Savannah, chairman of the 74-member Georgia caucus, told State Affairs. “This is the first time that I think we’re doing a total reach-out to all of the Black caucuses. We share a lot of similarities. Whether it’s voter suppression in Georgia, the same laws are going to be tried in Tennessee and the same laws are going to be tried in Florida. We share a lot of commonalities.”
Next week, for instance, the Georgia caucus is scheduled to issue a statement supporting efforts to pass a hate crimes bill in South Carolina. The bill passed in the House but stalled in the Senate, Gilliard noted.
Over 700 Black legislators represent about 60 million Americans, according to the National Black Caucus of State Legislators. In addition to the Georgia caucus, Black caucuses exist in nearly three dozen states.
Shortly after the August convention, the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus will embark on a 14-city tour throughout Georgia to focus on “getting out the vote.”
“We’re not going to tell them who to vote for,” Gilliard said of voters. “But what is happening right now is no one is talking to the people. And if the election were held today, we all would be in trouble because no one is talking or meeting the people where they’re at.”
The tour is a continuation of various actions the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus has taken this year to align with other organizations of people of color on common causes.
In March, the caucus joined forces with the Asian American Pacific Islander and Hispanic caucuses for a tri-caucus town hall. It was the first time the three groups have aligned. The Black caucus also has “reached out to partner with the Hindus of North America population and the diaspora,” Gilliard said.
“What we’re trying to do is form a coalition to get to as many diverse groups of people as we can,” he said.
Gilliard said the lack of individual and collective involvement in communities he’s seeing concerns him. It’s a far cry from four years ago.
In 2020, the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed Black man murdered while jogging in Glynn County, and Breonna Taylor, a Black woman killed by Louisville, Kentucky police serving a no-knock warrant for drug suspicion, led to more than 450 protests nationwide and on three continents.
That same year, former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams led an effort to increase the voter rolls for the 2020 presidential election. Fair Fight and the New Georgia Projects, two groups Abrams founded, registered more than 800,000 new voters.
That level of community and political engagement has since subsided, Gilliard said.
“People don’t know what’s going on,” Gilliard said. “No one is really talking to the people. You’ve got a presidential election. I’m talking about on both [political] sides. There are rallies and different events being held, but nobody has gone to the barbershop. No one has gone to the community centers or the neighborhoods. We’re going to be empowering those communities by going and taking those townhall meetings right where they’re at, not in a big municipality but in community centers and neighborhoods.”
The caucus also plans to hold a hip-hop summit to reach young people, many of whom are skeptical of both political parties.
“They’re forming their own opinions,” Gilliard said. “They’re saying, ‘Forget about Trump. We need to hear something different.’ That’s just their perception. That’s why I’m really quietly championing the young candidates behind the scenes who are running right now because we need young leaders.
“We have to get as many people together, but we also have to get them ready to work.”
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Special prosecutor to decide if Lt. Gov. Jones should face criminal charges in 2020 election-meddling case
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones will face scrutiny over whether he should be criminally charged for alleged meddling in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
The Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia said Thursday it has assigned Executive Director Pete Skandalakis as the special prosecutor to handle the case because Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is barred from investigating Jones. The council is a nonpartisan state advocacy agency for district attorneys.
In July 2022, Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney blocked Willis from investigating Jones because her actions were an “actual and untenable” conflict of interest. At the time, Willis had hosted a campaign fundraiser for Jones’ Democratic rival, Charlie Bailey, and donated to his campaign when both men were running for lieutenant governor. Willis is currently involved in an election interference case she brought against former President Donald Trump and 18 others.
McBurney’s ruling left it up to the council to decide whether Jones should be criminally charged.
“I’m happy to see this process move forward and look forward to the opportunity to get this charade behind me,” Jones said in a statement issued Thursday. “Fani Willis has made a mockery of this legal process, as she tends to do. I look forward to a quick resolution and moving forward with the business of the state of Georgia.”
The council cited state bar rules in its news release and said there would be no further comments.
Skandalakis’ appointment marks another step in the ongoing political odyssey for Jones and other lawmakers over charges that they served as “false” electors to help Trump overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
Jones is one of 16 alleged “false” electors in Georgia who gathered at the state capitol on Dec. 14, 2020, to cast ballots for Trump and then sent their false certification of his victory to the National Archives and the governor’s office.
Jones has denied any wrongdoing, saying he and other electors were acting on the advice of lawyers to preserve Trump’s chances in Georgia in case the former president won a court challenge that was pending at the time. Jones was a state senator during the 2020 election.
Trump’s campaign enlisted an alternate slate of electors in 2020 in a number of swing states where Trump was defeated, as part of an effort to circumvent the outcome of the voting, The New York Times reported Thursday.
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Georgia taxpayers get a tax credit for helping young adults leaving foster care
The Gist
Georgia lawmakers in 2022 laid the groundwork to help young adults leaving the foster care system get a good start in life while giving taxpayers another tax relief option.
At that time, the Georgia General Assembly passed House Bill 424, also known as the Fostering Success Act. This law created the Qualified Foster Child Donation Credit program. It’s a tax credit plan that allows taxpayers to redirect their state income tax dollars to qualified organizations providing support services to young adults transitioning out of foster care.
Capped at $20 million a year, the money is used to help young adults ages 18 to 25 once they leave foster care.
What’s Happening
The tax credit took effect in 2023. The number of qualified organizations participating in the program has nearly doubled to 39 this year from 20 last year.
A bill to increase the cap on the tax credit to $30 million a year failed during this year’s legislative session because the House and Senate couldn’t agree on whether to expand the annual cap. It remains at $20 million a year.
As of March 28, $153,000 of the $20 million fund has been approved for the 2024 tax year. Roughly $19.8 million remains.
“With this being the second year of the tax credit, this tax credit opportunity is still relatively new and unknown,” Heidi Carr, executive director of Fostering Success Act Inc., told State Affairs. “It takes a while to get the awareness around it up.”
Carr’s group is one of the qualified organizations participating in the tax credit program. The nonprofit is not connected to the government program.
Georgia taxpayers get a dollar credit for every dollar they donate to a qualified organization, up to a certain amount. Here’s how it works:
- An individual or business applies through the Georgia Department of Revenue to qualify for the tax credit. The taxpayer specifies how much to donate and which organization will get the donation.
- Once approved, the taxpayer makes a payment directly to the organization.
- When the organization receives the payment, it sends the taxpayer the documents required when filing their state tax return so they can get their tax credit. The organization also notifies the state of the transaction.
Why It Matters
Each year, more than 700 young adults leave the foster care system in Georgia. They are some of the most underserved and overlooked people in the foster care system. Many never return to their biological families or get adopted. Once they leave the system, they often have little to no guidance as they enter college or the workforce.
The fostering success funds will help those young people with education, housing, counseling, medical care and transportation services.
Money generated from the tax credit has enabled Connections Homes to help 20 young people so far this year, Founder and Chief Executive Officer Pam Parish told State Affairs.
The Alpharetta-based nonprofit’s main goal is matching young people who have left or are leaving foster care with mentoring families. However, the $20,000 received through the tax credit program allows the organization to do much more, Parish said.
In one instance, they helped a young mother of two in her early 20s who is attending college and dealing with cancer. The organization paid the former foster care youth’s rent and car note and was able to “do the things that we could worry about and let her worry about getting better and staying in school,” Parish said.
Without the money generated through the Fostering Success Act’s tax credit program, such help would have been a “funding struggle,” Parish added.
“Our main program is our mentorship, which is immensely helpful to our kids,” she said. “But really to get into these practical needs and [having] funding available to do that is really helpful for our organization but most importantly for these kids.”
The organization has helped some 350 foster youth in its 10-year existence, Parish said. She and her husband have eight daughters, seven of them adopted. Five became part of the family after the age of 18 due to various circumstances, including surviving trafficking, homelessness and aging out of foster care, she said.
Similarly, Wellroot Family Services has been able to help foster youth pursuing college degrees.
“The Fostering Success Tax Credit bolsters the housing and wraparound services we provide for those youth pursuing postsecondary education and has enabled us to provide scholarships to former foster youth,” Wellroot CEO Allison Ashe said. “Because of the tax credit and the generosity of donors, we were able to provide additional funds to some of the youth pursuing college degrees to use for books and other academic supplies.”
What’s Next?
It’s not too late to participate in the 2024 tax credit program. To qualify, taxpayers must get the state’s approval and make their payments within 60 days of being approved or by Dec. 31, whichever comes first.
Between January 1 and June 30, the following yearly contribution limits are based on the taxpayer’s filing status:
- Single individual or head of household: Up to $2,500
- Married filing jointly: Up to $5,000
- Individual owner of an S corporation, member of an LLC or partner in a partnership: Up to $5,000
- C corporation, trust, or pass-through entity electing to pay tax at entity level: Up to 10% of Georgia income tax liability
Learn more about the Fostering Success Tax Credit here. As with any tax matter, consult your tax adviser. You can find a list of certified foster child support organizations on the Department of Revenue website.
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