On march 29th 2012 Georgia's Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted on a criminal-justice reform bill that read like a left-leaning criminolo-gist's fantasy. It revised sentencing laws to keep non-violent drug and property offenders out of prison, directing them instead toward alternatives-drug courts, day-reporting centres, mental-health courts-designed to treat and rehabilitate rather than punish. It invested millions of dollars in such programmes-not an easy sell in times of tight budgets. And it created graduated scales of punishment, allowing the law to distinguish between someone with a single joint and someone with a pound of marijuana. The House passed the bill unanimously. The Republican-controlled state Senate did the same, and Nathan Deal, Georgia's Republican governor, signed it into law.
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