Juvenile Code Rewrite Off Till Next Year

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The first overhaul of Georgia’s juvenile code in 40 years will be at least another year in the making. The rewritten code — Senate Bill 127 — failed to come up for a vote by the deadline to move it on to the House this year. But because the General Assembly works in two-year sessions, the bill is not dead and may be taken up next year without being reintroduced or reassigned to a committee. After its first reading in the Senate this year, the bill, also known as the “Children’s code,” was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Sen. Bill Hamrick (R-Carrollton), who is also the bill’s sponsor. “We had a hearing on the bill and discovered that some stakeholders had issues with the bill,” said committee aide Emily Fisher, “so Senator Hamrick asked those stakeholders to meet outside of the committee and work out some sort of compromise. The committee was set to hear the bill again, but we ran out of time.”

Hamrick “hopes to have worked out the stakeholders' concerns over the break this summer and fall in order to reach a version of the bill that may be passed and considered in the House,” Fisher said.

Human Trafficking Bill Takes Next Step in State House

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A State House Committee approved a bill cracking down on human trafficking on Wednesday. The bill, HB 200, now moves to the House Rules Committee where members will decide whether to schedule a vote. The measure places a heavy emphasis on elimination of child prostitution and punishing pimps.

Safe Haven Not Effective Says Health Official

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Georgia’s safe haven law is intended to save unwanted infants from abandonment but one health official says it may not work. According to Dr. Jack Birge, of the Carroll County, Ga., health board, a condition requiring parents to disclose personal information like their name, address and social security number before turning over their child is discouraging many from participating. “I think those are the circumstances that render the law potentially ineffective,” Birge told the Times-Georgian. The safe haven law allows parents to turn their newborn over to employees at hospitals and other medical facilities, without fear of prosecution. In Carroll County, no children have been turned over to officials in the last three years, however there were two children abandoned during that time, according to the Times-Georgian.

Saggy Pants Ban: Will It Overload Dublin, GA Courts, Encourage Racial Profiling?

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By Chandra R. Thomas

Dublin, Ga. Juvenile Court Judge William Tribble, Sr. says he has plenty of work to keep him busy on the bench. Now’s he’s concerned that a new ordinance signed into law Tuesday banning saggy pants in the middle Georgia city might end up overloading an already jam-packed court docket. “I can just see my assistant district attorney prosecuting a case like that,” says Tribble, who claims he spotted a young man in sagging pants on the streets of Dublin during his phone interview. “We’ll have a robbery and child molestation cases to handle and then there will be 20 baggy (pants) cases that we’ve got to get rid of.

Rural GA schools still spanking

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More than 28,500 students were spanked as a form of discipline in Georgia public schools last year. The latest annual report is out from the Georgia Department of Education called Counts of Discipline Actions. It reveals that corporal punishment was more prevalent in rural counties and in the southern parts of the state. Laurens County led the state with more than 2,400 students who got paddled. Randolph County was second, with almost 1600 students getting corporal punishment in 2009.