Federal cuts setback crime reduction efforts in rural Georgia

The now defunct Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) made sweeping cuts to the U.S. Department of Justice that resulted in rural Georgia communities losing funding for programs to reduce criminal activity, according to WABE.

The Rural Communities Diploma Program, run by the Dr. Annise Mabry Foundation, will hold its last graduation this year after losing federal funding.

A partnership between the foundation and the Burke County Sheriff’s Office initiated the program with $1.3 million in federal funding.

Annise Mabry said one of the last graduates of the program joined when he was 11 years old. At the time, he was being bullied and fighting at school all because he couldn’t read. Now, he’s graduating from high school.

“Could you imagine if this program hadn’t been there for him?” Mabry asked. “He would have fallen through the cracks.”

More than 400 kids have graduated from the program, and through other private grant funders, their parents, who didn’t have a high school diploma, were able to receive theirs as well.

Julianne Dunn is with the national nonprofit Local Initiatives Support Corporation, which helped fund the program in Burke County.

She said keeping people in rural areas is already tough enough without having high rates of crime.

“It often comes back to how safe people feel, and it doesn’t even take that much crime to make people feel unsafe,” she said.

Rural communities are home to 20% of the population in the U.S., but they receive as low as 6% of federal and private funding, Dunn said. With the additional cuts from the federal government, Dunn said many rural communities do not have anywhere else to go to fund these programs.