The Atlanta Police Department is cracking down on repeat offenders with a new Repeat Offender Tracking Unit. Police say 1,000 repeat offenders are responsible for 40 percent of the crimes committed in the city.
In just one week, Atlanta Police arrested 20 repeat offenders who had a total of 553 previous arrests and 114 felony convictions.
The new unit will share information between police and the court system to keep offenders in jail longer instead of bonding out and committing another crime, 11Alive reports.
Mayor Andre Dickens said training resources and programs exist; they just have to get repeat offenders off the streets first.
The tendency of a previously convicted criminal to re-offend or recidivism rates in the country show that areas that depend heavily on re-entry programs have the lowest rates of repeat offenders in the country.
"Any system that allows a cycle of career crime is a broken system," Dickens said at Tuesday's press conference.
