They Told the People in Charge. Then They Left.
Former Georgia prison officers, sergeants and supervisors say the same thing on the record: they...
A three-minute film from Georgia Prisoners' Speak
From the State's Own ReportsWhat Georgia Is Paying For
A man inside a Georgia prison wrote that you think you're paying for justice. You aren't, he wrote. We checked what he said against the state's own records.
Is anyone safer? This film takes three minutes to answer that. Every number in it comes from a public record.
People serving life who were released in 2025 had been inside 31 years on average. In 1992, it was twelve and a half. Georgia now holds more than 50,000 people in prisons built for less than half that many. The state spends about $1.75 billion a year to do it. Since 2020, 1,928 of them have died there.
Scenes are illustrations, not footage of real people.
When Georgia opened its prisons in the 1990s, it budgeted 63 positions for every 100 beds. Today they have only 11 staff for every 100 inmates.
These prisons hold 2.6 times what they were designed for, with about a fifth of the staff per inmate the state budgeted to open and operate them. Those 11 are spread across round-the-clock shifts, days off, vacations and sick leave. A former Ware State Prison officer says he ran four buildings alone on some nights: “That’s 400 inmates by myself.” On a Friday and a Saturday in January 2026, Washington State Prison’s shift rosters showed five or six officers for 69 security posts and more than 1,500 inmates.
Georgia's prisons are killing people.
1,928+
Deaths Since 2020
224
Deaths in 2026 So Far 34 homicides
51,644
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Sources for the figures at the top of this page
Opening staff: Georgia budget reports, FY1989 to FY1995, positions funded “to open and operate” 13 prisons opened 1990 to 1995 (all job types; the budgets don’t separate officers): Hays, Telfair, Autry, Washington, Johnson, Hancock, Ware, Smith, Wilcox, Macon, Dooly, Calhoun and Pulaski. Staff now: GDC’s staff roster dated August 27, 2026, everyone listed at those prisons except people marked on leave. Inmates held: GDC’s Inmate Statistical Profile for August 2026, by facility. Opening figures are authorized positions; the roster lists people employed. Former officer: Christopher Hickox, interview with Tyler Ryals, June 2026, on Ryals’s YouTube channel, as reported in GPS’s They Told the People in Charge. Then They Left. Washington State Prison: GDC shift rosters for January 9 and 10, 2026, released to FAIR Georgia and published in GPS’s They Knew: Empty Posts, Broken Locks, and Georgia’s Deadliest Prison Week.