Damita Bishop, co-founder of prison reform nonprofit FAIR and author of the Georgia Second Chance and Smart Justice Reform Act, has qualified as a Republican candidate for House District 61. GPS profiles her criminal justice reform platform and its alignment with both the End the Warehouse and Vision 2027 campaigns.
The squeaking shoes are what I remember first—the sound that now triggers my PTSD. Within minutes, a gang war erupted at Wilcox State Prison, and I watched a young man get stabbed to death. Then came the lockdown, punishing everyone except those responsible.
Photographs from Johnson State Prison reveal contaminated food trays — the result of broken dishwashers, chemical-barrel washing, and 30 years of deferred maintenance. Three Georgia prisons have failed health inspections since 2022 while the state spends just $0.60 per meal.
In less than three months, Warden Kendric Jackson transferred 87 lifers out of Calhoun State Prison — 79% to close-security facilities. GPS data reveals a systematic population swap: stable, long-term inmates shipped to Level 5 prisons while younger short-timers arrive from those same facilities. No other medium-security prison in Georgia is doing anything close to this.
At 52 years old with no criminal record, she entered county jail thinking it was a formality. Two years later, she was released—all charges dropped, but everything lost. Her story exposes the dehumanizing conditions of pretrial detention and her journey from inmate to criminal justice advocate.
Working in Telfair’s tier unit during a sweltering July, I witnessed an act of deliberate cruelty I’ll never forget. The Unit Manager intentionally turned on the heat in cells already baking from metal-plated windows, telling staff these men were ‘supposed to be punished.’ That same officer now runs Georgia’s largest prison.
Georgia’s prison phone crackdown spent years failing to stop $1.5 million in scams at a single prison — before and after MAS arrived. The $50M blocking system is deaf by design. Georgia already has the hardware, the law, and the precedent to monitor instead. The Commissioner needs to make one decision.
Georgia is the only state where unconfirmed field drug tests can convict. Colorado just banned arrests based on these $2 tests — unanimously. Here’s how advocates can bring that reform to Georgia.
Georgia is the only state where unconfirmed $2 field drug tests can convict someone at trial. Colorado just unanimously banned arrests based on these tests. An estimated 961 Georgians are falsely arrested annually.
Georgia is the only state where a $2 field drug test can sustain a conviction at trial. Colorado just showed — unanimously — how to fix it. A zero-cost reform could protect 961 Georgians falsely arrested each year.