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In-depth reporting on Georgia’s prison crisis — data-driven investigations, policy analysis, and the stories that need to be told.
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The Warden Shall Notify: Who Georgia’s Prisons Keep in the Dark, and the Law That Lets Them
A 1984 rule says the warden shall notify a prisoner's family when he is badly hurt. Family after family since December 2024 found out instead from an intern, a contraband phone, other prisoners or Facebook. The Department told the men at Autry there was no outbreak. And the statute that makes every inmate file a state secret is missing the one sentence the Parole Board's has...
Direct Selection: The Two-Page Note Behind Georgia’s $85,585,244 Prison Purchase
Georgia paid $85,585,244 for 524 modular prison beds. Asked how the vendor was chosen, GDC, DOAS and GSFIC each said the record wasn't theirs. Then GSFIC sent two undated pages: it read GDC's information request and "made a direct selection."...
Nobody Told Them: Georgia Convicted People on Science the FBI Disowned, Then Shut the Courthouse Door
The FBI has disowned three kinds of forensic testimony and sent letters each time. Georgia's crime lab read the 2015 hair admission, measured its own error rate at one in twenty, and told no one. The one court door that opened last year is one-shot. The other is closed by the four-year habeas deadline...
“Contained to One Dorm”: The Squad Left Wilcox at Noon. The Coroner Was Called at Two.
A tactical squad spent five hours turning out F2 dorm at Wilcox State Prison, then left at noon. The men were let out to shower. By two the coroner was called. GDC's own policies have four pages on the squad and no page for the hour after...
What the Videos Don’t Show
The prison videos on your feed aren't proof that the men in them can't be reached. Federal investigators read the same clips as proof of what a housing unit becomes when the state leaves it: half the posts empty, gangs deciding who sleeps where, drugs over a fence nobody watches. And the public already believes prisons don't fix anyone...
The Amplifier: How Five Unelected Officials Turned Georgia’s Prisons Into a Constitutional Crisis
Georgia's legislature wrote the sentences. Five appointees nobody elected decided how much of them people serve, and three times they turned the dial up, once by wiring their floor to judges' sentences so it rises on its own. The result is a prison system the DOJ says is unconstitutional...
When Nobody Comes: Surviving Georgia’s Prisons
Nine contributors describe what daily survival requires inside Georgia custody: boots worn into the shower, lunch carried back from breakfast, a fire alarm ringing into an empty post, and medication missed behind a locked door. Much of what keeps people alive is done by other prisoners...
Twenty Percent of the Jail
Georgia now reimburses rural county jails when more than 20 percent of their capacity is filled by people charged with delivering contraband to state prisons. Two sheriffs are in open revolt over the cost. Every dollar the state spends chases the supply chain it can see from a patrol car...
Bolted In: Georgia Prisons Lock the Fire Exits, and the State’s Own Inspectors Keep Finding Them Locked
State fire inspectors found barrel bolts on every fire exit at Ware State Prison in June and told GDC to remove them. In August they found the bolts still there, new ones on the dorm doors, empty control rooms and staff without keys. Inside Georgia's prisons, the same hardware is on the cell doors...
The Swing Space That Wasn’t: 524 New Beds, a Border-Wall Family, and No Contract Georgia Will Show
Georgia's General Assembly appropriated $86 million for modular prison units sold as temporary "swing space." GDC now calls them 524 permanent beds. The builder is owned by the Galveston family behind one of America's largest border-wall contractors. Update, September 2: the state has since produced five executed contracts with ModCorr LLC totalling $85,585,244, signed April 25, 2025. The solicitation behind them is still unaccounted for...
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