Where Georgia’s prison food money really goes
The state’s “food budget” is one small, honest number. The real economy around feeding Georgia’s prisoners runs through four other channels — most of them built on unpaid incarcerated labor and margins the state refuses to disclose.
…per meal. Georgia’s appropriated “Food and Farm Operations” line is about $31 million a year — roughly $0.54 a meal, about 15% of the American Correctional Association’s ~$3.66 recommendation, and down ~60% in real terms since 2015. That’s the part the state shows you. Source: Georgia Governor’s Budget Reports / Open Georgia appropriations; ACA meal-cost benchmark.
What that number hides
Behind the $31M food line sit four much larger flows of money and labor. Three of the four run on incarcerated workers paid little or nothing — and the most profitable one is run by the state itself.
The food the state grows — with unpaid labor
$325.7Mto GCI from GDC, FY18–25 (Open Georgia)Georgia Correctional Industries (GCI) is a state-owned, self-funded corporation — total revenue about $83M/year (state ACFR) — that grows, cans, and processes much of the food served inside, across five food-processing units and six farms. Georgia pays its incarcerated industries workers $0 — unusual even among prison-labor states.
Roughly half of GCI’s sales to GDC are food (an estimate — the state reports GCI as a single undifferentiated line and is exempt from breaking it out). And GCI is a mandatory, no-bid “preferred source”: state agencies are required by law to buy from it.
Sources: Open Georgia state payments; Georgia ACFR (GCI internal-service fund); GCI fact sheet; ACLU Captive Labor (2022); O.C.G.A. § 42-10 / DOAS Tier-Three mandatory sources.
The family-package monopoly
$14.5MGDC→Aramark, FY2025 — up ~5× since FY22Georgia ended the practice of letting families mail food and clothing to their incarcerated loved ones and funneled them to a single approved vendor — Access Securepak, then Union Supply (a vendor Aramark bought in 2022). Families may now send one food package per quarter (capped at 15 lbs or $100) and one clothing/property package per month — at captive-market prices.
The ~5× jump to $14.5M in GDC’s payments to Aramark since 2022 tracks this program — GDC buys the goods in bulk, and they’re packaged by incarcerated women at Lee Arrendale State Prison. The cost is in the structure: families are locked to a single vendor and buy basics one unit at a time at marked-up prices — a single T-shirt for $4.55–$9.25, socks $1.35 a pair — plus shipping and sales tax, on goods they were once allowed to mail in for free.
Sources: GDC vendor-transition notice (Union Supply replaced Access Securepak 1/1/2017); GDC SOP 206.01; GCI fact sheet (Lee Arrendale fulfillment); Open Georgia; archived Georgia Union Supply package catalog. Note: pay status of the Arrendale packaging work is disputed (GCI cites a federal PIE “prevailing wage”; advocacy data shows $0) and the exact GDC commission is not public.
The commissary — where the state is the profiteer
~$47Mextracted from families, 2024The in-prison store is inmate-funded — the state contract with the vendor (Georgia Commissary Suppliers / Stewart’s) has a face value of $1.00. The money is the markup: GDC itself sets prices 54–323% over wholesale — 132% on candy, up to 833% on a shower cap — generating about $19.8M/year in markup (a ~73% gross margin), and remits 30.5% of store sales to its Central Office.
GDC is the one marking up basics — for people it pays nothing — and keeping the difference. Read our commissary investigation →
Sources: GDC statewide commissary contract (eff. 11/01/25) — COMPENSATION terms; GDC SOP 407.02 (30.5% remittance); GPS analysis of the 519-item GDC commissary price file (FY2024).
The kitchens — in-house, quietly privatizing
4 facilitiesflagged for food-service privatization, FY2025Georgia’s prison kitchens are run in-house (by GCI), not by an outside food contractor — its annual reports say so. But amid a staffing collapse (correctional-officer vacancies of 47–55%), the FY2025 budget quietly lists “privatizing food services at four facilities.” Aramark has historically run only two prison kitchens (Hays and Smith). This is the leading edge of outsourcing kitchens the state can no longer staff — worth watching.
Sources: GDC Annual Fiscal Reports (FY2018–2025, staffing + food-service); FY2025 Governor’s Budget Report (reductions). The full list of facilities is not yet public — we name only the two that are confirmed.
The same system, across our data
Every number below comes from GPS’s own databases and evidence — click through to the underlying data.
The numbers we can’t see — and why
Three of the most important figures here are undisclosed by design, and the Department fee-loads open-records requests that would pry them loose:
- GCI’s food share — reported as one lump “Sales and Services” line; the state is formally exempt from breaking it out. Our ~half is an estimate.
- The family-package commission — what GDC earns from the Union Supply program isn’t in any public contract (it runs through a prison-labor program, not a competitive bid).
- The pay for package-fulfillment labor at Lee Arrendale — disputed between a federal “prevailing wage” claim and $0.
- What’s actually in the food — GPS has open-records requests in flight for GCI’s product and ingredient sheets and for the statewide Master Menu. The Department’s first response was a fee estimate, not the records.
We publish the verified figures and label the estimates as estimates. How we verify →
This is your tax money — and your family’s.
Georgia feeds people at 54 cents a meal while marking up the food and goods their families are forced to buy. Tell the people who can change it.
Find your legislator Submit a report