Greetings:
In June, state fire inspectors found barrel bolts on every fire exit at Ware State Prison and ordered them removed. In August they came back to find the bolts still there, new ones added to the dorm doors, control rooms empty and staff without keys. The same illegal hardware is on the cell doors inside most of Georgia’s prisons.
The design figures line up the same way. Georgia’s own FY1989 budget defined its 1990s prototype prisons as 500-cell facilities. Twenty-four of them now hold 27,541 people in space designed for 13,269, and 18 are above double their design. A block of new modular units the state sold as temporary swing space has become 524 permanent beds, backed by five executed contracts worth $85,585,244.
This period GPS filed 803 open records requests across 12 agencies, extended the Parole Board report series back to 1977, corrected its overcrowding math to the state’s own design basis, and mailed 51 firsthand stories into legislators’ hands.
| 7 articles · 51 stories to legislators · 927 emails · 6 new advocates |
New from GPS
Inside a three-man cell: a 3-D scan you can walk through
GPS published an interactive 3-D scan of a three-man Georgia prison cell (12 ft 8 in by 7 ft 8 in, about 27 square feet of open floor for three men) and reorganised End the Warehouse into a multi-page section: overview, the cell, what works, the legal pathway, real rehabilitation, what GPS is doing, and the receipts. English and Spanish.
The GPS Public MCP server is live: connect your AI directly to Georgia prison data
AI tools that support the Model Context Protocol, including Claude and ChatGPT, can now connect straight to GPS’s public datasets at data.gps.press/mcp, with no account or key. Twelve read-only tools cover population statistics, all 90 facilities, the mortality registry, parole statistics, the Georgia Code, settlements, and more, and every answer carries its source link and citation. A step-by-step guide is at gps.press/how-to-use-gps-data-with-ai-tools.
Significant work this period
Death records requested for three more prisons, and a statewide homicide series begun
GPS filed 224 open records requests with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation: the official death records for every death recorded at Macon, Baldwin and Valdosta state prisons, the remainder of the set for Johnson, and the first of a statewide series covering deaths Georgia recorded as homicides, wherever they happened. The homicide series runs to 246 requests and is being filed in batches.
Records work: fire-exit follow-ups and the modular-prison procurement trail
GPS pressed the state fire-safety office on items it had not yet produced, filed a request with the Department of Administrative Services to settle which agency ran the purchase of the state’s new modular prison housing after two agencies each pointed at the other, and re-filed its annual request for the Department of Corrections’ inmate classification counts at state and private prisons. Three GBI productions that arrived the same afternoon were captured and indexed.
Georgia Archives corrections holdings catalogued and 1.5 GB of public records
GPS catalogued every prison, parole and corrections record series held at the Georgia Archives, 104 series with box numbers, and pulled the public record around them: state annual reports back to 1944, 82 State Auditor reviews of the Department of Corrections from 2004 to 2025, and federal criminal-justice archive holdings. The catalog and the audit findings are now part of GPS’s research base, though it will still take some time to make all these records available.
Parole Board annual-report series now from 1989 to 2025
A paid records production from the State Board of Pardons and Paroles delivered eleven annual reports covering fiscal years 1989 through 2000, and six more volumes from the late 1970s and 1980s were recovered from a federal criminal-justice archive. GPS’s searchable Parole Board corpus now runs from FY1989 to FY2025, with earlier years back to 1977, every page citable.
County records processed: a 911 dispatch record and 62 medical examiner case files
GPS filed open-records requests with the state fire-safety office, the Department of Corrections and the GBI, and processed two county productions: a county E-911 office’s complete dispatch record for a prison death, and a county medical examiner’s case files covering 62 deaths at one state prison. Every one of those 62 deaths was already in GPS’s mortality registry, and 52 records gained medical-examiner detail.
GDC staff roster added to GPS’s public data tools
GPS added the Georgia Department of Corrections staff roster to its public data tools. You can now look up who works at a given prison, with job titles and a headcount, through the Lighthouse AI, the public data API, and the GPS data server for AI assistants. The roster is a dated snapshot, so every answer carries the date it was observed.
Prison overcrowding measure corrected to the state’s own 500-cell design basis
GPS corrected its overcrowding dataset to the original architectural design of the 1990s prototype prisons: Georgia’s FY1989 budget itself defined them as 500-cell facilities. The 750 count we previously quoted was shown legally to be an over capacity and does not qualify as original design capacity. On the corrected basis, the 24 state prisons with confirmed design figures hold 27,541 people in space designed for 13,269, which is 208 percent of design, with 18 of 24 above double their design. The corrected 500-cell basis was then carried through every published page in both languages, and every overcrowding percentage derived from the old basis was recalculated. The End the Warehouse pages now compute their key statistics live from the database.
Upcoming events
Blue-Ribbon Committee on Criminal Post-Conviction Litigation, public meeting
Friday, 18 September, 9:00 a.m., Old Capitol Building, Milledgeville. The Georgia House Blue-Ribbon Study Committee on Criminal Post-Conviction Litigation meets in Milledgeville, and the public may attend. The committee is examining how people convicted in Georgia can challenge a conviction after trial, and it is taking testimony from the public as it goes. GPS spoke at its August meeting in Ellijay, where members said they rarely hear from people who have recently been inside, and GPS was asked to return in September. The committee’s notice asks anyone who wants to give testimony to contact the committee office in advance. If you or someone in your family has been through Georgia’s post-conviction process, this is a room where that experience is being asked for.
Featured story
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.
If you or someone you love has a firsthand account from inside, share it through Tell My Story, and pass the link to a loved one inside so their story can be heard.
Articles published
7 articles published, and 5 Spanish editions.
Twenty Percent of the Jail (5 September)
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.
10 Lessons from Frederick Douglass: How a Man Forbidden to Read Taught Himself Anyway (5 September)
Frederick Douglass was legally forbidden to read. He traded bread for lessons and taught himself to write in the margins of a discarded copybook. Ten lessons from the man who wrote down exactly how he did it.
Bolted In: Georgia Prisons Lock the Fire Exits, and the State’s Own Inspectors Keep Finding Them Locked (2 September)
Inspectors found barrel bolts on every fire exit at Ware State Prison in June and told GDC to remove them. In August the bolts were still there, with new ones on the dorm doors.
10 Lessons from The Brothers Karamazov: Justice, Mercy, and Who You Choose to Become (29 August)
Ten lessons on justice, mercy, wrongful conviction, and refusing to become the man the court describes, drawn from his novel about a trial that got it wrong.
The Swing Space That Wasn’t: 524 New Beds, a Border-Wall Family, and No Contract Georgia Will Show (24 August)
Georgia’s General Assembly appropriated $86 million for modular prison units sold as temporary swing space. GDC now calls them 524 permanent beds. Update, September 2: the state has since produced five executed contracts with ModCorr LLC totalling $85,585,244.
Pleading From a Laundry Bin: The Killing Baldwin’s Officers Were Warned About Is Now in Federal Court (24 August)
Four Baldwin State Prison officers face a federal jury over a 2024 killing the complaint says they were warned about in writing the day before. GPS’s registry corroborates every homicide the lawsuit lists.
BLUF: This Must Stop (23 August)
A mother says she has paid over $2,000 since June to protect her son at Wheeler Correctional Facility, after he told her he would be harmed if she didn’t send money via Cash App.
Postal Mailings this period
We put 51 firsthand stories from inside directly into Georgia legislators’ hands this period: real accounts mailed as Tell My Story postcards, each carrying a pull-quote and a QR code to the full story, delivered as physical mail so lawmakers can’t look away.
Have a story that belongs in a legislator’s hands? Share it at https://gps.press/tellmystory.
Emails sent on your behalf
927 emails sent this period: Legislative 921, Advocacy 6.
Open records requests
803 open records requests were made this period, across 12 different agencies or offices. We want to thank some dedicated volunteers for helping to process and then read and log these requests. It’s been a huge undertaking.
New advocates
6 new advocates joined this period. Welcome.
Explore GPS
Two corners of GPS worth a look:
Ask a question in plain English, like “how many people are in GDC custody” or “what is the habeas deadline,” and get the exact page and section that answers it, across everything GPS has published. Free, no login, English and Spanish.
Facility Intelligence Profiles
Deep-dive profiles of each GDC facility: conditions, deaths in custody, leadership, and documented incidents, drawn from GPS’s records.
The GPS Team, accountability@gps.press