When a man is killed inside a Georgia prison, someone usually gets charged with the stabbing. Almost nobody asks what the staff knew. We think that has to change. We’re asking Georgians to help change it.
In October 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice found that gangs “have unacceptable levels of control over large sections of Georgia’s prison system” and decide “where individuals live.” 1 GDC’s own staff told DOJ that wardens are responsible for managing the gangs in their prisons. None of this was hidden. Since 2020, GPS’s death registry records at least 268 homicides among at least 1,928 deaths in GDC custody, as of November 3, 2026.
“GDC personnel reported that facility wardens bear responsibility for managing gangs in their facilities, and the wardens in turn typically have a sergeant assigned to STG monitoring. These STG sergeants report directly to their respective facility wardens.” U.S. Department of Justice, findings on Georgia prisons, October 1, 2024
When staff put a known gang member in a dorm full of men who aren’t in a gang, they know the risk. When someone has warned them about a specific man, they know more than that.
In September 2024, at Dooly State Prison, Zeary Davis was killed. Before that, the Commissioner had a written warning about the dorm. The deputy warden and a captain got phone calls the day before Davis died. According to accounts GPS has received, the man now charged with Davis’s murder had broken another man’s jaw in that dorm weeks earlier, and he admitted it to the warden. He stayed in the dorm. Read the reporting here.
In Georgia, that kind of choice is already covered by law. Reckless conduct means consciously disregarding a substantial and unjustifiable risk to someone’s safety. 2 When a death follows, it can be charged as involuntary manslaughter. 3 A public officer who commits a crime in office can be charged with violating his oath. 4 Staff who help an attack are parties to it. Federal civil rights law covers the same ground.
Prosecutors have charged staff who opened a door for an attacker. A case where staff were warned and did nothing? We haven’t found one. The law doesn’t stop them. What’s missing is a prosecutor willing to ask.
On every case with probable cause, the district attorney has a duty to look. 5 A homicide inside a state prison is a homicide in that circuit. But the Department of Justice found that most investigations stay inside GDC. The GBI comes in only when GDC asks. 6
Here is what we’re asking for.
District attorneys: review every homicide in a state prison in your circuit, and ask one more question than you do now. Was anyone on staff warned, and what did they do?
Wardens, deputy wardens and captains, this is a notice. GPS will send the warnings to the district attorney, the GBI and federal prosecutors when it learns that staff were warned about a specific danger to a man in their custody and that man is then hurt or killed. What each of them does with it, we’ll report.
Everyone else: call the district attorney for the circuit where a prison sits and ask what their office does when a man is killed there. Ask for the answer in writing. If someone you love was hurt or killed after staff were warned, tell us at gps.press/submit-a-report/.
Gang separation costs nothing. It’s a housing decision, and people who know who’s in which gang make it every day. Make the wrong one after a warning, and it shouldn’t be treated as bad luck. It should be treated as a case.
Call to Action: What You Can Do
If this was worth your time, share it with someone who should read it.
Spread the Word: It Takes One Click
Awareness without action changes nothing. Here’s how you can help push for accountability and real reform:
Join the GPS Advocacy Network: Sign up at https://gps.press/become-an-advocate/ and we’ll advocate on your behalf every week. GPS identifies your state legislators, crafts personalized letters on the most pressing prison issues, and sends them directly to the representatives who represent you. You receive a copy of every letter. It takes two minutes to sign up, and we handle the rest.
Send a 60-Second Message: Pick an issue, get a ready-to-edit message with the verified facts already in it, and email your state House representative and senator directly from your own inbox at https://gps.press/send-a-message/. No signup, nothing stored. It takes about a minute.
Tell My Story: Are you or a loved one affected by Georgia’s prison system? GPS publishes first-person accounts from incarcerated people and their families. Submit your story at https://gps.press/tellmystory and help the world understand what’s really happening behind the walls.
Contact Your Representatives: Your state legislators control GDC’s budget, oversight, and the laws that created these failures. Find your Georgia legislators at https://gps.press/find-your-legislator/ or call Governor Kemp at (404) 656-1776 or the GDC Commissioner at (478) 992-5246.
Demand Media Coverage: Contact newsrooms at the AJC, local TV stations, and national criminal justice outlets. More coverage means more pressure.
Amplify on Social Media: Share this article and tag @GovKemp, @GDC_Georgia, and your local representatives. Use #GAPrisons, #PrisonReform, #GeorgiaPrisonerSpeak.
Message the Board of Corrections: The citizen board that oversees the GDC publishes no contact details for its members. GPS built the missing front door: pick a board member and a policy message and send it from your own email at https://gps.press/write-the-board/.
File Public Records Requests: Georgia’s Open Records Act gives every citizen the right to request incident reports, death records, staffing data, medical logs, and financial documents. Start with the GPS Action Toolkits at https://gps.press/toolkits/. The Open Records Toolkit walks you through what to ask for, gives you ready-to-file request templates, and tells you what to do when the state says no. File directly with GDC at https://georgiadcor.govqa.us/WEBAPP/_rs/SupportHome.aspx.
Attend Public Meetings: The Georgia Board of Corrections and legislative committees hold public meetings. Your presence is noticed.
Contact the Department of Justice: File civil rights complaints at https://civilrights.justice.gov. Federal oversight has forced abusive systems to change before.
Support Organizations Doing This Work: Donate to or volunteer with Georgia-based prison reform groups fighting for change on the ground.
Vote: Research candidates’ positions on criminal justice. Primary elections often determine outcomes in Georgia.
Contact GPS: If you have information about conditions inside Georgia’s prisons, reach us securely at GPS.press.
Further Reading
When Prison Staff Work for the Gangs
The reporting behind this editorial: the warnings before Zeary Davis was killed, GDC’s own discipline rules, and the law that reaches staff who ignore a known danger.
Seconds to Kill, the Rest of Your Life to Pay: The Murder Charge in Zeary Davis’s Death
The indictment in Zeary Davis’s death at Dooly State Prison.
Separate the Gangs or Keep Burying the Dead
The no-cost housing change GDC hasn’t made, and the deaths that follow.
Criminal liability of Georgia prison staff when a gang member they housed with others kills someone
GPS’s research collection on the state and federal charges that can reach prison staff, with every source.
GPS Intelligence System
Arrests, charges and accounts of GDC staff working with the people they’re paid to guard.
Homicides and assaults across Georgia’s prisons, and what GDC has been told about them.
Explore the Data
GPS makes GDC statistics accessible to the public through several resources:
- GPS Statistics Portal: Interactive dashboards translating complex GDC reports into accessible formats, updated within days of official releases.
- GPS Lighthouse AI: Ask questions about Georgia’s prison system and get answers drawn from GPS’s investigative archive and data analysis.
- GPS llms.txt: A single machine-readable index of every GPS data resource, published using the open llms.txt standard. Point any AI tool (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity) at this URL and the model can navigate to facility profiles, intelligence briefs, mortality records, statistics, and the full investigative archive, with no other configuration needed. It is the fastest way to ground an AI conversation in verified GPS data.
- GPS Public MCP Server: For AI tools that support the Model Context Protocol (Claude, ChatGPT, and others), connect directly to GPS’s data: read-only tools covering population, facilities, mortality, parole, the Georgia Code, settlements, and more. Every answer arrives with its source link and citation built in.
For a walkthrough of how to put these resources to work with AI, see How to Use GPS Data with AI Tools: a step-by-step guide for researchers, advocates, families, and journalists analyzing Georgia prison conditions, statistics, and policy with tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.
Contact GPS at media@gps.press for access to underlying datasets used in this analysis.
About Georgia Prisoners’ Speak (GPS)
Georgia Prisoners’ Speak (GPS) is a nonprofit investigative newsroom built in partnership with incarcerated reporters, families, advocates, and data analysts. Operating independently from the Georgia Department of Corrections, GPS documents the truth the state refuses to acknowledge: extreme violence, fatal medical neglect, gang-controlled dorms, collapsed staffing, fraudulent reporting practices, and unconstitutional conditions across Georgia’s prisons.
Through confidential reporting channels, secure communication, evidence verification, public-records requests, legislative research, and professional investigative standards, GPS provides the transparency the system lacks. Our mission is to expose abuses, protect incarcerated people, support families, and push Georgia toward meaningful reform based on human rights, evidence, and public accountability.
Every article is part of a larger fight: to end the silence, reveal the truth, and demand justice.
The Architecture Is the Evidence
Across the 32 state prisons whose original design figures we hold, Georgia built for 15,737. They hold 33,805 — 215% of design capacity.
Dorms tripled. Cells double- and triple-bunked. Medical, kitchens, libraries — unchanged. Every facility, every design figure, every source.
See the receipts →- DOJ findings report on Georgia prisons, October 1, 2024, https://www.justice.gov/d9/2024-09/findings_report_-_investigation_of_georgia_prisons.pdf [↩]
- O.C.G.A. § 16-5-60, https://gps.press/ocga/16-5-60/ [↩]
- O.C.G.A. § 16-5-3, https://gps.press/ocga/16-5-3/ [↩]
- O.C.G.A. § 16-10-1, https://gps.press/ocga/16-10-1/ [↩]
- O.C.G.A. § 15-18-6, https://gps.press/ocga/15-18-6/ [↩]
- DOJ findings report on Georgia prisons, https://www.justice.gov/d9/2024-09/findings_report_-_investigation_of_georgia_prisons.pdf [↩]