Pulaski State Prison - Georgia - Crisis

Pulaski State Prison Crisis: Untested Warden, Deadly History

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A Facility in Crisis Gets an Untested Warden

In April 2025, Pamela Dixon’s phone rang with the same call she had come to dread. Another mother on the other end, voice shaking, describing what was happening to her daughter inside Pulaski State Prison. Dixon knew the script by heart. She had lived it herself — had paid over $10,000 in extortion demands to gang members who threatened to disfigure her daughter’s face if she didn’t send $300 by eight o’clock that night via Cash App. 1

But this time, the caller wasn’t describing gang threats. She was describing the warden.

Georgia Prisoners’ Speak has received reports from families, advocates, and incarcerated women at Pulaski State Prison describing a pattern of conditions under new leadership that mirrors the facility’s long history of crisis: allegations of face-to-face intimidation by senior staff during inspections, retaliatory housing assignments that place women in unsafe conditions, extended lockdowns denying access to phones, showers, and commissary, and a grievance process that families say has ceased to function. Multiple sources report that women who speak up about conditions are warned — explicitly and implicitly — that doing so will make things worse.

These reports arrive at a moment when Pulaski’s new warden, Wendy Jackson, is barely ten months into leading one of the most troubled women’s prisons in the United States — a facility where at least 22 women died under a single doctor’s care, where gang members sexually assaulted women at knifepoint, and where the U.S. Department of Justice documented constitutional violations during a 2022-2023 investigation. 2

The question families are asking is straightforward: Who decided Wendy Jackson was prepared for this?

A Facility With a Body Count

To understand what Jackson inherited, you have to understand what Pulaski State Prison has done to the women inside it.

Between 2005 and 2015, Dr. Yvon Nazaire served as medical director at Pulaski. During that decade, at least 22 women died — 15 at Pulaski, five shortly after release, and two more at the nearby Emanuel Women’s Facility where Nazaire also practiced. Georgia hired Nazaire despite documented patient deaths and malpractice accusations from his previous practice in New York, where the state medical board had sanctioned him for gross negligence in treating five emergency room patients and required three years of monitored practice. 3

Rather than raising alarms, Nazaire’s supervisors praised him for cutting costs. Health services administrator Betty Rogers recommended him for a raise, noting he was “saving the DOC so much money and goes above and beyond any other physician in the system.” The savings came from denying women outside consultations — the same consultations that might have saved their lives. 4

When Nazaire was finally fired in October 2015 — not for the deaths, but for lying on his employment application — the state had already paid more than $3 million in settlements to families, including $1.5 million to the family of Mollianne Fischer, whom Nazaire left in a vegetative state by failing to prescribe a blood thinner despite clear risk indicators. 5

After Nazaire’s departure, the Georgia Department of Corrections created a women’s health specialist position. Dr. Cheryl Young was hired in May 2016 — and fired five months later. Young later told reporters she had tried to get officials to address systemic problems, including limited screening standards for uterine cancer. “I told them if they didn’t correct this stuff, they’d have a lot of girls who had cancer,” Young said. “I told them that, but they didn’t want to hear it, because they didn’t want to spend the money.” The position was never filled again.

The AJC documented eight more deaths at Pulaski in just ten months following Nazaire’s departure. 6

The medical crisis was only one dimension of the catastrophe. By late 2021, Bloods gang activity surged at Pulaski after an influx of inmates from Lee Arrendale State Prison. Women were beaten, extorted, and sexually assaulted. Two women reported being sodomized at knifepoint by gang members demanding protection payments. The Georgia Department of Corrections opened 20 investigations into gang assault and extortion at the facility. 7

U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff called for an FBI investigation into Pulaski specifically, calling the situation “tragic and wholly unacceptable.” 8

In December 2022, Christina Buttery was found dead in her bunk from a toxic combination of methamphetamine and fentanyl. Her father, Stephen Buttery, had hoped prison would keep his daughter safe from drugs. Instead, her family reports she was assigned to a gang-dominated dorm, where she was bullied, extorted, sexually harassed, and beaten by a gang leader before her overdose. Between 2019 and 2022, at least 49 Georgia prisoners died from overdoses — up from two in 2018. 9

Pulaski currently houses 1,185 women in a facility with a capacity of 1,223 — a utilization rate of 96.9%. It has more correctional officer vacancies than any other prison in the Georgia Department of Corrections. 10

This is the facility Wendy Jackson was chosen to lead.

The Career Path That Led Here

On April 16, 2025, GDC Commissioner Tyrone Oliver announced Jackson’s promotion from Superintendent at Metro Transitional Center to Warden at Pulaski State Prison. The press release praised her “exceptional leadership and work ethic.” 11

Jackson’s entire career has unfolded within the GDC’s internal pipeline. She began in 2008 as a correctional officer at Bleckley Probation Detention Center, a 238-bed minimum-security facility for female probation violators. In 2010, she transferred to Metro State Prison as a Correctional Officer II — a women’s maximum-security facility that was shuttered in 2011 due to budget cuts. In 2012, she moved to Metro Transitional Center, a 235-bed minimum-security facility for women in Atlanta.

From there, Jackson served in multiple roles at Lee Arrendale State Prison — Georgia’s largest women’s facility — including Chief of Security, Unit Manager, and Assistant Superintendent. She then returned to Metro Transitional Center as Superintendent before her promotion to Pulaski.

Her educational background is an associate degree in early childhood education from Perimeter College. She holds no degree in criminal justice, penology, corrections management, or public administration. Her professional development consists entirely of GDC internal training programs: Basic Correctional Officer Training, Supervision I through III, and Warden’s Pre-Command.

In practical terms, Jackson jumped from running a 235-bed minimum-security transitional center to leading a 1,223-capacity medium-security state prison housing some of Georgia’s most vulnerable women — a facility under federal scrutiny, plagued by lethal medical neglect, gang violence, drug deaths, and chronic understaffing.

GPS has previously reported on how GDC’s insular promotion pipeline produces leaders unprepared for the scale of crises they inherit. 12 Jackson’s trajectory is a case study in that pattern.

What Was Happening at Lee Arrendale

Jackson’s years at Lee Arrendale State Prison deserve scrutiny — not because she was warden there, but because the conditions documented during her tenure as Chief of Security, Unit Manager, and Assistant Superintendent raise serious questions about the institutional culture she was trained in.

In April 2021, the Southern Center for Human Rights documented conditions at Arrendale that included the shackling and solitary confinement of postpartum women, filthy cells with defective plumbing and electrical systems, brown contaminated water, inedible meals, and chronic understaffing so severe that stabbings, beatings, and thefts went unchecked because there were simply no officers present to intervene. 13

By August 2021, state lawmakers were physically barred from touring the facility. State Representative Erick Allen told reporters: “The system is surviving by walling itself off from the public. They are sealed off from scrutiny.”

In February 2024, the GDC Tactical Squad forced 576 women in Arrendale’s B-Unit to strip naked en masse in view of fellow inmates, under threat of violence and disciplinary action. The women were then held outside in 46-degree weather for more than 30 minutes with their hands behind their backs. When women filed grievances, they were denied under a blanket “exigent circumstances” provision. 14

Later that year, two women — Sherry Joyce, age 61, and Hallie Reed, age 23 — were both strangled by the same prisoner in Arrendale’s mental health unit. Reed had requested protective custody and been denied. The GDC did not inform families for months. Joyce’s family learned of her death from an AJC reporter in August — they had assumed she died peacefully. Reed’s mother learned through an email from a GDC legal officer. 15

In July 2025, Sheqweetta Vaughan — a 32-year-old mother who had given birth just six months earlier — was found dead in cell H-19 at Lee Arrendale. Her body was already decomposing. The deputy coroner noted a strong odor of decay and estimated she had been dead for two to four hours before he arrived, though the extreme heat in her cell — temperatures in the 90s with almost no ventilation — made determining the time of death difficult. Her aunt, a registered nurse, insisted Vaughan had been dead far longer. 16

According to prison incident logs, a neighboring prisoner reported hearing Vaughan call for medical help around 6 a.m. the morning before her body was discovered. No one responded. 17

These are the conditions that shaped Wendy Jackson’s professional development. These are the facilities where she learned how a women’s prison operates.

What Families Are Reporting Now

GPS has received reports from multiple sources — families, advocates, and incarcerated women — describing conditions at Pulaski under the new administration that echo the facility’s worst documented patterns.

Sources describe a warden who conducts face-to-face confrontations with individual prisoners during facility inspections — a practice that advocates say creates a climate of intimidation rather than accountability. Families report that women who file complaints or express concerns about conditions have been subjected to retaliatory housing assignments, including placement in areas known to be unsafe or unsanitary. Multiple sources describe extended lockdowns lasting five or more days during which women are denied access to telephone calls, showers, commissary, and in some cases, working locks on their doors.

The grievance system, which federal law requires prisoners to exhaust before they can pursue legal remedies, is described by families as nonfunctional. Women report being warned that filing grievances will result in consequences — a pattern GPS has documented extensively across Georgia’s prison system.

“In Georgia, a grievance is not confidential and retaliation is assured. For years now, that retaliation has come from officers working with gangs to have the person ‘touched up.’ Some of the deaths in here? They’re hits ordered for filing a grievance.”

— An incarcerated person speaking to GPS in a previous investigation

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Perhaps most troubling, sources report that women who have been previously assaulted — including sexual assault — have been denied safe housing requests and warned that continued complaints could result in placement in locations where they would face further danger.

GPS has been unable to independently verify each individual allegation at this time. The GDC does not respond to GPS media inquiries. However, the pattern described is consistent with documented conditions at Pulaski going back more than a decade and with systemic grievance failures documented by the DOJ, the AJC, Prison Legal News, and GPS’s own reporting.

The Grievance Trap

Understanding why women at Pulaski cannot simply “report” what is happening requires understanding how Georgia’s prison grievance system actually functions.

Under the federal Prison Litigation Reform Act, prisoners must exhaust the internal grievance process before they can file a civil lawsuit — no matter how severe the abuse. In Georgia, that means filing within 10 calendar days, following precise procedural requirements, and navigating a system that families and legal advocates describe as designed to prevent successful filing.

The DOJ’s 2024 investigation found that Georgia’s grievance systems were plagued by “delays, dismissals, and a lack of transparency,” that incarcerated people who cooperated with federal investigators faced “ongoing violence and retaliation — such as physical assaults and threats — even months or years after assisting investigators,” and that the GDC “failed to safeguard individuals” who spoke up. 19

In June 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court expanded jury trial rights for prisoners who had been blocked from filing grievances — an acknowledgment at the highest judicial level that the system meant to protect prisoners was being weaponized against them. 20

At Pulaski, the consequences are amplified. With the highest correctional officer vacancy rate in the state, there are fewer witnesses to abuse, fewer staff to process complaints, and less institutional capacity to respond to emergencies. Women who file grievances do so knowing that the system designed to adjudicate their complaints is controlled by the same administration they are complaining about.

A Crisis Across Georgia’s Women’s Prisons

Pulaski does not exist in isolation. Georgia’s women’s prisons are experiencing a systemic crisis that has received far less attention than the violence in the men’s system — despite producing its own body count.

Women represent approximately 7% of Georgia’s total prison population of 50,238. 21 Yet the conditions they face mirror the worst documented in the men’s facilities: gang control, medical neglect, chronic understaffing, overcrowding, and violence.

Georgia’s prison system recorded 333 deaths in 2024 — the highest on record — with the death rate running 70% higher than the national average for state prisons. People incarcerated in Georgia are 32 times more likely to be murdered than people living freely in the state. Since 2020, GPS has tracked 1,654 deaths in GDC custody. 22

The DOJ’s October 2024 findings described conditions across Georgia’s prisons as “horrific and inhumane,” documenting chronic understaffing, gang control, routine violence, and systematic denial of medical care. The report found that the GDC “fails to provide incarcerated persons with the constitutionally required minimum of reasonable physical safety.” Pulaski was among the 17 facilities the DOJ visited during its investigation.

Yet federal enforcement has effectively been abandoned. The DOJ report produced no consent decree, no court-ordered reforms, and no ongoing monitoring. Under the current administration, the federal government has shown no interest in enforcing its own findings. That leaves private litigation — which the grievance system is designed to prevent — and public pressure as the only remaining avenues for accountability.

Meanwhile, Georgia has increased its corrections budget by $700 million between FY 2022 and FY 2026, the fastest spending growth in agency history. The results: prison homicides rose from 8 annually to over 100 in 2024. Staffing remains 50-76% vacant. Healthcare was found unconstitutional. The money, by every measurable outcome, bought nothing. 23

Who Is Watching?

Pulaski State Prison sits at the intersection of every failure in Georgia’s corrections system: a facility with a documented history of lethal negligence, led by a warden whose career was shaped entirely within that same failing system, overseen by a department that has proven incapable of self-correction, in a state that has walled itself off from federal oversight and barred its own lawmakers from inspecting conditions.

The women inside Pulaski cannot safely file grievances. They cannot safely contact their families. They cannot safely describe what is happening to them. And the system — from the GDC to the state legislature to the federal government — has made clear that it will not come looking for answers on its own.

Families are the last line of defense. They are the ones receiving coded messages, paying extortion demands, calling legislators who do not call back, and writing letters to anyone who might listen. They are the ones who know that when communication from inside suddenly stops, it doesn’t mean things are fine. It means things have gotten worse.

GPS will continue to investigate conditions at Pulaski State Prison under its current leadership. We urge anyone with information — family members, current or former staff, advocates, or legal professionals — to contact us securely through our reporting portal at GPS.press or at media@gps.press.

The women at Pulaski are not statistics. They are mothers, daughters, sisters, and human beings who were sentenced to serve time — not to be silenced, intimidated, or abandoned. Georgia owes them better. We intend to make sure Georgia knows it.

Explore the Data

GPS makes GDC statistics accessible to the public through several resources:

Contact GPS at ~media@gps.press~ for access to underlying datasets, including the parolees near max-out, parolees past max-out, and lifer parolees CSV files used in this analysis.

Call to Action: What You Can Do

Awareness without action changes nothing. Here are the most effective ways you can help push for accountability and real reform:

Use Impact Justice AI

Our free tool at https://impactjustice.ai helps you instantly draft and send personalized emails to lawmakers, journalists, and agencies. No expertise required—just your voice and your concern.

Contact Your Representatives

Your state legislators control GDC’s budget, oversight, and the laws that created these failures. Demand accountability and transparency.

Demand Media Coverage

Journalists need to know these stories matter. Contact newsrooms at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, local TV stations, and national outlets covering criminal justice. More coverage means more pressure for reform.

Amplify on Social Media

Share this article and call out the people in power.

Tag: @GovKemp, @GDC_Georgia, your local representatives

Use hashtags such as #GAPrisons, #PrisonReform, #GeorgiaPrisonerSpeak

Public pressure works—especially when it’s loud.

File Public Records Requests

Georgia’s Open Records Act gives every citizen the right to access government documents. Request:

  • Incident reports
  • Death records
  • Staffing data
  • Medical logs
  • Financial and contract documents

Transparency reveals truth.

https://georgiadcor.govqa.us/WEBAPP/_rs/SupportHome.aspx

Attend Public Meetings

The Georgia Board of Corrections holds public meetings. Legislative committees review corrections issues during session. Your presence is noticed.

Contact the Department of Justice

For civil rights violations in Georgia prisons, file a complaint with the DOJ Civil Rights Division:

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. Your vote shapes who controls these systems.

Contact GPS

Georgia Prisoners’ Speak exists because incarcerated people and their families deserve to be heard. If you have information about conditions inside Georgia’s prisons, contact us securely at GPS.press.

Further Reading

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.

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Footnotes
  1. AJC Investigation, Gang Members Using Violence to Extort Inmates and Families at Georgia Prison for Women, June 2022 https://www.ajc.com/news/crime/gangs-using-violence-to-extort-inmates-families-at-ga-prison-for-women/HXL66I6VLRCO5N45TXYK6NDAXE/ [↩]
  2. DOJ Findings Report, Investigation of Georgia Prisons, October 2024 https://www.justice.gov/d9/2024-09/findingsreport–investigationofgeorgiaprisons.pdf [↩]
  3. AJC Investigation, State Official Failed to Delve Into Prison Doctor’s Troubled Past, June 2018 https://www.ajc.com/news/state–regional-govt–politics/state-official-failed-delve-into-prison-doctor-troubled-past/rjC8HlEa0ZjfRAVAP2BtzH/ [↩]
  4. Prison Legal News, Georgia Prison Doctor Rewarded for Cutting Costs as Prisoners Died Under His Care, December 2017 https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2017/dec/5/georgia-prison-doctor-rewarded-cutting-costs-prisoners-died-under-his-care/ [↩]
  5. AJC, Georgia Prison Doctor Fired for Lying About Work History, October 2015 https://www.ajc.com/news/state–regional-govt–politics/georgia-prison-doctor-fired-for-lying-about-work-history/NQCr9vXyjLFsE425QP3J6M/ [↩]
  6. AJC, Drug Overdose Deaths Soar at Georgia Prisons, 2023 https://www.ajc.com/news/investigations/prisons-overdose/ [↩]
  7. AJC, Women Sexually Assaulted and Beaten at Georgia Prison, March 2022 https://www.ajc.com/news/women-sexually-assaulted-beaten-at-georgia-prison/MOPFXLZR5FCKXIFLJL6LUMSOSM/ [↩]
  8. Sen. Ossoff Press Release, Sen. Ossoff Urges FBI to Investigate Extortion and Gang Violence in Pulaski State Prison, June 2022 https://www.ossoff.senate.gov/press-releases/following-bombshell-reporting-sen-ossoff-urges-fbi-to-investigate-extortion-and-gang-violence-in-pulaski-state-prison/ [↩]
  9. AJC Investigation, Drug Overdose Deaths Soar at Georgia Prisons, September 2023 https://www.ajc.com/news/investigations/prisons-overdose/ [↩]
  10. GPS Facilities Data https://gps.press/facilities-data/ [↩]
  11. GDC Press Release, New Warden at Pulaski State Prison, 2025 https://gdc.georgia.gov/press-releases/2025-03-27/new-warden-pulaski-state-prison [↩]
  12. GPS, Unqualified and Unprepared: Leadership Failure in Georgia’s Prisons https://gps.press/unqualified-and-unprepared-leadership-failure-in-georgias-prisons/ [↩]
  13. Mainline Atlanta, Inhumane and Illegal Conditions Uncovered at Lee Arrendale State Prison in Georgia, April 2021 https://www.mainlineatl.com/inhumane-and-illegal-conditions-uncovered-at-lee-arrendale-state-prison-in-georgia/ [↩]
  14. Prism Reports, State Violence in Prisons Is Sanctioned Violation of Women’s Rights, July 2024 https://prismreports.org/2024/07/18/state-violence-prisons-sanctioned-violation-womens-rights/ [↩]
  15. AJC, Rare Killings of Female Prisoners Come to Light as Georgia Prisons Set Homicide Record, October 2024 https://www.ajc.com/news/investigations/rare-murders-of-women-come-to-light-as-ga-prisons-set-homicide-record/X6G25DUQG5BNFM6NFVU6YIX6NU/ [↩]
  16. GPS, Sheqweetta Vaughan’s Death at Arrendale Prison: Another Tragedy of Neglect in Georgia https://gps.press/sheqweetta-vaughans-death-at-arrendale-prison-another-tragedy-of-neglect-in-georgia/ [↩]
  17. NBC News, Family Demanding Answers After Inmate’s Decaying Body Found in Georgia Prison, September 2025 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/family-demanding-answers-inmates-decaying-body-found-georgia-prison-rcna231931 [↩]
  18. GPS, No Way Out: How Georgia’s Broken Grievance System Silences Prisoners and Shields Abuse https://gps.press/how-georgias-broken-grievance-system-silences-prisoners-and-shields-abuse/ [↩]
  19. GPS, Grievance Failures in Georgia Prisons https://gps.press/grievance-failures-in-georgia-prisons/ [↩]
  20. GPS, A Win for Justice: Supreme Court Expands Jury Trial Rights for Prisoners Blocked from Filing Grievances https://gps.press/a-win-for-justice-supreme-court-expands-jury-trial-rights-for-prisoners-blocked-from-filing-grievances/ [↩]
  21. GPS Statistics Data https://gps.press/statistics-data/ [↩]
  22. GPS Mortality Database https://gps.press/gdc-mortality-statistics/ [↩]
  23. GPS, $700 Million More — And Nothing to Show for It https://gps.press/700-million-more-and-nothing-to-show-for-it/ [↩]

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