Georgia’s prison phone crackdown spent years failing to stop $1.5 million in scams at a single prison — before and after MAS arrived. The $50M blocking system is deaf by design. Georgia already has the hardware, the law, and the precedent to monitor instead. The Commissioner needs to make one decision.
Ronald Allen asked for insulated gloves before handling frozen beef patties at GDCP. He got two pairs of disposable ones. Eight weeks of medical neglect later — a doctor who never examined him — Allen lost his dominant hand. His lawsuit names 12 defendants including Commissioner Oliver.
A federal jury awarded $307.6 million to a former Michigan prisoner whose healthcare contractor denied him a colostomy reversal surgery to save money. The verdict in Jackson v. Corizon Health puts the entire for-profit prison healthcare industry on notice — including companies operating in Georgia.
Georgia spent $50 million deploying phone-blocking technology at 35 prisons. Homicides quadrupled. At every facility where GPS confirmed activation dates, violence erupted within weeks. The crackdown isn’t stopping crime — it’s destabilizing the power structures that kept people alive.
On April 1, 2026, coordinated Blood-on-Blood gang violence erupted across Georgia’s prison system. At least 12 prisons locked down, life flights dispatched to two facilities, stabbings at five. GPS has demanded gang separation for months. Arizona cut violence 50%. Georgia still refuses.
GDC spends $120M on surveillance and $2.6M on rehabilitation — a 46:1 ratio. That’s $52 per person per year. Meanwhile, 12,000 people return to Georgia communities every year worse off than when they entered prison.
Georgia corrections officials blame younger, more violent inmates for the prison violence crisis. The evidence — from the DOJ, academic research, and Georgia’s own data — tells a very different story. Five systemic failures explain the violence. The inmates didn’t create any of them.
A federal judge ruled Georgia’s parole process for juvenile lifers may violate the Constitution. Janice Buttrum, imprisoned since age 17, has been denied parole five times. Not a single juvenile lifer resentenced under Supreme Court rulings has been released in Georgia.
In 1972, inmates at Georgia State Prison filed a federal lawsuit that produced the most comprehensive court-ordered reforms ever imposed on a single American prison. Thirteen years of federal oversight transformed the facility. Then Congress handed Georgia the tool to walk away — and the state used it immediately. The same constitutional violations identified fifty years ago were found again in the DOJ’s 2024 investigation.
More than 80% of American voters support prison reform. A landmark Brennan Center study proves reform works — with 73% violence reductions, recidivism drops of one-third, and renovations under budget. Georgia is one of two states explicitly called out for refusing to try. This companion report to the “No Way Out” series holds the evidence against what Georgia’s families and incarcerated people are experiencing.