GDC tells people in prison that programs can shorten a sentence. The Parole Board’s handbook says Georgia has no good time at all. In a prison system the DOJ calls unconstitutional, Justice Reed reads the state’s own paper and lays out a law that would cut sentences in half for people who earn it.
Two men at Calhoun State Prison just added 26 years and 8 months of federal time for a jury-duty phone scam, on top of the Georgia sentences they were already serving. Here’s how the time adds up.
Georgia’s prisons can’t block or seize their way out of phone scams. GPS argues for registered, monitored phones inside, with lawyers excluded, backed by the state’s own arrest reports and the DOJ’s findings.
State fire inspectors found padlocks and slide bolts on cell doors in four housing units at Washington State Prison in September. Broken locks, the warden said. Georgia has been buying new ones for more than a decade, and this year it set aside another $84,596,895.
A Florida nanny forgot a sleeping baby in her car, and the State called it murder until an appeals court said no. Georgia charges grieving parents the same way. One Lawrenceville mother sat in jail for six weeks after losing her son. Forgetting is a tragedy, not a murder.
Five Board members vote on Georgia parole cases, but staff compute the crime severity level, the risk score and the case summary. One internal unit audits that work and publishes no results. Here is the design, in the Board’s own words.
“He’s on Tier” means a loved one is in Georgia’s prison segregation system. Here’s how Tier I, Tier II, the Special Management Unit and the STEP step-down work under GDC’s own policies, how people get in and out, and the bed counts GDC gave GPS in October 2026.
Rachelle Terry spent more than two years in Georgia’s women’s prisons. This September she wrote to lawmakers and the Department of Corrections about what she saw. Her letter is published here in full, alongside what the state’s own records show for the two prisons that held her.
Georgia’s corrections commissioner told senators single cells cut prison violence. At Calhoun, Dooly, Washington and Wilcox, GDC is packing more Close security men into single-man cells that hold three, at prisons built for 500 and holding up to 1,800, and the homicide rate shows it.
On August 25 we sent the same five questions to both nominees for Georgia Attorney General, on the Justice Department’s prison findings, deaths in custody, open records, oversight and habeas. Sen. Brian Strickland answered. No answers were received from Rep. Tanya Miller. His answers are here in full.