Where Georgia’s prison dinero para comida really goes

Georgia Correctional Industries (GCI) is a state-owned, self-funded corporation — total revenue about $83M/año (state ACFR) — that grows, cans, and processes much of the food served inside, across five food-processing units and six farms. Georgia pays its incarcerated industries workers $0 — unusual even among prison-labor states.

Roughly la mitad of GCI’s sales to GDC are food (an estimate — the state reports GCI as a single undifferentiated line and is exempt from breaking it out). And GCI is a fuente “preferred source” obligatoria y sin licitación: state agencies are required by law to buy from it.

→ Ve en qué se convierte realmente esa comida en la bandeja: calorías, nutrición y la afirmación de las “2,900 calorías”

Sources: Open Georgia state payments; Georgia ACFR (GCI internal-service fund); GCI fact sheet; ACLU Trabajo Cautivo (2022); O.C.G.A. § 42-10 / DOAS Tier-Three mandatory sources.

Georgia ended the practice of letting families mail food and clothing to their incarcerated loved ones and funneled them to a único proveedor aprobado — Access Securepak, then Union Supply (a vendor Aramark bought in 2022). Families may now send one food package por trimestre (capped at 15 lbs or $100) and one clothing/property package por mes — at captive-market prices.

The salto de ~5× hasta $14.5M in GDC’s payments to Aramark since 2022 tracks this program — GDC buys the goods in bulk, and they’re packaged by incarcerated women at Lee Arrendale State Prison. The cost is in the structure: families are locked to a single vendor and buy basics una unidad a la vez at marked-up prices — a single T-shirt for $4.55–$9.25, socks $1.35 a pair — plus shipping and sales tax, on goods they were once allowed to mail in for free.

Sources: GDC vendor-transition notice (Union Supply replaced Access Securepak 1/1/2017); GDC SOP 206.01; GCI fact sheet (Lee Arrendale fulfillment); Open Georgia; archived Georgia Union Supply package catalog. Nota: el estado de pago del trabajo de empaque en Arrendale es disputado (GCI cita un “salario prevaleciente” federal PIE; datos de defensores muestran $0) y la comisión exacta del GDC no es pública.

The in-prison store is financiado por los presos — the state contract with the vendor (Georgia Commissary Suppliers / Stewart’s) has a face value of $1.00. The money is the markup: el propio GDC fija precios un 54–323% por encima del mayorista — 132% on candy, up to 833% en un gorro de ducha — generating about $19.8M/año in markup (a ~73% gross margin), and remits 30.5% de las ventas de la tienda to its Central Office.

El GDC es quien sube los precios de lo básico — for people it pays nothing — and keeping the difference. Lee nuestra investigación sobre el comisariato →

Fuentes: contrato estatal del comisariato del GDC (vigente desde el 11/01/25) — términos de COMPENSACIÓN; SOP 407.02 del GDC (remesa del 30.5%); análisis de GPS del archivo de precios del comisariato del GDC con 519 artículos (año fiscal 2024).

Georgia’s prison kitchens are run in-house (by GCI), not by an outside food contractor — its annual reports say so. But amid a colapso de personal (correctional-officer vacancies of 47–55%), the FY2025 budget quietly lists “privatizando los servicios de alimentos en cuatro instalaciones.” Aramark has historically run only two prison kitchens (Hays and Smith). This is the leading edge of outsourcing kitchens the state can no longer staff — worth watching.

Sources: GDC Annual Fiscal Reports (FY2018–2025, staffing + food-service); FY2025 Governor’s Budget Report (reductions). La lista completa de las instalaciones aún no es pública — solo nombramos las dos que están confirmadas.