Last updated November 8, 2026.(DS)

Augusta Transitional Center: Work Release, a Coroner's Case, and the Discipline That Governs the Gate

Augusta Transitional Center is a 223-bed close-security facility for men in Augusta, in Richmond County — a transitional center operating at the Augusta State Medical Prison host site, led by Correctional Superintendent Eugenia Darlene Harrison since 2020, with Deputy Warden Tamikia Nicole Mahoney and Assistant Superintendent Asia Deon Cliett. Its purpose is reintegration: transitional centers are where people nearing release hold jobs in the community, save money, and prepare to come home. What GPS's records and the accounts families have brought to it describe is a facility where the gate to that work — and the threat of being sent back through it — is controlled by a small number of staff, and where at least one death produced a coroner's case that the public record has never fully accounted for.

A Transitional Center at a Medical Prison

The facility's own profile places it at ASMP, with a population of 223 men at close security. GDC's internal audit calendars show the facility scheduled for review repeatedly: an internal audit in December 2021, two audit dates in October 2023 (October 24 and October 25), and two more in the FY2026 calendar (October 30 and October 31, 2025). GDC's spreadsheet also lists Augusta TC among transitional centers carrying an accreditation schedule. Those scheduled reviews are the only structured outside scrutiny the public record shows — and, as the rest of this page describes, they are audits of process, not of what residents and their families say happens between them.

The Death of Kenneth Thomas Paige

The most documented death connected to this facility is not in GDC's mortality count. The Richmond County Coroner opened case 22-AC00759 for Kenneth Thomas Paige, date of death October 13, 2022, at 22:00. Paige was 32. The coroner's record lists him as housed at Augusta Transitional Center and records the cause of death as blunt force trauma to the torso and cervical spine; the manner of death is listed as accidental. An autopsy was performed and accepted by the GBI Medical Examiner's Office.

The record also captures a discrepancy in status. Augusta Transitional Center staff told the deputy coroner on October 14, 2022, that Paige "had been in the transition center and was released in August of this year." A live GDC lookup checked on August 25, 2026, shows an actual release date of 08/01/2022 for Paige, GDC ID 1000817350, with Augusta TC listed as his most recent institution. So the state's own records place him at the facility and then out of it, and the coroner's case places his death two months later, by blunt force trauma, ruled accidental. GPS's analysis has flagged that a death connected to this facility does not appear in the dataset GDC produced to UCLA Law's Office of the Respondent — a gap GPS treats as a records-coverage question rather than proof of anything about the death itself.

Two Deaths in the GPS Registry

GPS's mortality registry, which counts deaths from 2020 forward and is always a floor because GDC reports deaths roughly two months late, records two deaths at Augusta Transitional Center in that window. Both carry a cause of Unknown/Pending — GPS does not yet know what killed either man.

• Aaron C Thompkins died July 21, 2024, at Augusta Transitional Center; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 46.
• James Nicolas Waugh died July 5, 2026, at Augusta Transitional Center; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 30.

Across the system, GPS has independently tracked 1,928 deaths in GDC custody since 2020. The two deaths here are a small part of that total, but they are the part that belongs to this facility, and neither has a public cause.

Work Release as the Leverage Point

The central complaint families bring to GPS about Augusta Transitional Center is not violence in the dorm — it is control over the job. In aggregate, family accounts describe residents who were sent to interviews, told they were hired, and then not permitted to report to work; one account describes a resident who worked a single day in an eight-month stay. Others describe residents left largely idle without structure or reintegration classes, and a facility where the superintendent's approval functions as the gate to everything the center is supposed to provide.

The same accounts describe what happens to people who press the question. GPS has received recurring reports of residents threatened with disciplinary write-ups or transfer back to prison when they ask about employment, and of a broader pattern of verbal harassment and intimidation that families say keeps people from reporting at all. GPS has received accounts of retaliation against residents at this facility, including a transfer back to a state prison that a family member questions as retaliatory. These are family allegations, not findings; GPS registers them as accounts it has received.

Contraband, Testing, and a Two-Tier Rule

Families also describe a discipline system they say operates unevenly. In aggregate, the accounts describe prohibited items entering the facility through people other than residents while residents absorb the disciplinary consequences; some residents accumulating a dozen or more disciplinary reports without being returned to prison while others are sent back for less; and drug-testing procedures that families allege were altered or conducted with expired kits. One account describes a resident written up for a positive screen on arrival.

GPS's systemic reporting on GDC places these complaints in a wider frame. GPS has documented that officer vacancies across Georgia's prisons have run between 49.3% and 60% systemwide for multiple years, against a national standard of no more than 10%, and that the October 2024 DOJ findings letter concluded GDC leadership had "lost control of its facilities," faulting the Department for placing "too much blame on gangs and insufficient emphasis on understaffing." Transitional centers depend on staff judgment at the gate — who works, who is written up, who goes back — and that judgment is exercised in a system GPS has documented as chronically short-staffed and, per DOJ and the Guidehouse 2024 assessment, one in which gangs control access to phones, showers, food, and bed assignments at multiple facilities.

Escapes and the Record of Who Leaves

The public record of people leaving this facility without authorization is thin but not empty. GDC reported that Christopher Craig, 40, escaped from Augusta Transitional Center on Monday, August 3, 2020, around 5 p.m. Earlier that summer, James Moses Hardy escaped on June 8, 2020, and was arrested on June 16. GPS has also received an anonymous tip describing a person who left custody at this facility and was killed in a car crash in 2022 while at large — a report GPS classifies as an escapee death at large rather than an in-custody GDC death, which is why such a death would not appear in GDC mortality figures or in this facility's death count. GPS's analysis notes that a death during an active police pursuit may fall under the Death in Custody Reporting Act — a different instrument and a different agency than GDC — a question GPS has raised in connection with one Augusta matter.

What the Audits Do Not Reach

The facility's audit schedule — December 2021, October 2023, October 2025 — is the paper trail of oversight. What it does not capture is the thing families describe: whether a man who has been told he is hired is allowed to go to work, whether a resident who asks the superintendent a question is written up for it, whether the drug testing that determines who returns to prison is conducted on valid kits. Those are questions of daily administration, and they are the questions a scheduled audit of process is least equipped to answer. GPS's reporting on GDC's food-service inspections has documented the same structural problem at system scale: scheduled walkthroughs that produce clean scores while the conditions witnesses describe persist underneath them.

Sources

This analysis draws on the Richmond County Coroner's record for case 22-AC00759 and the GBI Medical Examiner's Office autopsy acceptance in the death of Kenneth Thomas Paige; live GDC inmate lookup data; GDC internal audit calendars for FY2022, FY2024, and FY2026 and GDC's transitional-center accreditation spreadsheet; GDC escape notices for Christopher Craig and James Moses Hardy; GPS's mortality registry and its analysis of GDC's records production to UCLA Law's Office of the Respondent; GPS's systemic reporting on staffing collapse, the October 2024 DOJ findings letter, and the Guidehouse 2024 assessment; and family accounts and an anonymous tip collected by GPS staff.