AUTRY STATE PRISON

Last updated October 4, 2026.(DS)

A Medium-Security Prison That Stopped Being One

Autry State Prison — formally Jimmy Autry State Prison — opened in 1994 in Pelham, in Mitchell County, as a medium-security men's facility. Its original design capacity was 500. Its current rated capacity is 1,698. That gap between what the plant was built to hold and what it is now rated to hold is the first fact worth sitting with, because it frames nearly everything else on this page: a facility engineered in the early 1990s for a few hundred men, with a large number of double-bunked cell units plus dormitory-style housing and segregation/isolation cells, now carrying a rated capacity more than three times its original design.

GPS's facility record describes Autry as having historically housed many close-custody and sex-offender populations, and as offering limited vocational industries — including footwear manufacturing — along with basic education, counseling, and religious programs. That programming inventory is thin, and it is the only public record of what the facility offers the people held there. The facility's current warden is Michael Graham, who has held the post since July 2025. The deputy wardens are Mary L. Banks, Nakia Stephen (Deputy Warden of Security), and Tanja Copeland.

Legionella, a Year of Denial, and a Facility Shut Down

The most consequential documented event in Autry's recent history is a water-contamination crisis that GPS's own reporting has covered at length. In October 2022, the Georgia Department of Public Health confirmed what men held at Autry had suspected for more than a year: the water was contaminated with Legionella pneumophila, the bacterium that causes Legionnaires' disease — a severe and sometimes fatal pneumonia. Local television reporting that month documented that positive tests had been surfacing at the prison for over a year.

GPS's reporting describes accounts in which an incarcerated person at Autry tested positive for Legionnaires' disease in 2021, and in which the facility was closed in June 2023 for infrastructure repairs — plumbing and HVAC upgrades — with the men held there relocated. GPS has framed the episode as an illustration of a broader failure: that prison officials can expose people to known contamination, deny the standard protective measure, and authorize retaliation. The same GPS coverage places Autry alongside Washington State Prison in a pattern of deteriorating infrastructure at facilities built more than 30 years ago, where maintenance funds were mismanaged or diverted.

That account is GPS-authored and, in its strongest form, rests on family and incarcerated-person accounts rather than on a court record; it should be read as GPS's documented reporting of those accounts, not as an adjudicated finding. What is not in dispute is the closure itself and the scale of the remediation it required.

Twenty-Two Deaths, and What the Registry Does and Doesn't Say

GPS's mortality registry records 22 deaths at Autry State Prison since January 1, 2020. That figure is a floor, not a ceiling: GDC reports deaths roughly two months late, so the true count is higher. Of the 22, eleven are coded Unknown/Pending, eight Natural/Medical, two Other, and one Suicide.

The registry names them. Richard Cleveland Castleberry died April 23, 2026, at Autry State Prison, at age 72; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. Chaudhry Abudl Rashid died November 11, 2025, at age 74, cause Unknown/Pending. Richard Merritt died October 20, 2025, at age 75, cause Unknown/Pending. James Melvin Tudor died August 23, 2025, at age 86, and Alton Anson Kelly died the same day at age 61, both with cause Unknown/Pending. Harvey Jack Woodard died May 8, 2025, at age 69, cause Unknown/Pending. Alerick Campbell died December 22, 2024, at age 56, cause Unknown/Pending. Clarence Steven Wallace died January 9, 2023, at age 67, cause Unknown/Pending. Stanley Eric Hamilton died October 30, 2022, at age 51, cause Unknown/Pending.

Henry Jr Sheffield died December 10, 2021, at age 51; GPS's registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. William H Oglesby died September 11, 2021, at age 61; the registry lists the cause as Suicide. Glamorous Lane died June 27, 2021, at age 60, and David Curtis Shores died May 3, 2021, at age 53, both with cause listed as Other. Carlie Edward Jr Burch died January 13, 2021, at age 65, cause Unknown/Pending. Cordell James Shipman died November 24, 2020, at age 22; the registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. Mark Ramos died October 8, 2020, at age 59, cause Unknown/Pending. Richard Office died May 22, 2020, at age 80; Thomas Edward White died May 9, 2020, at age 75; James Mitchell Blankenship died April 30, 2020, at age 67; Willie J Bell died April 22, 2020, at age 68; Dennis Lee Hammons died February 20, 2020, at age 62; and Darren Nicholas Wehrle died February 13, 2020, at age 32 — all five with the cause listed as Natural/Medical.

The Unknown/Pending coding on half of these deaths is itself a finding. It means GPS does not yet know the cause. It does not mean the deaths were suspicious, and it does not mean they were not.

Grade A Scores and the Sanitation Question They Don't Answer

The Georgia Department of Public Health has inspected Autry's food operation seven times in the record GPS holds, and the scores are uniformly high. An initial inspection on April 13, 2026, scored 100. A routine inspection on March 20, 2026, scored 90, citing two violations — proper hot holding temperatures, and physical facilities installed, maintained, and clean. A routine inspection on July 9, 2025, scored 98, citing one violation for sewage and waste water properly disposed. A routine inspection on December 12, 2024, scored 100.

Those scores should not be read as a clean bill of health for what arrives on the tray. GPS has documented a systemic pattern of food-service sanitation failure across GDC kitchens that DPH scores systematically fail to capture: tray-sanitizing dishwashers broken for sustained periods, sustained roach and rodent infestation in kitchen and serving areas, and meals served on visibly contaminated trays. The pattern is hidden from the scores because inspections are scheduled walkthroughs that do not assess equipment under load, and because GPS has documented professional overlap between inspectors and facility staff in small-county settings — a regulatory-capture dynamic. High DPH scores at GDC facilities coexist with sustained witness reports of equipment failure and food contamination; the contradiction is the analytical center of GPS's investigation "Dunked, Stacked, and Served."

The economics underneath that contradiction are stark. GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food (2024) and has proposed $1.60 per day in FY27 — under 60 cents per meal — against the FDA Thrifty Food Plan estimate of roughly $10 per day for an adult man's nutritionally adequate diet. The state spends approximately 14 times more on medical care for incarcerated people ($432 million) than on their food. The Marshall Project independently corroborated the pattern in a May 16, 2026 investigation, reporting rats in kitchens, insects in food, moldy trays, and visible malnutrition across Georgia facilities, and quoting GPS connecting chronic underfeeding to the violence pattern the DOJ documented in October 2024.

Classification Drift and the Staffing Collapse Behind It

Autry is a medium-security facility. GPS has documented that Georgia's medium-security prisons are increasingly functioning as close-security facilities without the staffing or infrastructure that designation implies — a pattern GPS calls classification drift. The Department's own numbers, drawn from October 27, 2025 data, show medium-security prisons operating at higher security levels than their designation. Autry's own profile — historically housing many close-custody and sex-offender populations, with a rated capacity of 1,698 against an original design capacity of 500 — fits that pattern.

The staffing context makes it worse. Officer vacancies in Georgia's prisons have run between 49.3% and 60% systemwide for multiple years, against a national standard of no more than 10%; at Valdosta State Prison the rate reached 80% by April 2024. The hiring pipeline cannot close the gap — acceptance rate under 15%, and 82.7% of new hires leaving in their first year — and Georgia ranks last of 50 states for correctional-officer pay. The October 2024 DOJ findings letter concluded that "the leadership of the Georgia Department of Corrections has lost control of its facilities" and faulted GDC for placing "too much blame on gangs and insufficient emphasis on understaffing." Approximately 31% of the system's roughly 49,000 incarcerated population are validated members of 315 different security threat groups — more than double the national average. DOJ and the Guidehouse 2024 consultant assessment independently concluded that gangs effectively run multiple facilities, controlling access to phones, showers, food, and bed assignments.

Settlements, Litigation, and the Record of Harm

Georgia's own risk-management ledger records five liability payouts tied to incidents at Autry State Prison. The largest is a $70,000 settlement to Susan Brown, tied to a 2020 incident at the facility. Nicole P. Ellis received $35,000 for a 2018 incident. Christopher L. Jones received $7,500 for a 2018 incident. Patricia Ann Kierce received $500 for a 2016 incident, and Damon Young (GDC 1030956) received $350 for a 2016 incident. The ledger, obtained through open records, does not describe the underlying conduct in each case; it records only that the state paid.

Separately, GPS has received recurring reports that incarcerated people at Autry involved in unit-conditions litigation have faced significant literacy and procedural barriers to maintaining federal pro se pleadings, and that many dropped their claims when a court order required them to proceed individually rather than collectively. GPS has received accounts of this pattern; it is not a court finding.

The wider system context is one of escalating violence. GPS has documented that prison homicides in Georgia increased 95.8% between 2021 and 2023, and that the DOJ's October 2024 investigation found unconstitutional risk of harm and serious infrastructure problems across Georgia prisons. Sexual violence in GDC facilities is systemic: the DOJ concluded sexual assault is "rampant," and of 456 sexual-abuse allegations recorded in 2022, only 35 were substantiated. Those are systemwide findings, not Autry-specific ones, but they describe the environment in which a facility like Autry operates.

A 2014 Case That Reached Outside the Walls

The AJC reported that in 2014, an Autry State Prison inmate ordered a hit on a woman, who was shot eight times while holding her infant son; the 9-month-old baby died. The case is a reminder that the facility's footprint extends beyond its perimeter — and that contraband communication from inside GDC facilities has repeatedly produced violence outside them. GPS has separately documented that Georgia spent $50 million deploying phone-blocking technology at 35 prisons, and that homicides quadrupled in the period that followed, with violence erupting within weeks at every facility where GPS confirmed activation dates.

Sources

This analysis draws on Georgia Department of Public Health food-safety inspection records; the Georgia Department of Corrections facility profile and personnel records; the GA DOAS Risk Management settlement ledger obtained through open records; the October 2024 U.S. Department of Justice findings letter and the 2024 Guidehouse assessment; reporting by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Marshall Project; and GPS's own mortality registry, investigative reporting, and systemic findings, including "Dunked, Stacked, and Served" and GPS's coverage of the Autry Legionella closure.