BAINBRIDGE PROBATION SUBSTANCE ABUSE TREATMENT CENTER

Last updated September 13, 2026.(DS)

A Treatment Center Inside a System in Crisis

Bainbridge Probation Substance Abuse Treatment Center sits in Decatur County, in Georgia's southwest corner, and occupies a distinct place in the state's correctional landscape. It is not a traditional security-level prison but an RSAT — Residential Substance Abuse Treatment — center, operating a nine-month residential program for high-risk, high-needs male offenders with documented substance use histories. The facility's rated capacity is 200, and its population is drawn from probationers rather than the general prison population, a structural distinction that shapes everything from its staffing model to its daily operations. Moses P. James serves as the facility's correctional superintendent, a post he has held since 2025; Lachanda Shiree Roberts-MacKey has served as correctional assistant superintendent since 2022.

The treatment mission is the facility's defining feature, and it is worth stating plainly because it is the only public record of what Bainbridge offers the men held there: a structured, nine-month residential substance abuse program. The facility profile lists no additional educational, vocational, or religious programming beyond the RSAT curriculum itself. For a facility whose entire purpose is rehabilitation, that narrowness is itself a finding — the program is the program, and there is little else.

Two Deaths, Both Unexplained

GPS's mortality database records two deaths at Bainbridge Probation Substance Abuse Treatment Center since tracking began in January 2020. Milledge Robert Angel, 72, died in custody at the facility on August 6, 2023. Timothy Keith Gray, 39, died on December 6, 2024. Both deaths are classified in GPS's records under the cause category "Unknown/Pending" — meaning that, as of the most recent data pull, GPS has not been able to determine or confirm the cause of either death.

That classification deserves emphasis. In a facility of 200 beds running a nine-month treatment program, two deaths in roughly sixteen months is not a trivial number, and the absence of confirmed cause-of-death information for either man means the public record on what happened at Bainbridge is incomplete. GPS's mortality counts are always a floor, not a ceiling: GDC reports deaths approximately two months late, and the database reflects only what GPS has been able to confirm. The two deaths recorded here are the minimum.

Staffing Collapse and the Loss of Facility Control

Bainbridge does not exist in isolation. It operates inside a Georgia Department of Corrections system that the U.S. Department of Justice formally concluded, in October 2024, had "lost control of its facilities." The systemic findings that GPS has documented across GDC — and that the DOJ and the independent Guidehouse 2024 assessment corroborated — form the backdrop against which any single facility's record must be read.

The staffing collapse is the most direct pressure point. 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%. At Valdosta State Prison the rate reached 80% by April 2024. The hiring pipeline cannot close the gap: acceptance rates run under 15%, and 82.7% of new hires leave within their first year. Georgia ranks last of 50 states for correctional-officer pay. Tyler Ryals, a former GDC sergeant forced out in 2024 after whistleblowing, told GPS he had personally been the only security person on the entire Telfair compound of roughly 1,250 maximum-security inmates. The DOJ's October 2024 findings letter faulted GDC for placing "too much blame on gangs and insufficient emphasis on understaffing" — a conclusion that applies systemwide, including to facilities like Bainbridge that are nominally treatment centers rather than maximum-security prisons. GPS's own reporting has separately described a statewide vacancy rate averaging around 50% against a prison population that has doubled since the facilities were originally designed.

Infrastructure Decay as a Force Multiplier

Infrastructure failure compounds the staffing crisis. Most GDC facilities are 30 to 40-plus years old, with documented patterns of deferred maintenance that have produced broken cell-door locks, inoperative surveillance and fire-alarm systems, mold and water failures, broken kitchen sanitization equipment, and pest infestations. The pattern is corroborated across three independent sources: the DOJ's October 2024 findings, the Guidehouse 2024 assessment, and Commissioner Oliver's own public statements that GDC facilities are approaching "end of life." GPS treats infrastructure collapse as a force multiplier for the violence, classification, gang-control, and mortality crises documented at the facility level.

Food, Sanitation, and the Limits of Inspection

GPS has documented a systemic pattern of food-service sanitation failure across GDC kitchens that inspection scores systematically fail to capture. Tray-sanitizing dishwashers have been broken for sustained periods; inmate-maintenance worker accounts collected at Dooly State Prison describe thousands of roaches inside kitchen equipment; roach and rodent infestation in kitchen and serving areas has been sustained; and meals have been served on visibly contaminated trays — a pattern corroborated by a Coastal State Prison resident's account. The Marshall Project independently corroborated the pattern in May 2026, 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.

The financial context is stark. GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food — under 60 cents per meal — and has proposed $1.60 per day in FY27, versus 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. GPS's investigation "Dunked, Stacked, and Served" identified the analytical center of this contradiction: high Department of Public Health inspection scores at GDC facilities coexist with sustained witness reports of equipment failure and food contamination, 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.

Sexual Violence and the Failure to Protect

The October 2024 DOJ findings letter concluded that sexual assault in Georgia's prisons is "rampant" and that GDC does not reasonably protect incarcerated people, including LGBTI individuals, from sexual harm. Of 456 sexual-abuse allegations recorded in 2022, only 35 were substantiated — 7.7%. GDC's own consultants, PREA Auditors of America, reviewed 388 PREA investigation files in May 2022 and found that not one met the law's standards. Georgia has never submitted a PREA certification of full compliance to the U.S. Department of Justice in the law's two-decade history.

The pattern is systemic, not facility-isolated. GPS treats it as the analytical center of any GDC violence or staff-misconduct narrative. For a facility like Bainbridge — smaller, treatment-focused, housing men in a nine-month program — the systemic failure to protect incarcerated people from sexual harm is not an abstraction. It is the operating environment.

What the Record Does Not Yet Show

GPS has recorded no deaths at Bainbridge beyond the two documented above, and no lawsuits, inspections, or personnel actions tied specifically to this facility have surfaced in the current data pull. That absence is not the same as a clean record. The two deaths remain unexplained in GPS's database, and the systemic failures documented across GDC — staffing collapse, infrastructure decay, food-service contamination, and the failure to protect incarcerated people from sexual violence — do not stop at the gates of a treatment center because the facility's mission is rehabilitative.

The men at Bainbridge are there to receive substance abuse treatment. The question the record poses is whether the system that surrounds them is capable of delivering it.

Sources

This analysis draws on GPS's own systemic findings and investigative reporting, including the GPS investigation "Dunked, Stacked, and Served"; the October 2024 U.S. Department of Justice findings letter; the Guidehouse 2024 consultant assessment; The Marshall Project's May 2026 investigation of Georgia prison food; GPS's mortality database; and GPS's records of GDC personnel and leadership.