Last updated October 25, 2026.(DS)

Bainbridge Probation Substance Abuse Treatment Center

Bainbridge Probation Substance Abuse Treatment Center is not a conventional prison. It is a Residential Substance Abuse Treatment (RSAT) center in Bainbridge, in Decatur County, operating a nine-month residential program for high-risk, high-needs men with a history of substance use — a facility classified around treatment and rehabilitation rather than a traditional security level. Its rated capacity is 200. Lachanda Shiree Roberts-MacKey is the superintendent. What follows examines the facility's stated purpose against the two deaths GPS has recorded there since 2020, the statewide staffing collapse that bears directly on whether a treatment center can deliver treatment, and the systemwide conditions GPS has documented across GDC.

A Treatment Center, Not a Prison — On Paper

The distinction matters because it defines what the state has promised the men held here. Bainbridge is designated an RSAT center, and its program is a nine-month residential course aimed at people whose substance use is the central driver of their incarceration. The facility's own framing is treatment and rehabilitation for probationers. That is the promise. The question a treatment center raises — more sharply than a conventional prison — is whether the programming the designation implies is actually delivered, and to whom.

GPS's standing record does not itemize Bainbridge's specific program offerings beyond the RSAT designation itself. That absence is itself worth stating plainly: the public record establishes the category of treatment the facility is meant to provide, but not the roster of education, vocational, or faith-based programming a reader might expect to find. Under GDC policy, faith and character-based initiatives are available in designated dormitories and facilities, and evidence-based prison programs are administered systemwide under SOP 214.04 — but whether and how those reach Bainbridge is not something the public record before GPS establishes.

Two Deaths in a Treatment Setting

GPS's mortality registry records two in-custody deaths at Bainbridge since 2020. Milledge Robert Angel died August 6, 2023, at the facility; GPS's registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. He was 72. Timothy Keith Gray died December 6, 2024, at the facility; the registry lists his cause as Unknown/Pending — meaning GPS does not yet know the cause, and this page will not guess one. He was 39.

Two deaths in a 200-bed treatment center over roughly four years is not, on its face, a cluster. But the registry is a floor, not a ceiling: GDC reports deaths to the public roughly two months late, so the count reflects what GPS has been able to confirm, not necessarily everything that has occurred. And the ages tell their own story — a 72-year-old and a 39-year-old dying in a facility built around rehabilitation rather than long-term custody. A treatment center's population is, by design, people in medical and psychological distress; the question of whether a 39-year-old's cause of death remains unknown years later is the kind of gap GPS continues to track across the system, where it has independently recorded 1,918 deaths in GDC custody since 2020.

Staffing Collapse and the Treatment That Depends On It

The most consequential fact about a treatment center is not its walls but its people — and Georgia's people are gone. GPS has documented that officer vacancies across the state's prisons have run between 49.3% and 60% systemwide for multiple years, against a national standard of no more than 10%. The hiring pipeline cannot close the gap: acceptance rates sit under 15%, and 82.7% of new hires leave within their first year. Georgia ranks last of 50 states for correctional-officer pay.

That collapse is not abstract at a facility whose entire purpose is programming. 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." Treatment programs are staff-intensive by nature — counselors, facilitators, medical monitors — and they are the first thing to thin when bodies are short. GPS's own reporting has documented the mechanism at facilities across the state: counselors who quit because they could not help the way they wanted to, and programming that evaporates for lack of staff. Whether Bainbridge has been spared that dynamic is not established in the public record before GPS, but the systemwide conditions that produce it are.

The Systemwide Conditions That Reach Every Facility

GPS treats infrastructure collapse as a force multiplier for the violence, classification, and mortality crises it has documented at the facility level, and the finding applies across GDC regardless of a facility's security designation. Most GDC facilities are 30 to 40-plus years old, with documented patterns of deferred maintenance — broken cell-door locks, inoperative surveillance and fire-alarm systems, mold and water failures, broken kitchen equipment, and pest infestations. The DOJ's October 2024 findings, the Guidehouse 2024 assessment, and Commissioner Oliver's public "end of life" statements all corroborate the pattern.

Food is part of the same story. 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 Marshall Project independently reported in May 2026 on rats in kitchens, insects in food, moldy trays, and visible malnutrition across Georgia facilities. GPS has separately documented food-service sanitation failures that DPH inspection scores systematically fail to capture — dishwashers broken for sustained periods, sustained infestation, meals served on contaminated trays — a contradiction at the center of GPS's investigation "Dunked, Stacked, and Served."

For a population in residential substance-use treatment, nutrition and sanitation are not amenities. They are part of the clinical picture.

Leadership and Accountability

Lachanda Shiree Roberts-MacKey holds the superintendent's post at Bainbridge, per GPS's personnel records. The curated record also reflects earlier leadership: Moses P. James appears as Correctional Superintendent in 2025 and as Warden in 2024, and Roberts-MacKey herself served as Correctional Assistant Superintendent at the facility from 2022 to 2025 before assuming the lead role. These are the people to whom the facility's treatment mission and its two recorded deaths answer.

What the Record Shows — and What It Doesn't

Bainbridge is a small facility with a specific, humane purpose: nine months of residential treatment for men whose lives have been organized around substance use. The public record before GPS establishes that purpose, the facility's 200-bed capacity, its leadership, and two deaths since 2020 — one of natural or medical causes, one whose cause GPS does not yet know. It does not establish the day-to-day reality of the programming inside, and GPS does not fill that gap with inference. What it does establish is the systemwide context: a Department whose staffing has collapsed, whose infrastructure is failing, and whose treatment and programming functions are the most exposed to both. A treatment center is where that exposure matters most.

Sources

This analysis draws on GPS's facility records and mortality registry; GDC Standard Operating Procedures on faith-based initiatives, evidence-based prison programs, education, and staff development; the October 2024 U.S. Department of Justice findings letter and the 2024 Guidehouse assessment as reflected in GPS's systemic findings; and reporting by The Marshall Project on food conditions in Georgia facilities. It also draws on GPS's own investigative and systemic reporting, including the investigation "Dunked, Stacked, and Served," and on firsthand narratives published in Georgia Prisoners' Speak — Tell My Story.