Last updated November 8, 2026.(DS)

Bainbridge Probation Substance Abuse Treatment Center

Bainbridge Probation Substance Abuse Treatment Center is not a prison in the ordinary sense. 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 male offenders with a history of substance use, with a rated capacity of 200. Its classification as an RSAT center rather than a traditional security-level prison means the people held there are there for treatment — and that is precisely what makes the thinness of the public record around it worth examining. GPS's registry records two in-custody deaths at the facility since 2020, one of them of undetermined cause, and the facility sits inside a system whose treatment capacity, staffing, and medical monitoring GPS has documented as systemically degraded.

A Treatment Facility Inside a Collapsing System

The RSAT model depends on something the rest of the Georgia Department of Corrections has been losing for years: staff. GPS has documented that correctional-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%. The hiring pipeline cannot close the gap — an acceptance rate under 15%, with 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."

That matters more at a treatment facility than at a conventional one. A nine-month residential program is a staffing-intensive proposition: counseling hours, group sessions, and clinical monitoring are the product. GDC's own policy framework recognizes the dependency. SOP 107.03, Staff Development, sets mandatory pre-service orientation and ongoing in-service training for Counselors, Multi-Functional Correctional Officers, and Counseling Supervisors, including training in cognitive behavioral program delivery. SOP 214.04, Evidence Based Prison Program, governs cognitive behavioral programming, peer mentoring, and community partnerships across GDC facilities. What the written policy requires and what a facility can deliver at a 50% vacancy rate are two different questions, and GPS has documented the gap systemwide rather than resolved it facility by facility.

Two Deaths in the Registry

GPS's mortality registry records two deaths in custody at Bainbridge since January 1, 2020 — a floor, not a full count, since GDC reports deaths roughly two months late.

Milledge Robert Angel died August 6, 2023, at Bainbridge Probation Substance Abuse Treatment Center; GPS's registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical and his age at death as 72. Timothy Keith Gray died December 6, 2024, at the same facility, at age 39; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending — meaning GPS does not yet know why he died, and this page does not guess.

The ages are the analytical detail. A 72-year-old man in a nine-month residential substance-abuse program for high-risk, high-needs offenders is an unusual profile for an RSAT population, and a 39-year-old dying with no cause yet established is the kind of record that stays open precisely because the institution that held him has not supplied the answer. GPS holds no cause determination for Gray beyond that pending status.

The Infrastructure and Food Context

GPS treats infrastructure collapse as a force multiplier for the violence, classification, gang-control, and mortality crises it has documented at the facility level, and the pattern is systemwide: most GDC facilities are 30-40+ years old, with documented deferred maintenance producing broken cell-door locks, inoperative surveillance and fire-alarm systems, mold and water failures, broken kitchen sanitization 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 it.

Food is part of the same ledger. 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 its May 2026 investigation "Rats, Insects and Mold," reporting rats in kitchens, insects in food, moldy trays, and visible malnutrition across Georgia facilities. GPS has separately documented food-service sanitation failure that DPH inspection scores systematically fail to capture — broken tray-sanitizing dishwashers, sustained roach and rodent infestation, meals served on contaminated trays — a contradiction GPS developed in its investigation "Dunked, Stacked, and Served."

For a population in residential substance-abuse treatment, underfeeding and contaminated food are not background conditions. They are clinical ones.

Leadership and the Record

The facility's current superintendent is Lachanda Shiree Roberts-MacKey, who took the post in 2022 after serving as Correctional Assistant Superintendent at Bainbridge from 2022 to 2025. Moses P. James held the superintendent post during 2025, and appears in the record as warden at Bainbridge during 2024. The churn at the top of a 200-bed treatment facility across two years is itself a data point about institutional continuity, though GPS does not infer a cause from it.

What the Record Does Not Show

Bainbridge's public footprint is small. GPS's registry records two deaths; GPS has recorded no other mortality at the facility since 2020, which means the registry holds no such record — not that nothing else has happened there. The facility's treatment outcomes, program completion rates, and clinical staffing levels are not in the public record GPS holds. For a facility whose entire purpose is rehabilitation, that absence is the finding worth pressing on.

Sources

This analysis draws on GPS's own mortality registry and personnel records; Georgia Department of Corrections policy documents, including SOP 107.03 (Staff Development) and SOP 214.04 (Evidence Based Prison Program); the October 2024 U.S. Department of Justice findings letter and the 2024 Guidehouse assessment as described in GPS reporting; and The Marshall Project's May 2026 investigation of Georgia prison food, "Rats, Insects and Mold." GPS's systemic findings on staffing collapse, infrastructure failure, and food-service sanitation are drawn from GPS's own investigative reporting.