BLECKLEY PROBATION SUBSTANCE ABUSE TREATMENT CENTER

Last updated August 23, 2026.(DS)

A Treatment Center Inside a Prison

Bleckley Probation Substance Abuse Treatment Center sits in Cochran, Georgia, in Bleckley County, and serves a male population. It is a residential substance abuse treatment center operating at Pulaski State Prison — a facility whose own history is woven into the broader pattern of violence and systemic failure that GPS has documented across the Georgia Department of Corrections. The center is led by Warden Lisa H. Thompson, with Assistant Superintendent Doreen Curtis, Administrative Assistant Cortney Land, and Business Manager Shekina Ross comprising the administrative staff.

GPS's mortality database, which tracks deaths in GDC custody beginning January 1, 2020, records no deaths at this facility. That is a floor, not a ceiling — GDC reports deaths roughly two months late — but as of the most recent data, the center stands apart from the mortality crisis that has claimed 1,863 lives across the Georgia prison system since 2020.

The Treatment Mandate and the System Around It

The center's core function is residential substance abuse treatment for people under probation supervision. GDC's own policy framework — SOP 508.44, governing Integrated Treatment Facilities — describes nine-month residential probation detention programs providing specialized treatment for people with co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders, with referrals coming through the Department of Community Supervision, direct court sentences, revocations, or internal channels. The policy's key topics include therapeutic community models, evidence-based intervention, and treatment planning. The center's placement at Pulaski State Prison means its residents live and receive treatment inside the perimeter of a facility that the October 2024 Department of Justice findings letter identified as a site of at-knifepoint sexual assaults — a documented cluster in the systemic sexual violence GPS has tracked across GDC.

The treatment mandate operates against a backdrop of structural collapse. GPS has documented that 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%. The 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 people are validated members of 315 different security threat groups — more than double the national average — and both DOJ and the Guidehouse 2024 consultant assessment independently concluded that gangs effectively run multiple facilities, controlling access to phones, showers, food, and bed assignments.

The Conditions That Shape Treatment

The physical conditions inside GDC facilities bear directly on what a residential treatment program can accomplish. GPS has documented that most GDC facilities are 30 to 40-plus years old, with deferred maintenance producing systemwide infrastructure failures: broken cell-door locks, inoperative surveillance and fire-alarm systems, mold and water failures, broken kitchen sanitization equipment, and pest infestations. The DOJ October 2024 findings, the Guidehouse 2024 assessment, and Commissioner Oliver's public "end of life" statements all corroborate the pattern. GPS treats infrastructure collapse as a force multiplier for the violence, classification, gang-control, and mortality crises documented at the facility level.

Food service is a particular point of failure. GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food — under 60 cents per meal — versus 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, quoting GPS connecting chronic underfeeding to the violence pattern DOJ documented. GPS has further documented a systemic pattern of food-service sanitation failure that DPH inspection 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 DPH 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.

Sexual Violence and the Pulaski Context

The October 2024 DOJ findings letter concluded that sexual assault is "rampant" in GDC facilities 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 DOJ findings specifically documented at-knifepoint sexual assaults at Pulaski State Prison — the host facility for Bleckley Probation Substance Abuse Treatment Center. That cluster sits alongside the 2020 Smith State Prison case in which an incarcerated person was waterboarded and sexually assaulted by his cellmate, and the at-least-four staff arrests for sexual assault since 2020 at Lee Arrendale State Prison, Georgia's largest women's facility. GPS treats the sexual violence pattern as systemic, not facility-isolated, and as the analytical center of any GDC violence or staff-misconduct narrative.

Sources

This analysis draws on GPS's own systemic findings and mortality database, GDC Standard Operating Procedures including SOP 508.44 governing Integrated Treatment Facilities, the October 2024 Department of Justice findings letter, the Guidehouse 2024 assessment, and independent reporting by The Marshall Project. Facility profile data comes from GPS's standing records of GDC facilities.