CALHOUN STATE PRISON
Facility Information
- Original Design Capacity
- 750 (at 221% capacity)
- Bed Capacity
- 1,677 beds
- Current Population
- 1,661
- Active Lifers
- 572 (34.4% of population) · Jun 2026 GDC report
- Life Without Parole
- 1 (0.1%)
Read: Brown v. Plata - A Legal Roadmap for Georgia's Prison Crisis →
- Address
- 27823 Main Street, Morgan, GA 39866
- Phone
- (229) 849-5000
- Fax
- (229) 849-5017
- Mailing Address
- P.O. Box 249, Morgan, GA 39866
- County
- Calhoun County
- Opened
- 1994
- Operator
- GDC (Georgia Dept. of Corrections)
Leadership & Accountability (as of 2026 records)
Officials currently holding positional authority at this facility, with deaths attributed to GPS-tracked records during their leadership tenure. Inclusion reflects role-based accountability, not legal findings of personal culpability. Death counts shown as facility / career.
| Role | Name | Since | Deaths this facility / career |
|---|---|---|---|
| Warden (facility lead) | Hudson, Charles Leonard | 2026-06-01 | — / 14 |
| DEPUTY WARDEN (facility deputy) | Scott, Tracey | 2020-01-01 | 28 / 28 |
| DEPUTY WARDEN (facility deputy) | Spencer, Gwendolyn A | 2024-01-01 | 14 / 14 |
| Deputy Warden of Security (facility deputy) | Johnson, Curtis Tyrone | 2025-01-01 | 7 / 7 |
About
Calhoun State Prison, a medium-security facility in Morgan, Georgia, has become a flashpoint in a systemic classification crisis: nearly 30% of its population is close-security, and a wave of 87 lifer transfers to Level 5 facilities in early 2026 has drawn intense scrutiny. GPS and federal investigations document multi
Mortality Statistics
30 deaths documented at this facility from 2020 to present.
Deaths by Year
- 2026: 2
- 2025: 7
- 2024: 7
- 2023: 5
- 2022: 5
- 2021: 1
- 2020: 3
County Public Health Department
Food service and sanitation at CALHOUN STATE PRISON fall under the jurisdiction of the Calhoun County Environmental Health Department. Incarcerated people cannot choose where they eat — public health inspectors carry an elevated responsibility to hold this kitchen to the same standards applied to any restaurant.
Contact
- Title
- Environmental Health Director
- Address
-
P.O. Box 56
Morgan, GA 31766 - Phone
- (229) 849-2515
- calhoun.eh@dph.ga.gov
- Website
- Visit department website →
Why this matters
GPS has documented black mold on chow-hall ceilings, cold and contaminated trays, spoiled milk, and pest contamination at Georgia prisons. The Department of Justice's 2024 report confirmed deaths from dehydration and untreated diabetes tied to food and water deprivation. Advance-notice inspections let facilities stage temporary fixes that disappear once inspectors leave.
Unannounced inspections by the county health department are one of the few outside checks on kitchen conditions behind the fence.
How you can help
Write to the county inspector and request an unannounced inspection of the kitchen and food service operation at this facility. A short, respectful letter citing Georgia food-safety regulations is more powerful than you think — inspectors respond to public concern.
Sample Letter
This is the letter Georgia Prisoners' Speak mailed to all county environmental health inspectors responsible for GDC facilities. Feel free to adapt it.
June 5, 2026
RE: Request for Unannounced Public Health Inspection of Food Service Operations at CALHOUN STATE PRISON
Dear County Environmental Health Director,
I am writing to respectfully request that your office conduct a thorough, unannounced inspection of food service and sanitation practices at CALHOUN STATE PRISON, located in Calhoun County.
Documented concerns
Georgia Prisoners' Speak, a nonprofit public advocacy organization, has published extensive investigative reporting on food safety and nutrition failures across Georgia's prison system, including:
- Dangerous sanitation conditions — black mold on chow hall ceilings and air vents, contaminated food trays, and spoiled milk served to inmates.
- Severe nutritional deficiency — roughly 60 cents per meal; inmates receive only 40% of required protein and less than one serving of vegetables per day.
- Preventable deaths — the U.S. Department of Justice's 2024 report confirmed deaths from dehydration, renal failure, and untreated diabetes following food and water deprivation.
- Staged compliance — advance-notice inspections allow facilities to stage temporary improvements, then revert once inspectors leave.
Firsthand testimony
In Surviving on Scraps: Ten Years of Prison Food in Georgia, a person who has spent more than ten years in GDC custody describes no functional dishwashing sanitation, chronic mold on food trays, and roaches found on the undersides of trays at intake facilities. Full account: gps.press/surviving-on-scraps-ten-years-of-prison-food-in-georgia.
Specific requests
- Conduct an unannounced inspection of the kitchen and food service operations at this facility, with particular attention to dishwashing equipment, tray sanitation procedures, and food storage conditions.
- Evaluate compliance with applicable Georgia food safety regulations, including O.C.G.A. § 26-2-370 and the Georgia Food Service Rules and Regulations (Chapter 511-6-1).
- Verify permit status and confirm whether the facility is subject to the same inspection schedule as other institutional food service establishments in the county.
- Make inspection results available to the public, as permitted under Georgia's Open Records Act (O.C.G.A. § 50-18-70).
Incarcerated individuals cannot advocate for their own health and safety in the way a restaurant patron can — they cannot choose to eat elsewhere. This places an elevated responsibility on public health officials to ensure these facilities meet the same sanitation standards applied to any food service establishment.
Thank you for your attention to this important public health matter.
Sincerely,
[Your name]
Food Safety Inspections
Georgia Department of Public Health
What the score doesn't measure. DPH grades kitchen compliance on inspection day — food storage, temperatures, pest control. It does not grade whether today's trays are clean. GPS reporting has found broken dishwashers at most Georgia state prisons we've documented; trays go out wet, stacked, and visibly moldy — including at facilities with recent scores near 100.
Who inspects. Most Georgia state prisons sit in rural counties — often with fewer than 20,000 people, several with fewer than 10,000. The environmental health inspector lives in that community and often knows the kitchen staff personally. Rural inspection regimes don't have the structural independence you'd expect in a city-sized health department. Read the scores accordingly.
Read the investigation: “Dunked, Stacked and Served: Why Georgia Prison Trays Are Making People Sick”
Recent inspections
| Date | Score | Purpose | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 7, 2026 | 98 | Routine | |
| Jul 23, 2025 | 99 | Routine | |
| Jan 8, 2025 | 98 | Routine | |
| Jul 25, 2024 | 99 | Routine | |
| Jan 10, 2024 | 98 | Routine | |
| Jul 19, 2023 | 97 | Routine |
January 7, 2026 — Score 98
Routine · Inspector: Ken Collins
| Code | Violation | Pts | Inspector notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 17C |
physical facilities installed, maintained, and clean 511-6-1.07(5)(a),(b) - good repair, physical facilities maintained; cleaning, frequency & restrictions, cleaned often enough to keep them clean (c) Repeat | 1 | Oberved worn and damaged floors throughout food prep areas. |
July 23, 2025 — Score 99
Routine · Inspector: Ken Collins
| Code | Violation | Pts | Inspector notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 17C |
physical facilities installed, maintained, and clean 511-6-1.07(5)(a),(b) - good repair, physical facilities maintained; cleaning, frequency & restrictions, cleaned often enough to keep them clean (c) | 1 | Observed damaged floors in need of repair. |
January 8, 2025 — Score 98
Routine · Inspector: Ken Collins
| Code | Violation | Pts | Inspector notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 17C |
physical facilities installed, maintained, and clean 511-6-1.07(5)(a),(b) - good repair, physical facilities maintained; cleaning, frequency & restrictions, cleaned often enough to keep them clean (c) Repeat | 1 | Observed damaged floors in need of repair throughout food preparation and dish washing areas. |
July 25, 2024 — Score 99
Routine · Inspector: Ken Collins
| Code | Violation | Pts | Inspector notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 17C |
physical facilities installed, maintained, and clean 511-6-1.07(5)(a),(b) - good repair, physical facilities maintained; cleaning, frequency & restrictions, cleaned often enough to keep them clean (c) | 1 | Observed damaged floors in need of repair throughout food preparation areas. |
January 10, 2024 — Score 98
Routine · Inspector: Ken Collins
| Code | Violation | Pts | Inspector notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 13A |
posted: permit/inspection/choking poster/handwashing 511-6-1.02(1)(d) - displaying of the inspection report (c) | 1 | Manager could not locate last inspection report during this inspection. |
| 17C |
physical facilities installed, maintained, and clean 511-6-1.07(5)(a),(b) - good repair, physical facilities maintained; cleaning, frequency & restrictions, cleaned often enough to keep them clean (c) | 1 | Observed damaged ceiling over prep tables in food prep rooms. |
July 19, 2023 — Score 97
Routine · Inspector: Ken Collins
| Code | Violation | Pts | Inspector notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18 |
insects, rodents, and animals not present 511-6-1.07(5)(k) - controlling pests (pf, c) | 3 | Observed roaches in warehouse and kitchen. |
Analysis written on May 31, 2026.
Calhoun State Prison opened in 1994 with an original design capacity of 750 men. Today it holds 1,663—virtually filling its current rated capacity of 1,677—but the population housed inside has drifted far from the facility’s medium-security label. As of October 2025, 487 of those incarcerated, or 29.4%, were classified as close-security. That mismatch is not incidental: it reflects a pattern of classification drift that Georgia Prisoners’ Speak (GPS) has documented across four state prisons, where medium-security compounds have become de facto close-security institutions without the staffing, infrastructure, or procedural controls that designation requires. At Calhoun, the consequences have been lethal.
Classification Drift and the Lifter Transfer Wave
GPS’s own investigative reporting, published under the title “The Classification Crisis: How Four Medium Security Prisons Are Killing People,” identified Calhoun State Prison as one of four Georgia facilities operating with a dangerously high concentration of close-security inmates—between 27.7% and 29.7% of their populations—while still designated as medium-security. Those four prisons, GPS found, registered 8 to 10 confirmed homicides between January and November 2025, compared to just 2 at all other medium-security facilities combined. The U.S. Department of Justice, in its October 2024 investigative findings, had already concluded that the Georgia Department of Corrections systematically misclassifies homicides as unknown or undetermined causes, meaning the real toll is almost certainly higher.
Beginning in early 2026, GPS uncovered a coordinated series of transfers that appear to be reshaping Calhoun’s population. Over several months, 87 men serving life sentences were moved out of Calhoun State Prison—79.3% of them sent to Level 5 close-security facilities. In the final week of March 2026 alone, a concentrated wave of 36 lifers was shipped out. Among them was John Morgan Coleman, 82 years old, transferred to the close-security Hancock State Prison. GPS’s internal analysis shows that Calhoun accounted for a disproportionately high share of all medium-to-close security lifer transfers statewide, making it a statistical outlier.
The demographics of those moved deepen the concern: a large majority were Black, a significant portion were 60 or older, and nearly all had been convicted of murder. Critically, none were serving life without parole—they were parole-eligible lifers, many with clean disciplinary records and documented participation in programming. Multiple inmate and family accounts collected by GPS describe stable, long-term residents being suddenly uprooted and sent to higher-security prisons. At the same time, the facility has been receiving a heavy influx of short-term inmates and close-security disciplinary transfers from Level 5 institutions—a pattern GPS’s analysis describes as a deliberate shift from a long-term population to a short-term throughput model, with little transparency.
Deaths and the Collapse of Safety
The human cost of operating a medium-security facility as a close-security prison without adequate safeguards is written in a series of deaths documented by both news outlets and federal investigators.
In February 2023, a 24-year-old man was found dead in his restrictive-housing cell at Calhoun. The coroner determined he had been lying dead for seven to eight hours before discovery; his cause of death was dehydration with renal failure. The DOJ investigation later confirmed that prison staff had cut off his food and water as retaliation after he threw water through his cell door flap. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the man had been denied meals and had his water shut off until he died—a killing that the DOJ pointed to as emblematic of a system in which staff act with impunity.
In May 2022, DaQuavious Cachone Lackey, 21, was beaten and stabbed to death by his cellmate. The DOJ found that staff had failed to follow classification and housing-assignment procedures when moving the assailant between segregation and general population, allowing the two to be housed together. Lackey died of blunt-force trauma and a stab wound to the neck.
Other deaths at Calhoun in recent years include Kenneth Piper, 37, found dead in May 2024 after an inmate-on-inmate assault; Gonzalo Colmenero, 54, killed in a similar assault in July 2024; Martel Dorsey, 34, stabbed in October 2023 while being chased through a dorm by other prisoners; and Willie Andrew Willis Jr., who died after a fall at the facility. Willis’s family alleges he was thrown from a balcony and that nearly an hour passed before he was airlifted for treatment—an account of delayed emergency response that mirrors the DOJ’s finding that EMS teams are delayed an average of 30 minutes during emergencies at GDC facilities because of understaffing.
GPS’s mortality database records 28 deaths at Calhoun State Prison since it began tracking in 2020, with the most recent being Jimmy McMullen, 67, in January 2026; Matthew Len Nutt, 37, in December 2025—a death GDC has not confirmed but which GPS records under a category associated with suspicious or undetermined causes; Thomas Haugabook, 67, in September 2025; and Tyler Jackson, 30, in June 2025. The total figure is consistent with a facility in crisis.
Staff Collusion and the Contraband Pipeline
Security failures at Calhoun extend beyond violence to a well-documented pattern of staff participation in drug and contraband smuggling, and a coordinated failure by law enforcement to bring those cases to prosecution.
In February 2020, correctional officers Corlethia Lattimore and Imani Ferguson were arrested after arriving for their shifts with Hot Pockets packages that allegedly contained 112 grams of methamphetamine and tobacco. Both were fired immediately. Yet the charges were dismissed in July 2023 because the GDC investigator, Ruby Long, had never submitted the drug evidence to the state crime lab for testing. The case was just one of nearly two dozen drug-smuggling investigations tied to Calhoun State Prison—leading to 33 arrests between 2018 and 2021—that District Attorney Joe Mulholland was forced to dismiss for the same reason. Five prison employees and numerous civilians walked free. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, reporting on the dismissals in June 2025, found that the Calhoun County Sheriff’s Department similarly failed to submit drug evidence in 12 of its own cases, despite the sheriff’s claim that deputies had sent samples.
The contraband problem was not limited to staff. In 2019, officer Temperess Johnson was sentenced to five years in federal prison for attempting to smuggle eight cellphones and 2.6 pounds of meth into the prison in a GDC van. Incarcerated people inside Calhoun ran sophisticated criminal enterprises: Jonathan Alvin Pope led a drug ring spanning at least seven Georgia counties; Pedro Barragan Valencia brokered the distribution of at least 250 kilograms of meth; Edwin Murillo, while incarcerated, directed meth sales and was later sentenced to life for ordering a 2021 torture and murder; and Irvin Falcon, a 23-year-old serving a burglary sentence, directed meth deliveries from his cell using a contraband phone. Two other prisoners were convicted of running a nationwide wire-fraud and extortion operation from Calhoun that targeted 119 victims across six states.
The state’s response—a $50 million Managed Access System (MAS) installed at Calhoun in mid-2025 to block unauthorized cellular signals—came years after these operations were already underway. Meanwhile, the GDC paid nearly $127,000 to the Calhoun County Sheriff and eight deputies in the first three months of 2025 for off-duty perimeter patrol at $45 per hour—outsourcing security to local law enforcement even as the facility reeled from internal failures.
Institutional Evasion and the Illusion of Oversight
Despite the cascade of violence, death, and corruption, oversight mechanisms repeatedly failed to surface the truth or hold anyone accountable.
A grand jury convened on June 2, 2025 heard 35 cases related to Calhoun State Prison, but more than 300 cases remained pending afterward, according to the Superior Court clerk. The AJC reported that the GDC’s public statements about the number of dismissed cases conflicted with what the newspaper found in court files, suggesting the agency deliberately understated the scope of evidentiary failures.
Grievances from incarcerated people at Calhoun met with obstruction. WALB documented one case in which a prisoner’s report alleging extortion and gang violence was rejected as untimely with no follow-up. The DOJ’s broader investigation found that less than 10% of prison fights, less than 23% of inmate-on-inmate assaults, and less than 6% of weapons incidents in Georgia’s prisons were forwarded for investigation.
Food-safety inspection scores from the Georgia Department of Public Health paint a benign picture: Calhoun earned scores of 96, 98, 99, and 100 in repeated biannual inspections between 2023 and 2026, all Grade A. But GPS has separately documented that DPH scores can mask deep sanitation failures—broken dishwashers, roach and rodent infestations in kitchens, and meals served on contaminated trays—because inspections are scheduled walkthroughs that do not capture equipment failures under load. Across the system, The Marshall Project’s 2026 investigation independently found rats in kitchens, insects in food, and visible malnutrition, while the state spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food—under 60 cents per meal.
A System in Freefall
Calhoun State Prison does not exist in isolation. Its crises are a local expression of a systemic breakdown that the DOJ, in its October 2024 findings letter, described as a prison system where “the leadership of the Georgia Department of Corrections has lost control of its facilities.”
Correctional officer vacancies in Georgia have run between 49.3% and 60% systemwide for years, against a national standard of no more than 10%. Approximately 31% of the system’s ~49,000 incarcerated population are validated members of 315 different security threat groups—more than double the national average—and both the DOJ and the state’s own Guidehouse consultant assessment concluded that gangs effectively run multiple facilities, controlling access to phones, showers, food, and bed assignments. Sexual assault, the DOJ found, is “rampant”; of 456 allegations recorded in 2022, only 35 were substantiated.
Those broader dynamics erupted into coordinated gang violence across the state in April 2026, when a Blood on Blood factional war sparked stabbings at multiple facilities, triggered 50-person tactical squads, and locked down 13 prisons. At Washington State Prison, a gang war killed four people on January 11, 2026—the facility has remained on continuous lockdown ever since.
At Calhoun, GPS’s intelligence system recorded a spike in family safety concerns, reports of medical neglect, and deaths in custody in early 2026, alongside multiple external complaints filed with the DOJ Civil Rights Division, federal investigators, and even journalists. The timing coincides with the lifter transfer wave, raising the question of whether the state is moving vulnerable long-term residents into facilities already consumed by violence—and whether the reclassification of Calhoun into a short-timer prison is a policy choice made far from public view, with lethal consequences for those caught in its gears.
Sources
This analysis draws on extensive reporting by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and WALB; the October 2024 findings of the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigation of the Georgia Department of Corrections; Georgia Department of Public Health inspection records; GPS’s own investigative series “The Classification Crisis” and ongoing data tracking of transfers and deaths; federal court filings; and multiple inmate and family accounts collected by GPS staff. Internal GPS intelligence records and mortality databases supplement the public record.
Recent reports (26)
Source-attributed observations and allegations from news coverage and reports submitted to GPS. Each entry credits its source.
- ALLEGATION According to Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published: Jan 21, 2025The DOJ report alleged that staff failed to follow procedures when moving Lackey's assailant between segregation and general population, leading to Lackey being housed with and killed by his cellmate.
"The DOJ report said he was killed after staff moved the assailant out of segregation to general population and then back to segregation without following procedures. There, he was housed in a cell with another prisoner. That prisoner asked to be moved because the two weren't getting along. The next day, an orderly saw the victim being beaten by his cellmate with a fan motor in a net bag, the DOJ reported."
Read source → - ALLEGATION According to Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published: Sep 5, 2024Murillo ordered the murder of a woman because the business relationship he had with her had collapsed and he no longer trusted her, resulting in her torture, murder and dismemberment.
"In September 2023, the drug ringleader was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to directing the 2021 torture, murder and dismemberment of a woman kidnapped from Plaza Fiesta Shopping Mall in DeKalb County. According to news reports, Murillo ordered the woman's murder because the "business relationship" he had with her had collapsed and he no longer trusted her."
Read source → - ALLEGATION According to Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published: Jan 21, 2025Prison staff cut off a prisoner's food and water as retaliation, leading to his death from dehydration and renal failure.
"At Calhoun State Prison in 2023, a prisoner died of dehydration with renal failure. According to the DOJ, prison staff had cut off his food and water after he had thrown water through the flap in his cell door."
Read source → - ALLEGATION According to WALB Published: Feb 13, 2026Willie Andrew Willis Jr.'s family alleges he was thrown from a balcony by other inmates and that it took nearly an hour before he was airlifted for treatment.
"Willis told his family he had been thrown from a balcony and left unable to move. The family said they still don't know how the incident happened or why it took nearly an hour before he was airlifted for treatment."
Read source → - ALLEGATION According to WALB Published: Feb 13, 2026Family alleges nurses gave a conflicting account of Willis's condition, claiming he came to get Tylenol and returned to his dorm before collapsing, while the family states he was paralyzed from the waist down and on a ventilator.
""Then we heard a different story where the nurses say he came and got a Tylenol, and then he went back to his dorm and fell out and couldn't move anymore. My son was on a ventilator; he couldn't breathe, couldn't move his body, and couldn't walk away. He was paralyzed from the waist down.""
Read source →
Timeline (60)
Source Articles (18)
Former leadership
Officials who previously held leadership roles at this facility.
| Role | Name | Tenure | Deaths this facility / career |
|---|---|---|---|
| WARDEN 1 (facility lead) | Jackson, Kendric | 2024-12-16 → 2025-12-31 | 7 / 18 |
| WARDEN 1 (facility lead) | Smith, Tarmarshe A | 2018-01-01 → 2019-12-31 | — / 36 |
| WARDEN 1 (facility lead) | Ford, Benjamin | 2016-01-01 → 2017-12-31 | — / 35 |
| DEPUTY WARDEN (facility deputy) | Peoples, Delvin Rasaunn | 2019-01-01 → 2024-08-31 | 19 / 44 |
| Chief Counselor (specialty lead) | Spann, James Clarence | 2009-01-01 → 2009-12-31 | — / 49 |
Location
Aerial View
Architecture documents what the building was designed to hold. See the system-wide receipts at gps.press/warehouse.