Last updated October 4, 2026.(DS)

Central State Prison: A Medium-Security Facility Running Past Its Design

Central State Prison sits on the grounds of the historic Central State Hospital complex in Macon, a medium-security facility for adult male felons that opened in 1978 with a design capacity of 288. It now holds roughly 1,157 people against a rated capacity of 1,153 — 100.3 percent of rated capacity, and more than four times what the plant was built to hold. Housing consists of cellblocks and dormitories configured for general population and segregation, along with a small infirmary. The prison provides work details, basic education, and limited treatment and religious programs, and it has historically been one of the larger medium-security hubs in middle Georgia.

That gap between design and reality is the spine of everything below: a mortality record of 39 deaths since January 2020, five of them homicides; a cluster of stabbings in December 2023 that killed two men within a day of each other; a documented pattern of staff-on-inmate violence allegations and disciplinary-process irregularities; and a state liability ledger that has paid out settlements tied to this facility in seven separate incidents since 2014.

Thirty-Nine Deaths Since 2020, Five Classified as Homicide

GPS's mortality registry records 39 deaths at Central State Prison since January 1, 2020 — a figure GPS treats as a floor, since GDC reports deaths roughly two months late. Twenty-four of those deaths carry a cause of Unknown/Pending, meaning GPS does not yet know the cause. Five are classified as homicide, three as suicide, three as Other, two as Natural/Medical, and two as overdose.

The most recent deaths on the registry include Steve Allen Burk, who died July 20, 2026, at Central State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Homicide and his age as 38. Demetris Raynard Keller died July 17, 2026, at Central State Prison; the cause is Unknown/Pending, age 38. Mickey Barrett died July 11, 2026, at Central State Prison of Natural/Medical causes, age 64. Raemonte Gentale Harris died July 3, 2026, at Central State Prison; cause Unknown/Pending, age 39. Richard Palmer died June 2, 2026, at Central State Prison; cause Unknown/Pending, age 57. Michael Lane Brooks died April 19, 2026, at Central State Prison; cause Unknown/Pending, age 77. Miguel Angel Duran died March 1, 2026, at Central State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Suicide, age 44.

Earlier deaths include Ronald Goss, who died October 23, 2025, at Central State Prison; cause Unknown/Pending, age 60. Joseph Hamm died October 8, 2025, at Central State Prison of an overdose, age 36. James Theodore Miller died September 22, 2025, at Central State Prison; cause Unknown/Pending, age 64. Ricky D Ring died July 16, 2025, at Central State Prison; cause Unknown/Pending, age 56. Travis Jamal Gaither died April 21, 2025, at Central State Prison; cause Unknown/Pending, age 41. Ricky Eugene Rogers died April 21, 2025, at Central State Prison of an overdose, age 68. Lamancha Ware died March 2, 2025, at Central State Prison; cause Unknown/Pending, age 48. Matthew Maddox died January 28, 2025, at Central State Prison; cause Unknown/Pending. Brandon Jamal Pool died December 29, 2024, at Central State Prison; cause Unknown/Pending, age 38. Leon Culver Kelly died December 9, 2024, at Central State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Homicide, age 47. Anthony Le Ray Baugher died October 26, 2024, at Central State Prison; cause Unknown/Pending, age 68. Thomas Dewayne Kiker died June 22, 2024, at Central State Prison; cause Unknown/Pending, age 49. Jeremiah Eugene Taylor died April 21, 2024, at Central State Prison; cause Unknown/Pending, age 41. Deanthony Terrell Fleming died February 14, 2024, at Central State Prison; cause Unknown/Pending, age 37. Adel Eackles died February 10, 2024, at Central State Prison; cause Unknown/Pending, age 64. Joseph W Akins died December 25, 2023, at Central State Prison; cause Unknown/Pending, age 66. Marquis Lamar Johnson died December 18, 2023, at Central State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Homicide, age 26. Hollis Alan Bryant died December 17, 2023, at Central State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Homicide, age 28.

The full registry for this facility is published at https://gps.press/georgia-prison-deaths/facility/central-state-prison/.

Two Stabbings in Eight Days, December 2023

The homicides that anchor the registry's recent history at Central State Prison occurred within a single week in December 2023. Hollis Alan Bryant, 28, died December 17, 2023, from sharp force trauma to the left femoral artery, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Three other prisoners were criminally charged in connection with his death, the AJC reported, citing the DOJ report. Marquis L. Johnson, 26, was stabbed in the prison barbershop on December 8, 2023, hospitalized, and died December 18, 2023, after returning to the prison and going into cardiac arrest secondary to the stabbing — also per the AJC's account of the DOJ report.

Georgia Public Broadcasting reported that in the last weeks of December, two incarcerated men were stabbed to death at Central State Prison, bringing total prison deaths in the past month to six. GPB also reported that 2023 was the Department of Corrections' most violent year since before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to GDC data.

An earlier homicide on the registry is Joshua Carl-Haynes Lester, 34, who died July 28, 2021, from a stab wound to the chest at Central State Prison, per the AJC.

Staff Misconduct Allegations and the Disciplinary Process

Central State Prison's recent news record includes several staff-side cases. 13WMAZ reported that a guard at the facility faced charges after falsely imprisoning four Department of Family and Child Services employees over child support payments in December 2025. The same outlet reported that three former prison guards were accused of beating an inmate and trying to cover it up in March 2025. GDC's own published account of the same period describes three former prison guards at Central State Prison accused of beating an inmate and attempting a cover-up, and separately, three inmates charged with stabbing another inmate in June 2025.

A separate thread runs through the facility's disciplinary process. GPS has received recurring accounts alleging that disciplinary reports at Central State Prison were falsified — including accounts that a named officer was not present during the search described in a report, that a CERT officer failed to recover the contraband item a search was purportedly conducted to find, and that hearing officers denied incarcerated people the ability to call witnesses or present video evidence. GPS records show four due-process-violation signals and four grievance-obstruction signals at this facility over the past twelve months, drawn from at least three distinct sources each.

These accounts align with what GPS's intelligence system records at scale: over the past year, GPS records seven staff-misconduct-alleged-named signals at Central State Prison across five months, seven assault-by-inmate-alleged signals, nine family-fear-for-life signals, six family-safety-concern signals, five death-in-custody-reported signals, three medical-neglect-alleged signals, and three external complaints filed to the Georgia DOC or DOJ or to law enforcement. GPS has additionally received accounts of staff-on-inmate use of force at this facility.

The Contraband Record and the Food-Safety Record

GDC's own published contraband reports list 20 incidents at Central State Prison since 2011, with arrests as reported by the agency — GDC publishes no dispositions, and an arrest is not a conviction. The staff-class actors GDC printed across those reports include four listed as "Officer," one as "Correctional Officer," one as "food service staff," and one as "Contract Nurse." The heaviest year in the series is 2021, with six incidents and six arrests reported, three of them staff-class. A 2025 incident dated August 23 lists the Bibb County Sheriff's Office as the arresting agency.

Against that, the facility's food-service record is unblemished on paper. The Georgia Department of Public Health has scored Central State Prison's kitchen 100 — Grade A — on six consecutive routine inspections: July 21, 2026; November 7, 2025; June 4, 2025; December 27, 2024; January 5, 2024; and July 6, 2023. Five of the six were conducted by inspector Jeremy Wimes; the most recent was conducted by Shondreka Webster-Reese.

GPS has documented a systemic pattern across GDC kitchens in which DPH scores fail to capture food-service sanitation failure — broken tray-sanitizing dishwashers, sustained roach and rodent infestation, and meals served on contaminated trays — because inspections are scheduled walkthroughs that do not assess equipment under load. The Marshall Project's May 16, 2026 investigation (Schwartzapfel, "Rats, Insects and Mold") independently reported rats in kitchens, insects in food, moldy trays, and visible malnutrition across Georgia facilities. GPS treats the coexistence of high DPH scores and sustained witness reports of contamination as the analytical center of its investigation "Dunked, Stacked, and Served." The scores at Central State Prison are the cleanest possible illustration of that gap: six perfect inspections, and a systemwide pattern GPS says those inspections are structurally unable to see.

Settlements, Staffing, and the Structural Frame

Georgia's open-records settlement ledger, maintained by the Department of Administrative Services Risk Management program, records seven state liability payouts tied to Central State Prison: $100,000 in the Christopher Stewart matter (incident 2019); $70,000 in the Calvin McClain matter (incident 2018); $22,000 in the Joshua David Turk matter (incident 2022); $22,000 in the Steven L. Avery matter (incident 2014); $3,000 in the Daniel Ford matter (incident 2021); $2,000 in the Marvin Bonilla-Bonilla matter (incident 2020); and $250 in the Robbin Bayse matter (incident 2018).

Those payouts sit inside a systemwide staffing and infrastructure crisis that GPS treats as the force multiplier behind facility-level violence. Officer vacancies in Georgia's prisons have run between 49.3 percent and 60 percent systemwide for multiple years, against a national standard of no more than 10 percent. The hiring pipeline cannot close the gap: acceptance rate under 15 percent, and 82.7 percent of new hires leave in their first year. 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." DOJ and the Guidehouse 2024 consultant assessment independently concluded that gangs effectively run multiple facilities, controlling access to phones, showers, food, and bed assignments. 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.

Most GDC facilities are 30 to 40-plus years old, with documented patterns of deferred maintenance that have produced systemwide infrastructure failures — broken cell-door locks, inoperative surveillance and fire-alarm systems, mold and water failures, broken kitchen sanitization equipment, and pest infestations. Central State Prison, at 47 years old and holding four times its original design population, is squarely inside that pattern.

The current leadership at Central State Prison is Warden Sonja D. Brown, who has held the post since June 1, 2026. Her deputies are Lachaka Nicole McKenzie, Deputy Warden of Care and Treatment, since May 1, 2025; Dennis J. Turner, Deputy Warden, since August 1, 2025; and Janice Denise Blackshear, Deputy Warden of Security, since May 16, 2025.

Sources

This analysis draws on GPS's mortality registry and intelligence records; Georgia Department of Public Health food-safety inspection reports for Central State Prison; GDC's published contraband arrest reports; the Georgia Department of Administrative Services Risk Management settlement ledger obtained through open records; reporting by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia Public Broadcasting, and 13WMAZ; The Marshall Project's May 2026 investigation of Georgia prison food; the October 2024 U.S. Department of Justice findings letter and the 2024 Guidehouse assessment; and inmate, family, and staff accounts collected by GPS.