COFFEE CORRECTIONAL FACILITY

Last updated August 22, 2026.(DS)

Coffee Correctional Facility opened in 1998 as a medium-security prison for men in Nicholls, Coffee County. Operated by CoreCivic, the private prison was originally designed for 1,524 people but now carries a rated capacity of 2,628 — and, per GPS's facility records, currently holds 2,822, running at 107.4% of that expanded figure. Warden Sidney Carter heads the facility, with a leadership team that includes Assistant Warden of Security Kamala Grant, Chief of Security Joaquin Lemon, and State Monitor Lonnie Pritchett. The facility's public profile lists no special designations and no programming details — a notable absence in the record of what the people held there are offered.

A Facility Running Past Its Design

The gap between Coffee's original design capacity of 1,524 and its current rated capacity of 2,628 is itself a structural fact: the facility was re-rated to hold more than 1,100 additional people without a corresponding expansion of its physical plant. GPS's records show the facility now holds 2,822 people — 194 above even the re-rated figure. This overcrowding pattern is consistent with GPS's systemic finding that medium-security facilities across Georgia are absorbing close-security populations without the staffing or infrastructure to match. GPS has documented classification drift across the system, with medium-security prisons operating as higher-security facilities while officer vacancy rates statewide run between 49.3% and 60% — against a national standard of no more than 10%.

Homicides and the December 2025 Stabbings

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has documented two homicides at Coffee Correctional Facility. Kendall Ja'Mal Cromer, 31, died on November 30, 2020 from stab wounds to the neck and chest; an incident report indicated four other inmates were involved. Hendricks Riley Gunn, 42, died on January 1, 2022 from blunt force injuries to the head and neck. GPS's mortality database records 25 deaths at the facility since 2020, including two classified as homicides, one suicide, four natural or medical deaths, and fourteen still listed as unknown or pending — a category that reflects both the slow pace of GDC death reporting and the difficulty families face in getting answers.

The most serious recent violence came on December 13, 2025, when a series of stabbings left multiple inmates critically injured and requiring off-site, life-saving medical care, according to GDC. On June 18, 2026, a Georgia grand jury indicted 16 inmates on charges including aggravated assault, aggravated battery, violations of the Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act, and riot in a penal institution. FOX 5 Atlanta reported that the 16 indicted inmates are alleged members of the Bloods street gang, and Yahoo.com carried the same characterization. The scale of the incident — 16 people charged in a coordinated series of stabbings — points to the gang-control dynamic that the October 2024 DOJ findings letter described systemwide, in which gangs effectively run multiple facilities and control access to phones, showers, food, and bed assignments.

Staff Accountability and Contraband

In January 2025, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Dacia Gaskins, a former correctional officer at Coffee Correctional Facility, was indicted for conspiring to distribute cocaine, methamphetamine, oxycodone, and marijuana as part of a drug-trafficking operation. The case fits a broader pattern GPS has documented across Georgia facilities, where the staffing crisis — with acceptance rates under 15% and 82.7% of new hires leaving in their first year — has produced hiring standards so degraded that contraband introduction by staff has become a recurring failure mode. The DOJ's October 2024 findings letter explicitly faulted GDC for placing "too much blame on gangs and insufficient emphasis on understaffing."

Food Safety Scores and the Limits of Inspection

Coffee Correctional Facility's food-service inspection record, as documented by the Georgia Department of Public Health, is superficially strong: seven routine inspections between May 2023 and March 2026 produced scores of 100, 100, 100, 90, 99, 96, and 100 — all Grade A. The lowest score, a 90 in November 2024, cited two violations: proper cold holding temperatures and physical facilities installed, maintained, and clean. But GPS's systemic investigation into food-service sanitation across GDC facilities has documented a pattern in which high DPH scores coexist with sustained witness reports of equipment failure and food contamination. GPS has found that inspections are scheduled walkthroughs that do not assess equipment under load, and has documented professional overlap between inspectors and facility staff in small-county settings. The contradiction between clean scores and the lived conditions GPS has documented elsewhere in the system is the analytical center of GPS's investigation "Dunked, Stacked, and Served." GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food — under 60 cents per meal — against the FDA Thrifty Food Plan estimate of roughly $10 per day for a nutritionally adequate adult male diet.

Notification Failures and Family Silence

GPS has received recurring reports that Coffee Correctional Facility has failed to notify next of kin following incidents involving incarcerated people. A family member alleges that the facility did not notify them after an incident involving their incarcerated relative; an anonymous tip indicates the same failure in the recent past; and a family member reports that information about an incident was communicated through another incarcerated person rather than through facility staff. These accounts, taken together, describe a facility where families learn about violence, injury, or death through informal channels rather than official notification — a failure that compounds the trauma of the underlying incident and leaves families without timely access to medical information or legal recourse.

Sources

This analysis draws on reporting from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, FOX 5 Atlanta, and Yahoo.com; official statements and inspection records from the Georgia Department of Public Health and the Georgia Department of Corrections; GPS's mortality database and facility records; GPS's own investigative reporting on classification drift, staffing collapse, and food-service sanitation; and family and anonymous accounts collected by GPS staff.