COLQUITT COUNTY PRISON

Analysis written on June 28, 2026.

A Private Facility in a System in Collapse

Colquitt County Prison, a privately operated men's facility in Moultrie, houses approximately 182 incarcerated people under the oversight of Warden William Howell, a contractor appointed in January 2024. It is one of Georgia's private prisons, which together held 8,174 people as of June 26, 2026, according to GDC's weekly population snapshots — a segment that has drawn scrutiny for reduced transparency and accountability compared to state-run institutions. The prison sits within a correctional system the U.S. Department of Justice described in October 2024 as one where "the leadership ... has lost control of its facilities." GPS analysis finds that the systemic breakdowns documented across Georgia's prisons — chronic understaffing, gang assumption of operational control, decrepit infrastructure, and pervasive sexual violence — are not confined to large state compounds; they extend to private facilities like Colquitt, even when public reporting on those facilities remains scarce.

GPS reporting has documented that GDC acknowledges officer vacancies averaging 50% statewide, while prison populations have doubled since many facilities were originally designed. At some state prisons, vacancy rates exceed 80%, and Georgia ranks last in the nation for correctional officer pay. The hiring pipeline cannot close the gap: fewer than 15% of applicants are accepted, and 82.7% of new hires leave within their first year. These figures come directly from GDC statements and consultant assessments, including the 2024 Guidehouse review. The systemic finding that "staffing collapse + gang assumption of facility control" drives violence and mortality applies across the board. At Colquitt County Prison, GPS has not yet collected facility-specific staffing data, but the systemic conditions detailed in DOJ's findings — that gangs effectively run multiple facilities, controlling phones, showers, food, and bed assignments — create a baseline hazard that no private prison can be assumed to escape.

Deprivation, Contamination, and the Cost of Food

The Georgia prison system feeds incarcerated people for roughly $1.69 per person per day — approximately 57 cents per meal — a figure that is about one-sixth of the FDA's Thrifty Food Plan estimate for a nutritionally adequate diet for an adult man. GPS's own investigation, corroborated by a May 2026 Marshall Project report documenting rats in kitchens, insects in food, and visible malnutrition, found that chronic underfeeding is a structural feature of GDC operations. The state spends approximately 14 times more on medical care for incarcerated people than on their food, a ratio that reflects a system in which hunger is a constant companion.

This deprivation is compounded by systemic food-service sanitation failures that GPS has documented across multiple facilities: tray-sanitizing dishwashers broken for sustained periods, roach and rodent infestations in kitchen equipment, meals served on visibly contaminated trays. A GPS investigation, "Dunked, Stacked, and Served," revealed that these conditions persist even when Department of Public Health kitchen scores appear acceptable, because inspections are scheduled walkthroughs that do not assess equipment under load and because of professional overlap between inspectors and facility staff in small counties. While no Colquitt-specific kitchen inspection data is available in GPS's records, the facility operates within a system in which broken sanitation and malnutrition are the norm.

Firsthand narratives published in GPS's Tell My Story collection illustrate what those numbers mean in human terms. One incarcerated man described a diet so meager that "life in there, for some people ... it's either laugh or cry." Another, a 69-year-old with prostate cancer, shared a cell with a man whose chest condition was caused by "extended exposure to black mold in GDC facilities." These stories, though drawn from other institutions, reflect the environmental conditions that define life inside Georgia's prisons — private and public alike.

Infrastructure Collapse and the Violence It Enables

GDC's facilities are overwhelmingly old — most 30 to 40 years or more — and GPS has documented a systemic pattern of deferred maintenance that produces cascading failures: broken cell-door locks (an audit at Hays State Prison found ~42% non-functional, a finding confirmed by Guidehouse in 2024), inoperative surveillance and fire-alarm systems, mold and water failures, broken kitchen sanitization equipment, and pest infestations. The DOJ October 2024 findings letter, the Guidehouse assessment, and Commissioner Oliver's public statements that many facilities are "at end of life" all corroborate the pattern. GPS treats infrastructure collapse as a force multiplier for the violence, classification, gang-control, and mortality crises it has documented facility by facility.

These physical failures create spaces where violence is nearly impossible to supervise. In the Tell My Story collection, a man who served decades recalls the "constant and never absent presence" of anxiety, the "looming fog of potential violence," and the way "these young gangsters are so prevalent in the GDC and lately they're killing older guys." Another describes entering Jackson for diagnostic processing and finding a cell with "fresh blood everywhere." Those experiences, while not set at Colquitt, are products of the same broken infrastructure and staffing void that characterize the entire system.

Sexual Violence and the Failure to Protect

The October 2024 DOJ findings letter concluded that sexual assault is "rampant" in Georgia's prisons 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 violations are not confined to a few large state prisons; they form a systemic pattern that includes private facilities. GPS has not yet received facility-specific reports from Colquitt, but the absence of transparent data from private operators makes oversight even more difficult.

Deaths in Custody and the Accountability Void

GPS's mortality database records two deaths at Colquitt County Prison. The circumstances of those deaths are not publicly known — a reflection of the opacity that private corrections contractors maintain. Across Georgia's prison system, GPS has independently tracked 1,841 deaths in GDC custody since 2020. The systemic failures documented above — understaffing, gang control, food deprivation, broken infrastructure, and sexual violence — form the backdrop against which those deaths occur.

The people who live in these facilities are acutely aware of their vulnerability. As one man, now elderly and ill, wrote in Tell My Story: "As older, infirm prisoners we exist under daily threat and anxiety. I've seen a man decimate his best friend and sit down in his blood and eat a nutty bar waiting for the guards to come take him to seg." That account came from another prison, but it captures the reality of a system in which violence is not an aberration but a predictable consequence of neglect. Colquitt County Prison, small and private, is not exempt from that reality.

Sources

This analysis draws on GPS's own systemic investigations, including its findings on staffing collapse, food deprivation, infrastructure failure, and sexual violence; GDC weekly population snapshots; the October 2024 U.S. Department of Justice findings letter and the 2024 Guidehouse assessment; GPS's mortality database; and firsthand narratives published in GPS's Tell My Story collection. Public reporting specifically on conditions inside Colquitt County Prison remains minimal.