Last updated November 8, 2026.(DS)

Emanuel Probation Detention Center: A Probation Facility Held Together by Fractions of a Position

Emanuel Probation Detention Center sits on 32 acres in Twin City, in Emanuel County, and holds adult male felons at medium security. GDC's Probation Detention Centers fact sheet gives it a capacity of 369, an opening date of October 18, 1994, and Emanuel Women's Facility in Swainsboro as its host facility. GDC's own facility descriptions record that it was built in 1991, was "one of the first detention centers completely constructed with offender labor," received its first detainees on October 18, 1994, and was renovated in 2007; physical capacity is 369 and operational capacity 352. A PREA audit notes that one warden oversees both Emanuel facilities, with an assistant superintendent running the detention center day to day. The Augusta Chronicle described it in March 2025 as "a medium-security facility in Twin City where felony probationers stay."

What follows examines the facility through three lenses: the arithmetic of its contracted health and mental-health staffing, which the state's own contract amendments lay out in fractions of a position; the family and tipster accounts GPS has collected about medication and segregation; and the facility's documented record of audits, a state liability payout, and a 2026 contraband arrest.

The Arithmetic of Care: Fractions of a Position

The most concrete public record of what Emanuel PDC offers the people held there is the state's contract staffing matrices for mental health and dental services, and they read as a study in fractional coverage. MHM's FY23 staffing table for Emanuel PDC totals 2.81 mental health FTEs at 112.40 hours per week, at an annual cost of $260,554.14 — a figure that includes a 0.06 FTE psychologist at $83.78 per hour, or $10,456.09 a year. That is roughly two and a half hours of psychologist time per week for a facility rated at 369.

MHM Amendment 13 breaks the same total down: 2.00 FTE mental health counselors at 80.00 hours per week ($150,144), 0.50 FTE clerk at 20.00 hours per week ($24,506), and 0.25 FTE psychiatrists at 10.00 hours per week ($75,448), with no Mental Health Unit Manager FTE allocated at all. Ten hours of psychiatrist time per week is the entire psychiatric allocation for the facility in that amendment.

Dental care is thinner still. MHM's FY23 table shows zero dental FTEs and zero dental cost for Emanuel PDC, and Amendment 13 lists no Dentist, Dental Hygienist, or Dental Assistant FTE — all entered as dashes — with total dental staffing at zero FTE and no annual cost. Amendment 7 had earlier set dental staffing at 0.25 dentist FTE, a quarter of a position that later amendments show disappearing entirely.

The same amendments document a facility in transition. Amendment 5 notes Emanuel PDC "is transitioning to Rogers," assigns 1.06 total FTE to "Emanuel PDC (to Rogers)," and lists 1.31 combined total positions; Amendment 7 records the same 1.31 combined figure and repeats that services are being moved to Rogers. Amendment 4 lists a staffing allocation of 0.25 for Emanuel PDC, again flagged "to Rogers." Centurion's proposed staffing matrix for the facility lists an LPN at 1.00 FTE, a Medical Records Clerk at 0.20 FTE, an NP/PA at 0.40 FTE, and an RN Administrator at 1.00 FTE, totaling 3.60 FTE. Read together, the contract record describes a facility whose clinical coverage is measured in tenths of a position and whose services are being steadily reassigned elsewhere.

Medication, Segregation, and What Families Report

Against that staffing backdrop, GPS has collected a recurring body of family and tipster accounts centered on medication at Emanuel PDC. GPS has received accounts of an incarcerated person at the facility being denied psychotropic medication, and of a person with a serious mental health condition going without prescribed medication in circumstances the family feared could lead to self-harm. Multiple sources describe placement in segregation at Emanuel PDC, with family members alleging that segregation without medication could put an incarcerated person at risk of self-harm. GPS has also received an account that a person was moved because prescribed medication could not be provided at the facility, and a tip describing Emanuel PDC as a facility for incarcerated people with mental health conditions.

A separate cluster of family accounts concerns work detail and transfer. GPS has received reports that an incarcerated person at Emanuel PDC was told to fill out a form stating they no longer wished to be at the facility because there was no work detail, and that staff told a person Spalding County Jail would pick them up and they would appear before a judge. Family members also describe transfer-related documents being processed roughly a month before an alleged escape from the facility. These are family attestations, not findings; GPS registers them as accounts it has received.

The facility's own record of audits is comparatively dense. GDC's FY2022 internal audits calendar scheduled an internal audit of Emanuel PDC in March 2022, and its FY2022 PREA audit schedule lists the facility for a PREA audit on October 6–7, 2022. The FY2024 internal audits calendar lists Emanuel PDC audits on November 9 and 10, 2023, and the FY2026 audit calendar schedules the facility on August 14 and 15, 2025, and again on December 10 and 11, 2025. What those audits found is not reflected in the public calendar entries, which record only that the reviews were scheduled.

A 2018 Liability Payout and a 2026 Contraband Arrest

The state's own risk-management ledger records a settlement tied to Emanuel Probation Detention Center: a $35,000 liability payout in the matter of Rebekah Reddish, arising from a 2018 incident at the facility, per the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts Risk Management settlement ledger obtained through open records. The ledger establishes the payment and its facility; it does not, on its face, describe the underlying conduct.

More recently, GDC's published contraband report for February 19, 2026 records that security staff at Emanuel PDC observed a suspicious vehicle near the facility and notified the Twin City Police Department. A check of the vehicle, occupied by civilians Jonathan Fussell, Kalijah Pittman, and Ahijiah Fussell, turned up one bag of suspected tobacco and three cellphones, according to GDC's verbatim account. All three civilians were arrested and transported to the Emanuel County Sheriff's Office with charges pending, the report states. GDC publishes arrests as reported and no dispositions; an arrest is not a conviction. It is the single contraband incident GDC's reports record for the facility in 2026.

Leadership and the Wider System

Katherine Wells has served as superintendent since September 16, 2025, according to GPS's personnel records; Stephanie Thomas Mainer has served as assistant superintendent since April 1, 2026, and Whittney Danelle Williamson as correctional assistant superintendent since November 22, 2023.

Emanuel PDC's staffing fractions sit inside a systemwide pattern GPS has documented. 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%, and 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." GPS has independently tracked 1,928 deaths in GDC custody since 2020.

GPS has also documented a systemic pattern of food-service sanitation failure across GDC kitchens that scheduled Department of Public Health inspections systematically fail to capture — broken tray-sanitizing dishwashers, sustained roach and rodent infestation, and meals served on contaminated trays — a pattern The Marshall Project independently reported on May 16, 2026, describing rats in kitchens, insects in food, and moldy trays across Georgia facilities. GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food (2024) and has proposed $1.60 per day in FY27, under 60 cents per meal, against the FDA Thrifty Food Plan estimate of roughly $10 per day for an adult man's nutritionally adequate diet. GPS treats infrastructure and staffing collapse as force multipliers for the violence, classification, and mortality crises it has documented at the facility level.

Sources

This analysis draws on GDC's own published records — its Probation Detention Centers fact sheet, facility descriptions, internal and PREA audit calendars, and contraband arrest reports — together with the state's MHM and Centurion contract staffing matrices and amendments, the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts Risk Management settlement ledger obtained through open records, and GPS's personnel records. It also draws on family and tipster accounts collected by GPS staff, on GPS's systemic findings on staffing, food service, and infrastructure, and on The Marshall Project's May 16, 2026 investigation of Georgia prison food.