GEORGIA DIAGNOSTIC AND CLASSIFICATION STATE PRISON

Last updated September 13, 2026.(DS)

Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison (GDCP) in Jackson, Butts County, is the largest prison in Georgia and the central intake facility for all men entering the state's prison system. Opened in 1968 and renovated in 1998, the facility processes every male offender committed to the Georgia Department of Corrections, houses the state's male death-row unit, operates a 192-bed Special Management Unit for the most restrictive custody, and conducts state-ordered executions. Its physical plant includes eight cellblocks with single- and double-bunked cells, seven general-population dormitories, a 17-bed Segregated Transition Education Program (STEP) unit, and a medical unit. GDCP also maintains a CERT Team, Tactical Squad, and on-site fire station. The facility is rated for 2,487 people and, per GPS's facility records, held 2,421 — 97.3% of rated capacity, against an original design capacity of just 500. The warden is Jacob Beasley, who has held the post since July 16, 2025; his deputies include Patricia Watts (Care and Treatment), Jacinta Booker Johnson (Security), Reginald Tyrone Clark, Tandra Tiease Rogers, and Nicholas Brown.

The analytical threads that follow trace intersecting crises at GDCP: a mortality record GPS has independently tracked at 122 deaths since 2020; a pattern of medical neglect and delayed care that has produced federal litigation; a security environment in which contraband, staff misconduct, and violence against incarcerated people have repeatedly surfaced in public reporting; a classification system whose failures have placed people in proximity to documented threats; and a disputed in-custody death whose official determination the family rejects.

A Mortality Record That Keeps Climbing

GPS's mortality database records 122 deaths at GDCP since tracking began in 2020 — a figure GPS treats as a floor, since GDC reports deaths roughly two months late. By cause, the largest single category is Unknown/Pending at 50 deaths — a figure that itself signals how often the state has not yet publicly accounted for what happened. Natural/Medical causes account for 40 deaths, suicide for 17, homicide for 7, overdose for 4, accident for 2, execution for 1, and medical neglect for 1.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's homicide-tracking coverage has documented several of these deaths in specific, named terms. Carrell Beontae Johnson, 32, died on June 6, 2023 from chopping injuries to the head and sharp force injuries to the torso. Elmer W. Pless, 65, died on May 15, 2023 by strangulation. Boyd Henry Williams, 64, died on October 3, 2022 from manual strangulation and blunt force trauma to the head. Daniel Charriez, 46, died on February 23, 2022 from delayed complications of traumatic brain injury with a four-month interval. Brandon Trace Burrell, 31, died on January 28, 2024 from methamphetamine intoxication complicated by a physical altercation; the AJC reported he was assaulted by another inmate while under the effects of methamphetamine and reportedly suffered numerous stab wounds.

The most recent deaths tracked by GPS include Mark Rutledge, 72, who died on June 26, 2026 and whose death GDC's Office of Professional Standards is investigating, with the body sent to a GBI crime lab to determine cause of death. GDC's own public statement, issued June 29, 2026, confirmed Rutledge was pronounced dead at GDCP and that the official cause of death was unknown. GPS records also list Leonel Cedillo, 42, who died June 27, 2026 with cause still pending, Phillip Dwayne Rogers, 66, who died June 14, 2026 with cause pending, and Shaun Corey Farrell, 48, who died July 13, 2026 with cause pending.

GPS's intelligence system has recorded nine distinct sources reporting deaths in custody at GDCP over the past 12 months, spanning five months of reporting and including an external filing to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia. Inmate accounts collected by GPS describe a recurring pattern in which people who die at the facility are found in cells after extended periods without staff presence, and in which documentation surrounding deaths consists of minimal incident reports lacking narrative or explanation.

Medical Neglect and the Allen Litigation

The most fully documented medical-neglect case at GDCP is that of Ronald Allen, a former inmate whose hands were severely damaged in April 2024 while he was ordered to separate frozen beef patties with inadequate protective equipment. GPS's own reporting has documented that Allen was ordered to perform the work during a prison riot response, and that the injuries progressed to amputation of his left hand and permanent damage to his right hand.

Allen filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia, naming the Georgia Department of Corrections as a defendant and asserting claims of medical malpractice, negligence, and deliberate indifference to serious medical needs under the Eighth Amendment. The lawsuit's expert witness, Dr. Michael M. Neeki, has opined that GDC and the defendants deviated from the standard of care in treating Allen's cold-induced vascular injuries — disregarding escalating complaints, providing inadequate treatments, and engaging in delayed evaluations of his condition. The court record confirms Allen sustained cold-induced vascular injuries, and that his maximum release date was June 10, 2024, with his GDC status now listed as INACTIVE.

GPS's intelligence system has recorded 14 distinct sources alleging medical neglect at GDCP over the past 12 months, spanning eight months of reporting and including an external filing to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia. Inmate accounts collected by GPS describe a recurring pattern in which people with serious injuries are returned from outside hospitals to general housing without adequate follow-up care, and in which medical staff routinely fail to enter information into medical records. GPS has additionally received multiple reports of people transported to outside hospitals in facility vehicles rather than by emergency medical services, a practice that would generate no external incident reports.

Contraband, Staff Misconduct, and the Security Environment

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has documented a series of security failures at GDCP that point to systemic contraband problems. In June 2024, the AJC reported that newly convicted inmate Shane Tassi was photographed on social media displaying a homemade shank and making a gang gesture within days of arriving at GDCP, having been convicted of malice murder and sentenced to life without parole plus 80 years. Tassi and two other inmates received disciplinary sanctions. The same outlet reported that at the time of Zavala's guilty plea, officers had seized 35 cellphones from him.

Staff misconduct has also surfaced repeatedly. Officer Vera Jackson admitted in 2018 that she was paid several thousand dollars to provide death row inmate Eric Perkinson with information on upcoming shakedowns; she pleaded guilty to violating her oath and received five years' probation. The AJC reported the plea in January 2026. In a separate case, GPS staff records and news reporting document that former Counselor Gibbs was arrested on April 17, 2025 for failure to appear on an assault charge, and was subsequently charged with violation of oath of office, conspiracy, and crossing the guard line. Chief Counselor Bethune reported Gibbs's initial arrest to the Butts County Sheriff's Office, which was involved in processing the arrest.

The most serious staff-misconduct finding in the court record concerns a 2014 federal lawsuit in which Cassady sued CO Steven Douglas Hall for sexual assault at GDCP. A jury awarded Cassady $150,000 in compensatory damages and $50,000 in punitive damages from Hall. This case sits within a broader systemic finding GPS has documented: the October 2024 DOJ findings letter concluded that sexual assault is "rampant" in GDC facilities and that GDC does not reasonably protect incarcerated people 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.

GPS's intelligence system has recorded 16 distinct sources alleging named staff misconduct at GDCP over the past 12 months, with severity ratings ranging from moderate to critical. Inmate accounts collected by GPS describe a pattern in which correctional officers have appeared unfamiliar with radio call procedures during emergencies, and in which orderlies — incarcerated people themselves — have had to urge officers to radio in altercations between incarcerated persons. Multiple witnesses report that responders arrived to intervene in physical altercations only after repeated coaching interventions by other incarcerated individuals directed at a correctional officer. GPS records also show three sources alleging assault by staff and three alleging excessive force at the facility over the same period.

Classification Drift and Protective Custody Failures

GDCP's role as the state's central diagnostic and classification facility places it at the center of what GPS has documented as systemic classification drift across Georgia's prisons. GPS's own reporting has found that medium-security facilities across the state are housing disproportionate numbers of close-security inmates without adequate staffing and infrastructure. At GDCP specifically, GPS staff observed a pattern in which incarcerated individuals opt for general population placement over protective housing in order to access programming — a dynamic GPS characterized as a systemic issue warranting independent documentation.

The case of Charles Lee Broady Jr., reported by the AJC in January 2025, illustrates the consequences. Despite Broady's request for protection from threatening gang members, he was moved to a location where six gang members attacked him with razor blades, nearly killing him. The AJC also reported that an individual who assaulted someone at Coastal State Prison in March 2020 — with no investigation conducted — reentered the prison system in 2022 and strangled his cellmate to death at GDCP.

GPS staff records document that GDC placed an involuntary protective custody profile on Trey Adams, and that GDC's own profile acknowledged Shoffner's intent to harm him. Anthony Douglas Shoffner Jr., a former GDC corrections officer at GDCP, is currently serving life without parole at the facility. The protective custody unit and death row unit are in close physical proximity at GDCP, a configuration that inmate witnesses report enables regular communication between populations. GPS records show four sources reporting overcrowding at the facility over the past 12 months.

Food, Sanitation, and the Limits of Inspection Scores

On March 26, 2025, GDCP received a food-safety inspection score of 100 — a perfect Grade A — from the Georgia Department of Public Health, with a routine inspection. A second routine inspection on May 27, 2026 produced the same perfect score. Those scores sit in tension with what GPS has documented systemically: a pattern of food-service sanitation failure across GDC kitchens that DPH inspection scores systematically fail to capture. GPS's investigation "Dunked, Stacked, and Served" found that high DPH scores at GDC facilities coexist with sustained witness reports of equipment failure and food contamination.

At GDCP specifically, GPS staff characterized a food-allergy accommodation refusal as a serious safety issue rather than an administrative matter, and observed that caloric allotment and snack refusals fit a pattern tracked across multiple facilities. Inmate accounts collected by GPS describe the kitchen withholding medically prescribed supplemental snacks from residents on medical diet profiles in 2026, and failing to provide medically prescribed higher-calorie meal trays to multiple incarcerated individuals on a medical diet at a scheduled meal. GPS records show three sources reporting food-quality complaints and three reporting sanitation failures at the facility over the past 12 months.

GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food, against an FDA Thrifty Food Plan estimate of roughly $10 per day for an adult man's nutritionally adequate diet. The Marshall Project independently corroborated the pattern on May 16, 2026, reporting rats in kitchens, insects in food, moldy trays, and visible malnutrition across Georgia facilities.

Infrastructure Collapse and Climate Control

The AJC reported in March 2025 that almost every part of GDCP has been vandalized by prisoners, with widespread infrastructure failures. This sits within a systemic pattern GPS has documented: most GDC facilities are 30-40+ years old, with deferred maintenance producing broken cell-door locks, inoperative surveillance and fire-alarm systems, mold and water failures, broken kitchen sanitization equipment, and pest infestations. The DOJ's October 2024 findings, the Guidehouse 2024 assessment, and Commissioner Oliver's public "end of life" statements all corroborate the pattern.

Climate control at GDCP has been a long-running advocacy issue. Inmate witnesses report that climate control systems in housing units are malfunctioning or inadequate, and that an air conditioning retrofit project began in 2026 involving contractors based in Duluth and Covington. Inmate witnesses report that large air conditioning units were installed at E House, but that the warden cancelled the air conditioning after Carrier units were installed. GPS's intelligence system has recorded six distinct sources reporting inadequate climate at GDCP over the past 12 months, with severity ratings including critical.

Death Row and the Execution Function

GDCP houses Georgia's male death-row unit and conducts state-ordered executions. The facility's death-row population includes Jeremy Moody and DeMarcus Ali Sears, whose case presents a unique legal anomaly: Sears was convicted of kidnapping with bodily injury, and his death sentence does not correspond to an underlying murder conviction. GPS has documented that at least one person held at GDCP is serving a death sentence for kidnapping with bodily injury without a corresponding murder conviction, a combination that appears unique within Georgia's death row population.

Stacey Humphreys, 52, was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on December 17, 2025 at GDCP. U.S. District Court Judge Leigh Martin May ruled on December 11, 2025 that Humphreys failed to show that his rights to due process and equal protection would be violated by executing him, declining to halt the scheduled execution. Humphreys was convicted in 2007 on two charges of murder for the 2003 killings of Cyndi Williams and Lori Brown. A subsequent execution date was scheduled for September 16, 2026, with a clemency hearing set for September 15, 2026 before the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles. The Georgia Virtue reported that a December 2025 clemency meeting was postponed due to litigation challenging the participation of Board members Kimberly McCoy and Wayne Bennett, and that a Fulton County judge ruled Board member Kimberly McCoy had a conflict of interest.

Inmate accounts collected by GPS describe death row residents being subjected to drug testing late at night in 2026, and a physical altercation between two incarcerated individuals occurring on death row in early 2026. Multiple sources at GDCP report that the protective custody unit and death row unit are in close physical proximity, enabling regular communication between populations — a configuration that raises questions about the facility's ability to maintain the separation its classification designations imply.

A Disputed Death and the Family's Account

A separate death at GDCP remains contested. A family member contacted GPS in 2026 after the prison notified them by phone that an incarcerated person had died; the facility classified the death as suicide, and the family disputes that determination. The family's account describes an autopsy summary listing hanging as the cause and manner of death, with postmortem toxicology negative for drugs and alcohol, minor cutaneous injuries on the head and extremities, a superficial wound, and nephrosclerosis noted. The family alleges the person did not inflict all documented injuries on himself and that the death was a homicide; GPS has received accounts describing the person as having received a death threat days before the family was notified, and as having been supposed to be housed alone in isolation. The family also reports that the person asked for medical help shortly before being found deceased and was told care would be provided after count, and that a facility administrator said he did not want to be involved.

GPS has received recurring reports of a practice in which a deceased person's body is moved from a cell before death is officially declared, described by sources as a way to document "advanced life saving measures" and to keep the coroner from observing the body in its original location. Multiple sources also report that a person who later died had sought medical attention the night before. These accounts are single-source in their specifics and GPS has not independently corroborated them; they are recorded here as allegations. GPS records show three sources reporting family fear for an incarcerated person's life and three reporting family safety concerns at the facility over the past 12 months.

The Washington State Prison Riot and the Documentation Gap

Elsewhere in the GDC system, five people died at Washington State Prison during the week of January 9-17, 2026. Dajhmere Hall, 30, was found dead on January 9 — two days before the riot. Teddy Jackson, 27, Ahmod Hatcher, 23, and Jimmy Trammell, 42 — who was approximately 72 hours from release after serving 10 years — were killed in the January 11 riot. Silas Westbrook, 42, was injured on January 11 and died on January 17 after hospital release. The facility was placed on lockdown after the riot and, per GPS records, never reopened. Twelve inmates were subsequently charged with felony murder, aggravated assault, and gang participation, announced around April 28.

The documentation gap that followed is itself a finding. Allen Wigington filed open records requests to GDC Legal Services for all incident reports from Washington State Prison from January 9 through January 12. According to GDC Legal Services' response, no documentation of an investigation was produced, no documentation of witness interviews was produced, no documentation of evacuation was produced, no documentation of the riot was produced, and no death notification reports were produced despite four inmates dying. No incident reports were completed for January 9-12 despite four deaths occurring. GDC produced no incident report documenting the deaths, the evacuation, or a riot at Washington State Prison during January 9-12.

The staffing record Wigington obtained is equally stark. According to GDC-provided duty rosters, the five officers at Washington State Prison worked continuous duty totaling approximately 48 hours with no recorded breaks, and the same five officers worked both January 9 and January 10. Duty post rosters for the day of the riot were missing from GDC's open records response. Wigington alleges a correctional officer did not respond to pleas for help for 30 minutes during the incident, and that the Department of Corrections appears to be exercising complete control over the investigation and handling of inmate deaths from the incident.

This staffing collapse is not an isolated incident. GPS has documented that 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%. The October 2024 DOJ findings letter explicitly 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." 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 approximately 1,250 maximum-security inmates.

Sources

This analysis draws on reporting from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Georgia Virtue, WGXA, WRDW, and The Marshall Project; federal court filings in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia; Georgia Department of Public Health inspection records; GDC official statements, contraband reports, and open-records responses; GPS's own investigative reporting and mortality database; and inmate and family accounts collected by GPS staff. GPS's intelligence system records 16 distinct sources alleging named staff misconduct, 14 alleging medical neglect, and 9 reporting deaths in custody at GDCP over the past 12 months.