HANCOCK STATE PRISON

Analysis written on August 2, 2026.

Hancock State Prison, built in 1991 and designed to hold 750 people, now houses 1,174 individuals in a close-security environment originally conceived for a much smaller population. Designated as the destination for many of Georgia’s highest-risk prisoners, the facility relies on Tier I and Tier II close-custody management, segregation units, and an annex. But behind those walls, a catastrophic staffing shortage, rampant violence, and physical decay have combined to produce a death toll that stands among the worst in the state system. GPS records show 26 deaths at Hancock since 2020—at least 17 of them homicides—out of a systemwide total of 1,859 deaths during the same period, while federal investigators have described Georgia’s prisons as being effectively run by gangs, with a homicide rate nearly eight times the national average.

A Homicide Chronicle: The Deadly Toll at Hancock

The list of lives lost inside Hancock reads like a ledger of institutional failure. In January 2025, William Holeman, 34, and Prince Porter, 38, were found dead in the same dorm, 15 to 20 feet apart, after gang-related violence erupted. Porter had a single puncture wound in his back; Holeman bore no visible marks yet was pronounced dead, and a third prisoner was hospitalized. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the coroner leaned toward homicide in at least one of the deaths, and internal GDC documents would later show that the violence was part of a broader gang conflict that had already claimed lives at other facilities.

That double fatality was not an aberration. Earlier, on October 13, 2024, Travon Walthour, 29, was killed in an incident that GDC records say involved four other prisoners. In August 2023, Francisco Zaldivar Melgar-Saldivar, 26, was strangled and beaten to death; a claim filed against the state alleges he was not provided appropriate medical care after being attacked by another prisoner. Two months before that, Roland Lamont Phillips, 33, died from multiple sharp-force injuries—11 puncture wounds to his torso and one to the neck—and a murder warrant was served against his cellmate. Norman Samples, 59, succumbed to blunt force injuries to the head and torso in December 2022. Terry Lee Bishop, 49, was beaten to death in October 2022. Dwayne Zackery Jr., 22, was stabbed in the chest with a homemade knife by his cellmate in February 2021. Rashad Bolton, 29, died from a puncture wound to the chest in January 2021, prompting a lawsuit by his parents. Cesar Arnold Pastrana Morales, 33, was stabbed in the chest in March 2020, with an incident report naming five other inmates as participants.

The most widely documented killing is that of Charles “Tristen” James McKee, a 24-year-old who identified as LGBTQ. On May 23, 2022, McKee was stabbed 13 times in the back and head after gang members attacked him. A U.S. Department of Justice investigation found that McKee tried to escape by jumping through stair railings to the floor below, only to be followed and stabbed repeatedly; another prisoner who attempted to intervene was seriously wounded. McKee had repeatedly asked to be moved the day before, telling staff his life was in danger, but those requests went unheeded. A subsequent lawsuit alleged that officials had placed him in a dorm with known gang members hostile to LGBTQ inmates. Cleveland Gary was later convicted of striking McKee six times in the head with a 17-inch homemade machete after the fight had already ended.

The state itself has paid for these failures. Georgia’s DOAS settlement ledger shows a liability payout of $424,710 in connection with McKee’s death and $437,500 for Rashad Bolton’s killing. Another payout of $600,000 was made in the 2019 death of Geberyesus Yemane Selassie, who was placed in a regular cell contrary to a counselor’s advice after expressing suicidal thoughts and subsequently hanged himself. More recently, the fatalities have continued: Jerrod Johnson, 27, was killed in February 2026, following the January 25 death of Steven Wood, 54, after an altercation with his cellmate. Jacorey Pearson, 36, died on April 7, 2026, and Jaylin Bell, 32, died on February 6 after an altercation with his roommate. The GDC’s Office of Professional Standards opened investigations into each death, describing them as standard procedure.

The Guarding Vacuum: 73.5% Vacancy and Gang Rule

Behind the carnage is a staffing crisis so severe that, as of October 2024, Hancock had only 49 correctional officers for more than 1,100 prisoners—a vacancy rate of 73.5%, according to data published by GPS and corroborated by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The AJC also reported that consultants had found vacancy rates at 20 of Georgia’s 34 prisons had reached “emergency levels,” making it impossible to maintain basic protocols. At Hancock, the shortage has left a vacuum that gangs have filled.

Tyler Ryals, a former GDC sergeant forced out in 2024 after whistleblowing, described being the sole security officer on the entire Telfair State Prison compound of roughly 1,250 maximum-security inmates—a situation he said was emblematic of a system in freefall. The DOJ’s 2024 civil rights investigation concluded that GDC leadership had “lost control of its facilities,” placing “too much blame on gangs and insufficient emphasis on understaffing,” and that sexual assault was “rampant,” with LGBTI individuals particularly at risk.

The consequences of hollowed-out security are visible in incident reports. In September 2024, seven prisoners were disciplined for a gang-related assault on another inmate. In January 2019, Hancock officer Jasmine Nicole Hall was caught with water bottles containing compartments filled with meth, pot, ecstasy, and hydrocodone; phone evidence revealed an ongoing drug distribution network spanning eight prisons and more than $5,000 in transactions. The AJC documented 28 major drug-trafficking cases filed between 2015 and 2024, many run by prisoners using contraband cell phones from inside facilities. GPS records show five separate reports of inmate-on-inmate assaults at Hancock between January and May 2026, one of which drew the attention of the U.S. Department of Justice, with incidents classified at critical and high severity.

Extreme Heat and Broken Systems: The Physical Decay

Hancock’s infrastructure compounds the danger. Though the facility’s current rated capacity is 1,191, its original design was for only 750, a 57% increase that was not matched by corresponding expansions in staffing or life-safety systems. The AJC reported that consultants confirmed cell locks at many Georgia prisons are broken, allowing prisoners to roam freely and gangs to intimidate others. GPS has received multiple reports from family members of extreme temperatures inside Hancock, with interior readings exceeding 105°F. Family accounts, collected by GPS, describe the annex as a metal building lacking insulation and ventilation, and one family member alleged that the HVAC system was activated briefly during an inspection, then shut off again afterward.

Security breaches offer further signs of degraded control. Multiple incarcerated witnesses told GPS that an individual was caught accessing the roof on three consecutive nights, prompting a tactical squad deployment that nonetheless included no shakedown. While Department of Public Health food-safety inspections have consistently awarded the prison’s kitchens scores of 96 to 100, GPS’s systemic investigations have documented that such scores can mask chronic equipment failures and contamination because inspections are scheduled walkthroughs that do not test equipment under load. Across Georgia, the state spends roughly $1.69 per person per day on food—less than 60 cents per meal—while employing a food-service system that the DOJ and outside investigators have linked to visible malnutrition.

A Systemwide Fire: The Blood-on-Blood War and Federal Scrutiny

The violence at Hancock is not an isolated phenomenon. In early 2026, a coordinated gang conflict erupted across Georgia’s prisons, ignited by a Blood-on-Blood factional war that GPS documented in a clean-checked investigation and that led to a statewide lockdown of at least 13 facilities. At Washington State Prison on January 11, 2026, four men died in a riot—three killed at the scene and a fourth dying of injuries days later—while only six officers were on duty, according to GPS’s open-records production. The facility was placed on continuous lockdown and never fully reopened. Authorities later charged 12 individuals with felony murder, aggravated assault, and gang participation.

That same gang war had already spilled into Hancock, where the two January 2025 deaths were part of the same conflict. The DOJ’s October 2024 findings had warned that Georgia’s in-prison homicide rate had surged from 8–9 deaths annually in 2017–2018 to 100 in 2024, a year in which 333 people died in GDC custody. GPS reporting documented that $700 million in additional corrections spending from FY2022 to FY2026 yielded no measurable safety improvement; homicides only accelerated. The DOJ concluded that the state’s failure to protect incarcerated people—through understaffing, gang accommodation, and deliberate indifference—violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, a judgment that the deaths at Hancock State Prison make tangible.

Sources

This analysis draws on coverage from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 41NBC, and GPS’s own investigative reporting; Georgia Department of Public Health inspection records; GDC weekly population snapshots and incident report data; state settlement ledgers obtained through open-records requests; the U.S. Department of Justice’s 2024 civil rights findings; on-record testimony from former GDC sergeant Tyler Ryals; and incarcerated-person and family accounts collected by GPS staff. GPS’s mortality tracking at Hancock has recorded 26 deaths since 2020, at least 17 of them homicides.