HANCOCK STATE PRISON

Analysis written on May 31, 2026.

Hancock State Prison, opened in 1991 in rural Hancock County, is designed as a close-security facility — housing many of the state’s highest-risk men under Tier I and Tier II management. Yet the prison’s population, 1,193 as of mid-2026, swells its original design capacity of 750 by nearly 60 percent. Warden George Ivey, assisted by deputy wardens for security (Tamikia Mahoney), care and treatment (Rashedah Mitchell), and administration (Chequita Adams), oversees a compound that has become one of the deadliest in Georgia. GPS’s own mortality database has tracked 26 deaths at Hancock since 2020; the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has reconstructed homicide after homicide, while the DOJ’s landmark 2024 investigation found that violence, sexual assault, and gang dominance pervade the state’s prisons. This report traces the human toll at Hancock — and the systemic failures that make it possible.

The Anatomy of a Homicide Wave

The list of lives lost at Hancock State Prison tells a story of sharp-force injuries, strangulations, and beatings inflicted inside a facility that GDC’s own consultants say has reached emergency staffing levels. Since 2020, at least ten incarcerated men have been killed by other prisoners, and many more have died in circumstances still under review.

In March 2020, Cesar Arnold Pastrana Morales, 33, was stabbed in the chest; incident reports show five other inmates were involved. Rashad Bolton, 29, died of a puncture wound to the chest on January 4, 2021 — his parents later filed suit alleging he was stabbed to death. Dwayne Zackery Jr., 22, was killed by his cellmate with a homemade knife just over a month later. The facility then recorded a pair of brutal deaths in 2022: Norman Samples, 59, killed by blunt-force injuries to the head and torso in December; and Terry Lee Bishop, 49, beaten to death in October, with methamphetamine and cannabinoid toxicity also listed on his death certificate.

The killing of Charles “Tristen” James McKee, 24, on May 23, 2022, became a flashpoint. The DOJ investigation found that McKee — who identified as LGBTQ — was placed in a dorm with gang members hostile to him. The day before his death, he repeatedly asked to be moved, stating his life was in danger. When gang members attacked, he jumped through stair railings to the floor below trying to escape, but they continued to stab him 13 times. A lawsuit alleges staff ignored his pleas; another incarcerated man who tried to intervene was seriously wounded. 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 pace accelerated. Roland Lamont Phillips, 33, died on June 28, 2023 from 11 puncture wounds to his torso and one to his neck; a murder warrant was served against his cellmate. Francisco Zaldivar Melgar-Saldivar, 26, was strangled to death on August 12, 2023, and a claim against the state alleges he was denied appropriate medical care after the attack. In October 2024, Travon Walthour, 29, was killed with four other prisoners involved. In January 2025, gang violence left William Holeman, 34, and Prince Porter, 38, dead in the same dorm, 15 to 20 feet apart — Porter with a puncture wound in his back, Holeman with no visible marks on his body. A third prisoner was hospitalized. The AJC, drawing on death-certificate data, also identified the earlier homicides of Roland Phillips (stabbing, June 2023) and Francisco Melgar-Saldivar.

The violence continued in 2026. On January 11, a gang-related disturbance at Washington State Prison killed four, and by January 12 a brawl at Hancock left five inmates stabbed — two had to be airlifted to hospitals. Inmate Steven Monroe Wood, 54, was beaten to death by his cellmate on January 25. On February 6, Jaylin Bell, 32, died following an altercation with his roommate. Jerrod Johnson, 27, died on February 18, and Jacorey Pearson on April 5. GDC’s Office of Professional Standards opened investigations into each, describing the process as standard procedure. GPS records show multiple reports of inmate-on-inmate assaults at Hancock in the first five months of 2026 alone, consistent with the DOJ’s findings of rampant violence across the system.

Staffing and Infrastructure: The Hollowing Out of a Prison

The violence at Hancock is not an aberration; it is the predictable output of a facility where almost no one is watching. As of October 2024, more than 70 percent of correctional officer positions at Hancock were vacant — one of the highest rates in the state — leaving only 49 officers to supervise over 1,100 prisoners. By January 2026, the AJC reported the vacancy figure at 73.5 percent. Against a national standard of no more than 10 percent, the deficit essentially cedes control of the compound to the people detained there.

Consultants hired by the state found that staffing vacancies at 20 of Georgia’s 34 prisons have reached “emergency levels,” making it impossible to maintain even basic security protocols. Broken cell locks allow prisoners to roam freely and gang members to intimidate or attack others without interruption. GPS’s systemic investigation, corroborated by the Guidehouse 2024 assessment and the October 2024 DOJ findings, has documented that gangs effectively run multiple facilities — controlling access to phones, showers, food, and bed assignments. At Hancock, that reality translates into dormitories where men are murdered within sight of uncounted cells.

The infrastructure itself is failing. GPS has documented that most GDC facilities are 30-to-40-plus years old, with patterns of deferred maintenance that produce broken cell-door locks, inoperative surveillance systems, and fire-alarm failures. The 2012 Hays audit found roughly 42 percent of locks non-functional at one facility; Guidehouse confirmed the pattern continued in 2024. Commissioner Tyrone Oliver has publicly acknowledged “end of life” infrastructure across the system. At Hancock, the result is a close-security prison where locks, cameras, and alarms are not reliably present — leaving a skeleton crew to manage a population that far exceeds the building’s original intent.

The vacuum of authority also enables criminal enterprises. In January 2019, correctional officer Jasmine Nicole Hall was caught smuggling methamphetamine, marijuana, ecstasy, and hydrocodone into Hancock using water bottles with hidden compartments. Phone records revealed an ongoing distribution network across eight prisons totaling more than $5,000 in transactions. Across the system, 28 major drug-trafficking cases were filed between 2015 and 2024, with federal prosecutors in 2025 charging dozens of people — including inmates at Wilcox, Telfair, Macon, and other state prisons — for conspiring to distribute cocaine, methamphetamine, and oxycodone from inside cells.

Medical Neglect and Preventable Suicides

Violence does not only kill; it also wounds, and the subsequent medical response at Hancock has come under sharp scrutiny. The claim filed by the family of Francisco Zaldivar Melgar-Saldivar alleges that after he was attacked by another prisoner, he was not given appropriate medical care — and he died. It is a pattern: GPS’s broader reporting and the DOJ’s findings confirm that medical neglect, often in the aftermath of violence, contributes to the death toll.

The case of Amanuel Selassie Geberyesus exposes another failure. Geberyesus, placed in solitary confinement after being repeatedly attacked by gang members, told counselors he was suicidal. A counselor advised against returning him to a regular cell, but prison officials did so anyway. In March 2019, he hung himself. A lawsuit details that his warnings were ignored, compounding the institutional indifference that the DOJ later cited as a driver of harm.

Inmate and family accounts collected by GPS reinforce a picture in which the most basic protections — a transfer out of a dangerous dorm, a response to a medical emergency, a suicide-precaution protocol — are frequently absent or disregarded.

Systemic Crisis, Localized Tragedy

Hancock’s crisis cannot be isolated from the statewide collapse documented by GPS and federal investigators. The DOJ found that Georgia’s in-prison homicide rate is nearly eight times the national average, with homicides surging from 8–9 annually in 2017–2018 to 100 in 2024 — the deadliest year in state history, with 333 total deaths. State spending on corrections rose by $700 million between FY2022 and FY2026, yet safety outcomes deteriorated. Officer vacancies ran between 49 and 60 percent systemwide, while Georgia ranked last among states in correctional-officer pay.

At Hancock, the 73.5 percent vacancy rate leaves a facility that, by GDC’s own numbers, holds 1,193 men in a building originally meant for 750. The difference is not just a statistic; it means that every dorm, every cell, every segregation unit is stretched beyond its design, with fewer staff to intervene. GPS’s investigation of classification drift — the practice of housing close-security prisoners in facilities rated for lower security levels — shows that Hancock, a close-security facility, is not exempt: an 82-year-old lifer, John Morgan Coleman, was transferred from medium to close security in March 2026, part of a broader movement of aging and vulnerable people into higher-security settings.

The food system adds another layer of harm. GPS and The Marshall Project have independently documented that GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food — under 60 cents per meal — against the FDA’s Thrifty Food Plan estimate of roughly $10 per day for a nutritionally adequate diet. At the same time, state inspection scores at Hancock have consistently been perfect or near-perfect: 100 in October 2023, 100 and 93 in June 2024, 100 in December 2024, 100 and 96 in May 2025, and two scores of 100 in December 2025. But GPS’s investigation “Dunked, Stacked, and Served” found that high DPH scores systemically fail to capture the real conditions — broken tray-sanitizing dishwashers, roach and rodent infestation, moldy trays, and meals served on visibly contaminated surfaces. The juxtaposition of top inspection scores and witness accounts of unsanitary food at GDC facilities is the analytical center of that investigation, and Hancock’s high marks must be read in that light.

The sexual violence that the DOJ called “rampant” across Georgia’s prisons, the 7.7 percent substantiation rate for sexual-abuse allegations in 2022, and the finding that PREA investigation files did not meet legal standards are not background — they are the environment in which the murders at Hancock occur. The killing of Charles McKee, an LGBTQ man placed in a hostile dorm against his pleas, is one consequence.

Sources

This analysis draws on reporting from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 41NBC, Georgia Department of Corrections press statements, and Georgia Prisoners’ Speak investigations; federal court records and the October 2024 U.S. Department of Justice findings; state inspections published by the Georgia Department of Public Health; the Guidehouse 2024 operational assessment; GPS’s own mortality database and systemic reports including “The Classification Crisis” and “Dunked, Stacked, and Served”; and inmate and family accounts collected by GPS staff.