Last updated October 4, 2026.(DS)

Jenkins Facility: A Private Prison Inside a Systemwide Crisis

Jenkins Facility opened in 2012 in Millen, the seat of Jenkins County, as a medium-security men's prison operated by CoreCivic under contract with the Georgia Department of Corrections. Its original design capacity was 1,150; its current rated capacity is 1,186, and GPS's facility records list a population of 1,153 — roughly 97 percent of rated capacity. The facility carries no special designations in GDC's records. Terrance Dickerson has served as warden since January 1, 2024, employed through the private contractor rather than GDC directly; Edwina L. Johnson holds the post of Regional Operations Coordinator, a GDC position, since July 2025.

What follows examines Jenkins through three lenses: the deaths GPS has recorded there since 2020, the food-service inspection record that is the facility's most consistent public paper trail, and the systemwide structural findings — staffing collapse, gang control, classification drift, and infrastructure failure — that GPS treats as the operating environment for every facility in the system, private or state-run.

Twenty Deaths Since 2020, and What the Registry Shows

GPS's mortality registry records 20 deaths at Jenkins Facility since January 1, 2020. Fifteen are coded Natural/Medical, two as Suicide, one as Homicide, one as Overdose, and one as Unknown/Pending. That count is a floor, not a ceiling: GDC reports deaths roughly two months late, so the registry lags the actual toll. (GPS separately holds 791 deaths from 2015 through 2019 across the system, obtained through open records from the Department's own cause coding, but those are not part of the since-2020 count.)

The most recent deaths came within four days of each other in April 2026. Dustin Scott Scarbro died April 21, 2026, at Jenkins Facility; GPS's registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical and his age as 27. Charles Edward Richey died April 17, 2026, at Jenkins Facility, also coded Natural/Medical, at age 58.

Earlier deaths span the full period. Jason Brent Melton died April 10, 2025, at Jenkins Facility; the registry lists the cause as Suicide and his age as 41. Alonzo Wright died January 9, 2025, at Jenkins Facility, with the cause listed as Homicide. James Lee Powell died September 17, 2024, at Jenkins Facility at age 72; GPS does not yet know the cause, which the registry lists as Unknown/Pending. Earl Franklin Waggy died March 3, 2024, at Jenkins Facility, Natural/Medical, age 65.

In 2022, three men died at the facility: Thomas Jefferson Parrish died September 6, 2022, at Jenkins Facility, Natural/Medical, age 61; Birihanyuma Obedi died April 15, 2022, at Jenkins Facility, Natural/Medical, age 33; and Eric Lane Dixon died April 4, 2022, at Jenkins Facility, Natural/Medical, age 50.

In 2021, six deaths: John David Runyon died October 30, 2021, at Jenkins Facility, Natural/Medical, age 63; Lorenza Bernard Journey died September 29, 2021, at Jenkins Facility, Suicide, age 25; Alphonso Drett Curry died September 18, 2021, at Jenkins Facility, Natural/Medical, age 60; Gregory Sr Montgomery died August 27, 2021, at Jenkins Facility, Natural/Medical, age 61; and Bradley Jay Watkins died January 17, 2021, at Jenkins Facility, Natural/Medical, age 38.

In 2020, seven deaths: Charles Perry died October 24, 2020, at Jenkins Facility, Natural/Medical, age 73; Randy Carlton Wilder died October 21, 2020, at Jenkins Facility, Overdose, age 48; Stephen Harold Saylor died October 1, 2020, at Jenkins Facility, Natural/Medical, age 69; Constancio Paulino Vasquez died September 27, 2020, at Jenkins Facility, Natural/Medical, age 44; Benjamin Warrick Cooney died August 25, 2020, at Jenkins Facility, Natural/Medical, age 42; and Alexander Pryor died January 30, 2020, at Jenkins Facility, Natural/Medical, age 66.

Food-Safety Scores and the Gap Between Inspection and Kitchen Reality

Jenkins Facility's most consistent public record is its food-safety inspection history, conducted by the Georgia Department of Public Health. The scores read well: 96 (Grade A) on May 14, 2026, with one violation for food-contact surfaces not cleaned and sanitized; 91 (Grade A) on November 6, 2025, with one violation for improper hot holding temperatures; 100 (Grade A) on May 1, 2025, with no violations; 87 (Grade B) on December 12, 2024, with two violations covering food-contact surface sanitation and improper cooling time and temperature; and 100 (Grade A) on August 14, 2023, with no violations. Inspector Ashley Clark conducted the four most recent; Jonathan Fiedler conducted the 2023 inspection.

Those numbers require context, because GPS has documented a systemic pattern of food-service sanitation failure across GDC kitchens that DPH inspection scores systematically fail to capture. GPS's own investigative work describes tray-sanitizing dishwashers broken for sustained periods, sustained roach and rodent infestation in kitchen and serving areas, and meals served on visibly contaminated trays. Inmate-maintenance accounts collected at Dooly State Prison describe thousands of roaches inside kitchen equipment; a Coastal State Prison resident's account corroborates the contaminated-tray pattern. The reason the scores don't reflect any of this, per GPS's analysis, is structural: inspections are scheduled walkthroughs that do not assess equipment under load, and GPS has documented professional overlap between inspectors and facility staff in small-county settings — a regulatory-capture dynamic in which the same local relationships that make a county function also soften the inspection. High DPH scores at GDC facilities coexisting with sustained witness reports of equipment failure and food contamination is the analytical center of GPS's investigation "Dunked, Stacked, and Served."

The economics underneath that pattern are documented at the system level. GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food as of 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. The state spends approximately 14 times more on medical care for incarcerated people ($432 million) than on their food. The Marshall Project corroborated the pattern on May 16, 2026, in a Schwartzapfel investigation, "Rats, Insects and Mold," independently reporting rats in kitchens, insects in food, moldy trays, and visible malnutrition across Georgia facilities, and quoting GPS connecting chronic underfeeding to the violence pattern the DOJ documented in October 2024.

Staffing Collapse, Gang Control, and Classification Drift

Jenkins does not sit outside the system's structural failures; it sits inside them. Officer vacancies in Georgia's prisons have run between 49.3 percent and 60 percent systemwide for multiple years, against a national standard of no more than 10 percent. At Valdosta State Prison the rate reached 80 percent by April 2024. The hiring pipeline cannot close the gap: acceptance runs under 15 percent, and 82.7 percent of new hires leave within their first year. Georgia ranks last of 50 states for correctional-officer pay. The October 2024 DOJ findings letter concluded explicitly 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."

The gang picture is equally documented. Approximately 31 percent of the system's roughly 49,000 incarcerated population are validated members of 315 different security threat groups — more than double the national average. DOJ and the Guidehouse 2024 consultant assessment independently concluded that gangs effectively run multiple facilities, controlling access to phones, showers, food, and bed assignments. 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 roughly 1,250 maximum-security inmates. In a separate on-record interview, Russell Zirkle, a former GDC assistant warden, described Smith State Prison as running a 70–80 percent officer vacancy rate — testimony that corroborates the documented staffing shortfalls GPS has reported across the system.

Classification drift compounds the problem. GPS has documented medium-security facilities housing close-security inmates without the staffing and infrastructure those classifications require — the subject of GPS's published report "The Classification Crisis: How Four Medium Security Prisons Are Killing People." Jenkins is a medium-security facility by designation, and the systemwide finding applies to the class of facilities it belongs to.

Infrastructure, Sexual Violence, and the Force Multiplier

Most GDC facilities are 30 to 40-plus years old, with documented patterns of deferred maintenance producing systemwide infrastructure failures: broken cell-door locks (a 2012 Hays audit found roughly 42 percent non-functional, confirmed by Guidehouse in 2024), 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. GPS treats infrastructure collapse as a force multiplier for the violence, classification, gang-control, and mortality crises documented at the facility level.

Sexual violence is likewise systemic rather than facility-isolated. The October 2024 DOJ findings letter concluded that sexual assault is "rampant" 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 percent. 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 Ashley Diamond litigation established the constitutional baseline and launched the DOJ investigation.

What GPS Has Received, and What It Does Not Yet Know

GPS records show three family-safety-concern signals at Jenkins Facility over the twelve months from April through July 2026, spanning high and moderate severity. GPS has additionally received recurring accounts of a lockdown period at the facility during 2026, of housing placements that put individuals from rival groups in proximity, and of a stabbing incident involving two older incarcerated men. These are receipt acknowledgments, not findings; GPS holds no corroborating documentation for them at this time, and they are recorded here as reports the facility's public record does not address.

The gaps in the public record are themselves notable. As of this writing, GDC's published contraband reports list a single Jenkins incident — a 2018 case involving a visitor, with one arrest reported. GDC publishes no dispositions, and an arrest is not a conviction. The facility's DPH inspection file contains no report addressing kitchen equipment condition, only food-handling practice. And the mortality registry's Unknown/Pending coding for James Lee Powell reflects the same lag that makes every count in this analysis a floor.

Sources

This analysis draws on Georgia Department of Public Health food-safety inspection records for Jenkins Facility; GPS's mortality registry, built from state death records and GDC mortality reports; GPS's personnel and facility records; GDC's published contraband reports; the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division's October 2024 findings letter on Georgia prisons; the Guidehouse 2024 consultant assessment; The Marshall Project's May 2026 investigation of Georgia prison food; on-record interviews with former GDC assistant warden Russell Zirkle and former GDC sergeant Tyler Ryals; and GPS's own investigative reporting and systemic findings, including "Dunked, Stacked, and Served" and "The Classification Crisis: How Four Medium Security Prisons Are Killing People." GPS has independently tracked 1,896 deaths in GDC custody since 2020.