Last updated November 8, 2026.(DS)

Jenkins Correctional Center: Twenty Deaths, a Partial Coroner's File, and a Paper Trail That Stops Short

Jenkins Correctional Center is a privately operated medium-security prison for men in Millen, in Jenkins County, opened in 2012 and run under contract by CoreCivic, the company formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America. Its original design capacity was 1,150; its current rated capacity is 1,186, and GPS's facility record shows a population of 1,155 — about 97.4 percent of rated capacity. Terrance Dickerson has held the warden's post since January 1, 2024, under the contractor. GPS's death registry records 20 deaths at the facility since January 1, 2020 — a floor, not a ceiling, since GDC reports deaths roughly two months late — and the central analytical problem on this page is not the count but what can and cannot be established about each one. A coroner's records production received in 2026 covered 12 of those 20 deaths. For several others, the only official cause-of-death coding GPS holds is GDC's own classification, passed through an academic dataset, with no autopsy behind it.

A Death Registry Built on Partial Records

GPS's mortality registry for Jenkins records six deaths in 2020, five in 2021, three in 2022, none in 2023, two in 2024, two in 2025, and two in 2026. By cause category, 15 are coded Natural/Medical, two Suicide, one Overdose, one Homicide, and one Unknown/Pending. Those categories are GPS's own, and where a coroner's or medical examiner's determination exists, GPS treats it as superseding GDC's coding.

The records problem runs through the whole series. The Jenkins County Coroner's Office, under Coroner Henry Young, produced death-investigation reports that GPS received on June 25, 2026, and processed the following day — but that production accounted for 12 of the 20 deaths GPS has recorded at the facility between 2020 and 2026. For deaths outside that set, GPS filed follow-up requests with the GBI Medical Examiner. GBI Open Records responded to multiple requests — R000144-070426, R000146-070426, R000148-070426 among them — that it was unable to locate any responsive records, and closed them. Per GBI, no GBI autopsy or medical examiner record exists for Stephen Harold Saylor, for Alphonso Drett Curry, or in the request tied to Bradley Jay Watkins.

Where no autopsy exists, GPS has in some cases filled the cause field from GDC's own coding as captured in the UCLA Behind Bars Data Project custodial mortality dataset, which researchers obtained through an open records request to the Department covering 2015–2021. That coding is the Department's classification, not a pathologist's finding. GPS's internal validation, comparing roughly 200 records where it already held a cause against the UCLA dataset, found agreement about 84.5 percent of the time; most disagreements were cases where GPS's classification was more specific than GDC's "Undetermined" designation.

The Named Dead

The registry, read at build time, names every person GPS records as having died at Jenkins since 2020:

• Alexander Pryor died January 30, 2020, at Jenkins Facility; GPS's registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. The coroner's report lists COPD and cardiovascular disease, with a cardiac ejection fraction under 10 percent and a history including congestive heart failure, hypertension, pneumonia, and a mitral valve replacement; it records that he presented in respiratory distress.
• Benjamin Warrick Cooney died August 25, 2020, at Jenkins Facility; the registry lists Natural/Medical. The coroner's report lists respiratory failure, and records that Cooney was COVID-19 positive at death. He had been seen by a prison doctor on August 24, 2020, for fever, chills, night sweats, and cough, and placed in quarantine; he later suffered severe respiratory distress and cardiac arrest at the ER. The Medical Examiner declined to take the case.
• Constancio Paulino Vasquez died September 27, 2020, at Jenkins Facility; Natural/Medical.
• Stephen Harold Saylor died October 1, 2020, at Jenkins Facility; Natural/Medical, age 69. GDC coded the death "Natural" in the UCLA dataset; GBI holds no autopsy or medical examiner record for him.
• Randy Carlton Wilder died October 21, 2020, at Jenkins Facility; the registry lists Overdose, age 48. The coroner's report lists methamphetamine overdose, manner accidental, and his urine screen was positive for amphetamine and methamphetamine; his body temperature was recorded at 107°F. Medical examiner Dr. Hebert declined to perform an autopsy, limiting examination to external only.
• Charles Perry died October 24, 2020, at Jenkins Facility; Natural/Medical, age 73.
• Bradley Jay Watkins died January 17, 2021, at Jenkins Facility; Natural/Medical, age 38. GDC coded the death "Natural"; GBI holds no autopsy or medical examiner record.
• Gregory Sr Montgomery died August 27, 2021, at Jenkins Facility; Natural/Medical, age 61.
• Alphonso Drett Curry died September 18, 2021, at Jenkins Facility; Natural/Medical, age 60. GDC coded the death "Natural"; GBI holds no autopsy or medical examiner record.
• Lorenza Bernard Journey died September 29, 2021, at Jenkins Facility; the registry lists Suicide, age 25.
• John David Runyon died October 30, 2021, at Jenkins Facility; Natural/Medical, age 63.
• Eric Lane Dixon died April 4, 2022, at Jenkins Facility; Natural/Medical, age 50. The coroner's report lists septic shock; Dixon had been transported to Memorial Health University Medical Center in Savannah on March 25, 2022.
• Birihanyuma Obedi died April 15, 2022, at Jenkins Facility; Natural/Medical, age 33. Medical records describe a sore throat for two to three days and shortness of breath before he suffered cardiac arrest in the prison medical unit, where a prison nurse and doctor performed resuscitation.
• Thomas Jefferson Parrish died September 6, 2022, at Jenkins Facility; Natural/Medical, age 61. The coroner's report lists hypertensive cardiovascular disease; Parrish collapsed in the prison kitchen without a pulse or breathing, staff performed CPR, and Jenkins County EMS transported him. He had a known history of hypertension and had complained of a severe headache before his death.
• James Lee Powell died September 17, 2024, at Jenkins Facility; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending, age 72. GPS does not yet know the cause.
• Earl Franklin Waggy died March 3, 2024, at Jenkins Facility; Natural/Medical, age 65. The coroner's report lists hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease; Waggy was found unresponsive in his bunk in POD-C 105 with rigor and lividity present, and had a history of hypertension, diabetes, and stroke.
• Alonzo Wright died January 9, 2025, at Jenkins Facility; the registry lists Homicide. The coroner recorded the manner as homicide and the death certificate states "Stab wound to the chest. Assaulted by others," describing an altercation with other inmates and a stab wound to the left chest; injury time was recorded at 00:42 and Wright was pronounced dead at 01:10 at Jenkins County Medical Center. GDC's own mortality data lists the cause as "Homicide due to Chest Trauma with a Large Amount of Blood Loss."
• Jason Brent Melton died April 10, 2025, at Jenkins Facility; the registry lists Suicide, age 41. The coroner's report states Melton hanged himself with a bedsheet and was found hanging in a bathroom from a light fixture; a complete autopsy by Dr. Kari Broder at GBI's Division of Forensic Sciences certified hanging and suicide, with a continuous ligature furrow, fracture of the hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage, and negative toxicology. A guard found him at about 0803; 911 was called at 0809, EMS arrived at 0819, and he was pronounced dead at 0837.
• Charles Edward Richey died April 17, 2026, at Jenkins Facility; Natural/Medical, age 58. The coroner's report lists cardiac arrest due to B-cell lymphoma, diabetes, and seizures; Richey was admitted to Memorial Health Savannah from Jenkins on April 6, 2026, and died there on April 17.
• Dustin Scott Scarbro died April 21, 2026, at Jenkins Facility; Natural/Medical, age 27. The coroner's report lists complications from necrotizing pancreatitis.

Two Hangings, Two Official Findings, and What Families Say

The two suicides in the registry — Journey in 2021 and Melton in 2025 — are the cases where the official record is most complete and where the gap between official finding and family account is widest. In Melton's case the paper trail is unusually detailed: the coroner's report, the autopsy, the toxicology, and a minute-by-minute account of the response, from the guard's discovery at 0803 to pronouncement at 0837. The autopsy notes Melton was reportedly discovered suspended from a light fixture with a ligature made of a bed sheet, and that a bedsheet ligature was around his neck and removed by prison staff during resuscitation. Foul play was not suspected.

A separate hanging case in the coroner's file, case 2021-09-07, records a death ruled Hanging/Suicide, with the decedent found by an inmate named Ryan Bickham in a utility closet in Dorm 200 Delta, a white sheet tied to a ceiling pipe. The autopsy, performed by Medical Examiner Natasha Grandhi, found a ligature furrow and petechial haemorrhages of the left upper eyelid, with negative toxicology; the medical examiner's opinion cites video showing the decedent entering and exiting the supply closet independently and removing a bedsheet from his bed, with another inmate finding him unresponsive about an hour and a half later.

Against that, GPS has received a family account describing a death at this facility as a killing where the coroner's official determination was suicide. That account is a family's, not a finding, and it does not displace the certified manner of death — but it is the reason the official record on these cases deserves to be read closely rather than closed.

Violence, Housing, and the Limits of What GPS Holds

The homicide of Alonzo Wright is the one death in the registry that GDC itself coded as a killing, and it fits a pattern GPS has documented systemwide: the October 2024 DOJ findings letter concluded that gangs hold "unacceptable levels of control" over large sections of Georgia's prison system and decide where people live, and GPS has documented classification drift in which medium-security facilities house close-security populations without the staffing or infrastructure to match. GPS records show four family-safety-concern signals at this facility over the past twelve months, at high and moderate severity, spanning two months.

GPS has also received recurring reports of stabbings in a housing unit at this facility, and of people housed alongside members of rival groups. Those are accounts, not established findings, and GPS does not treat them as more than that. What can be said on the record is narrower: the facility's own audit schedule shows sustained internal scrutiny — GDC's FY2022 calendar scheduled an internal audit of Jenkins in May 2022, the FY2024 calendar listed audits on May 6 and 7, 2024, and the FY2026 calendar scheduled the facility for April 13, 14, and 15, 2026.

Food Service, Contraband, and the Inspection Record

The Georgia Department of Public Health's routine food-safety inspections of the Jenkins kitchen tell a mixed story. The facility scored 100 (Grade A) on August 14, 2023, and again on May 1, 2025; 91 (Grade A) on November 6, 2025, with one violation for proper hot holding temperatures; and 96 (Grade A) on May 14, 2026, with one violation for food-contact surfaces cleaned and sanitized. The outlier is December 12, 2024, when the facility scored 87 (Grade B) with two violations, for food-contact surfaces and for proper cooling time and temperature. Inspector Ashley Clark conducted the four most recent inspections; Jonathan Fiedler conducted the 2023 inspection.

Those scores should be read against GPS's systemic finding that DPH scores systematically fail to capture kitchen sanitation failure across GDC facilities — that inspections are scheduled walkthroughs which do not assess equipment under load, and that high scores coexist with sustained witness reports of equipment failure and contamination. GPS does not claim that finding has been documented at Jenkins specifically; it is the frame in which any single facility's scores should be read.

On contraband, GDC's own published reports record a single incident at Jenkins, in 2018, involving one arrest and one visitor-class actor. GDC publishes no dispositions, and an arrest is not a conviction.

What the Record Does Not Show

The most important finding on this page may be an absence, carefully scoped. Of 20 deaths GPS records at Jenkins since 2020, the county coroner's 2026 production covered 12. For several of the remainder, GBI reported that it could not locate any responsive autopsy or medical examiner record, and GDC's own coding — "Natural," in the cases of Saylor, Watkins, and Curry — stands without a pathologist's examination behind it. That is a statement about what GPS's records contain as of this writing, not a claim that no examination occurred. But a death classified natural with no autopsy, no GBI file, and no coroner's report in the production is a death whose cause rests on a coding decision rather than a finding, and the difference matters for every family still waiting on an answer.

Sources

This analysis draws on GPS's own mortality registry and facility records; Jenkins County Coroner's Office death investigation reports authored by Coroner Henry Young and produced to GPS in June 2026; GBI Division of Forensic Sciences autopsy and toxicology reports; GBI Open Records responses to GPS requests; GDC's internal audit calendars for FY2022, FY2024, and FY2026; Georgia Department of Public Health routine food-safety inspection reports; GDC's published contraband reports; the UCLA Behind Bars Data Project custodial mortality dataset; and GPS's systemic reporting on classification drift, staffing, and food service, including its analysis of the October 2024 DOJ findings. Family and witness accounts referenced here were collected by GPS and are presented as accounts, not findings.