JENKINS FACILITY

Analysis written on July 12, 2026.

Jenkins Facility, a privately operated medium-security prison run by CoreCivic in Millen, Georgia, holds 1,155 individuals—just over 97% of its 1,186-bed capacity. Opened in 2012, it is part of the Georgia Department of Corrections’ network of private prisons, housing men classified at medium-security levels. But under the surface, Jenkins bears the hallmarks of a system in deep crisis: classification drift that places higher-security individuals in a facility not designed or staffed to hold them, chronic understaffing that cedes control to gangs, and a food-service environment whose official health scores mask a dangerous reality of poor nutrition and hidden contamination. GPS has tracked 20 deaths at the facility, and in April 2026 two men were killed there as a Blood-on-Blood gang war ripped across the state’s prisons.

Two Deaths in April: Gang Violence and a Lockdown That Didn’t Stop the Killing

On April 1, 2026, coordinated gang violence erupted across Georgia’s prison system. GPS reported that a Blood-on-Blood factional war between ROLACC and G-Shine sets triggered a statewide lockdown, with at least 13 facilities locked down, multiple stabbings reported at five prisons, and two life-flight helicopter dispatches. Tyler Chase Ryals, a former GDC CERT Commander who had spent nearly a decade inside Georgia’s prisons, later told GPS that the system was hopelessly outmatched by gangs that effectively ran multiple facilities. The April 1 violence, GPS wrote, was not a single incident but the acceleration of a years-long failure to separate gang members.

At Jenkins Facility, the toll of this conflict became tragically clear later that month. GPS’s mortality database records two homicides: Charles Edward Richey, 58, on April 17, and Dustin Scott Scarbro, 27, on April 21. Multiple witness accounts collected by GPS describe a stabbing of two older incarcerated individuals at the facility around this time—a pattern that matches the broader Blood-on-Blood violence. In addition, GPS has received reports of a suspected drug intoxication during a lockdown procedure and an individual found unresponsive during a routine count, prompting a facility-wide shakedown. While the full circumstances of these deaths remain subject to investigation, they unfolded inside a medium-security prison that was never intended to manage the kind of gang-driven lethality that has become standard across Georgia’s facilities.

When a Medium Isn’t a Medium: Classification Drift and the Violence It Enables

The homicides at Jenkins did not happen in a vacuum. GPS has repeatedly documented a systemic classification crisis in Georgia: medium-security prisons are housing high numbers of close-security inmates without the staffing, infrastructure, or programming required to manage them safely. The practice, which GPS calls “classification drift,” has been documented across multiple facilities and was the subject of a GPS investigation, “The Classification Crisis: How Four Medium Security Prisons Are Killing People.” Although Jenkins was not specifically named in that report, it is precisely the kind of facility where classification drift creates lethal conditions.

Jenkins is classified as a medium-security facility, but the presence of close-security individuals—often men with histories of violence or gang affiliation—in an environment without sufficient officer posts, surveillance systems, or separation capacity amounts to a structural guarantee of violence. GPS’s own data, current as of October 2025, shows that medium-security prisons are routinely functioning as de facto higher-security institutions. When the Blood-on-Blood war spilled into Jenkins, it found a population mixed without regard for gang affiliation and a facility unable to control what followed. The two homicides in April, with victims described as older men, illustrate how even those not targeted for gang affiliation become casualties in a war the state has no plan to stop.

The Deceptive Comfort of a 100: Food Safety Scores and the Real Kitchen

Jenkins Facility has scored as high as 100 on its Georgia Department of Public Health food-safety inspections, most recently in May 2025 and August 2023. A routine inspection in November 2025 gave it a 91, citing a violation for improper hot holding temperatures. The December 2024 inspection, however, scored an 87—a B grade—with two violations, for improper food-contact surface cleaning and sanitizing and for inadequate cooling time and temperature. On paper, the overall track record appears respectable.

But GPS’s own investigation, “Dunked, Stacked, and Served,” reveals that these scores can be dangerously misleading. Across GDC kitchens, broken tray-sanitizing dishwashers, roach infestations, and rodent activity are common, yet inspectors conduct scheduled walkthroughs that rarely assess equipment under load and do not capture the conditions that incarcerated people experience daily. At Dooly State Prison, for example, inmate-maintenance workers reported thousands of roaches inside kitchen equipment—and Dooly had passing scores. The Marshall Project’s May 2026 investigation of Georgia prison food independently corroborated this pattern, documenting rats in kitchens, insects in food, and moldy trays statewide. Against this backdrop, even a 100 at Jenkins cannot be taken as proof of a safe kitchen.

The budgetary context makes the sanitation failures almost inevitable. GPS has found that GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food—roughly sixty cents per meal—compared to the FDA Thrifty Food Plan estimate of about $10 per day for an adequate diet. The state’s proposed FY27 food budget of $1.60 per day would deepen this nutritional crisis, which in turn fuels the violence that has killed so many.

Staffing Collapse, Private Prisons, and the Absence of Oversight

Georgia’s correctional officer vacancies have run between 49% and 60% systemwide for years, and GPS reporting confirms that at some facilities the rate has reached 80%. The October 2024 U.S. Department of Justice findings letter concluded that GDC leadership had “lost control of its facilities” and placed too much blame on gangs while ignoring understaffing. Tyler Ryals, the former CERT commander, recounted to GPS being the only security officer on an entire compound of roughly 1,250 maximum-security inmates at Telfair State Prison. When staffing collapses, gangs fill the vacuum—controlling cell assignments, showers, phones, and food—as both the DOJ and the Guidehouse 2024 consultant assessment found.

Jenkins Facility, operated by CoreCivic, sits inside this same broken system. Private prisons contract with the state and are not immune to the staffing crisis; indeed, they may face even less public accountability. GPS has reported that GDC is exempt from certain audits and transparency requirements, and that no-bid contracts for healthcare, maintenance, and services have raised serious concerns about financial impropriety. The result is a correctional environment where official inspection scores and capacity numbers mask a reality in which two men were killed inside a medium-security private prison in one month, and families and outside observers are left with little visibility into why.

Sources: This analysis draws on GPS’s own mortality database, Georgia Department of Public Health inspection reports, and GPS’s investigative reporting on classification drift, gang violence, food-service sanitation, and staffing collapse, including the reports “The Classification Crisis: How Four Medium Security Prisons Are Killing People,” “Blood on Blood: Georgia Statewide Prison Lockdown,” and “Dunked, Stacked, and Served.” Contextual findings incorporate the October 2024 DOJ investigation, the Guidehouse 2024 facility assessment, and GPS’s 2025 systemic-finding compilation. Witness accounts and incident reports were collected by GPS staff and aggregated for this article.