JENKINS FACILITY

Last updated September 6, 2026.(DS)

Jenkins Facility sits in Millen, Georgia, in Jenkins County — a medium-security men's prison operated by the private corrections contractor CoreCivic. Opened in 2012, the facility was originally designed for 1,150 people and now carries a rated capacity of 1,186. GPS records show a current population of 1,153, placing the facility at 97.2% of capacity. Warden Terrance Dickerson has led the facility since January 2024.

The public record on Jenkins is thinner than the record on many of Georgia's state-run prisons — a function of its private operation, which places it outside some of the GDC-specific reporting channels GPS tracks. What exists paints a picture of a facility operating near its design limits, with a mortality record that has not drawn the same scrutiny as the state's most violent compounds but which nonetheless reflects the systemic pressures GPS has documented across the Georgia system.

Mortality at Jenkins: Twenty Deaths, Mostly Medical

GPS's mortality database records 20 deaths at Jenkins Facility since tracking began in January 2020. Fifteen of the twenty deaths are classified as natural or medical; two as suicide; one as overdose; one as homicide; and one remains unknown or pending. The annual distribution is uneven: six deaths in 2020, five in 2021, three in 2022, none in 2023, two each in 2024, 2025, and 2026 through the latest records.

The two most recent deaths on record both occurred in April 2026. Charles Edward Richey, 58, died on April 17, 2026, of natural or medical causes. Dustin Scott Scarbro, 27, died four days later, on April 21, 2026, also of natural or medical causes. GPS treats its mortality counts as a floor, not a ceiling — GDC reports deaths roughly two months late, and the database reflects only what has been confirmed and recorded.

The single homicide in the Jenkins record — Alonzo Wright, who died January 9, 2025 — stands in contrast to the gang-war violence GPS has documented at other Georgia facilities. The January 11, 2026 riot at Washington State Prison killed four people, and the coordinated Blood-on-Blood violence locked down at least twelve facilities in April 2026. Jenkins does not appear in GPS's published reporting on those events as a primary site of the violence, though the facility's own pattern-context record includes recurring reports of stabbing incidents involving older incarcerated people in 2026.

Food Safety: Strong Scores, Systemic Questions

The Georgia Department of Public Health has conducted five routine food-safety inspections at Jenkins Facility since August 2023, and the scores are strong by any conventional measure: 100 in August 2023, 87 in December 2024, 100 in May 2025, 91 in November 2025, and 96 in May 2026. The December 2024 inspection — the only one below a Grade A — cited two violations: food-contact surfaces requiring cleaning and sanitizing, and improper cooling time and temperature. The November 2025 inspection cited one violation, for proper hot holding temperatures. The May 2026 inspection cited one violation, for food-contact surfaces requiring cleaning and sanitizing.

These scores place Jenkins among the better-performing GDC kitchens on paper. But GPS's systemic findings complicate that picture. GPS has documented a pattern across GDC facilities in which high DPH inspection scores coexist with sustained witness reports of equipment failure, roach and rodent infestation, and meals served on visibly contaminated trays. The analytical center of GPS's investigation "Dunked, Stacked, and Served" is precisely this contradiction: 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 that can mask conditions a routine score never captures.

Jenkins County is a small county. The same inspector, Ashley Clark, conducted four of the five Jenkins inspections on record. That is not itself evidence of impropriety — small counties often have a single inspector covering multiple facilities — but it is the structural condition GPS has identified as enabling the scores-without-sanitation pattern elsewhere in the system.

The Broader Context: Staffing, Classification, and Private Operation

Jenkins operates inside a state system in crisis. GPS's systemic findings document officer vacancy rates between 49.3% and 60% systemwide for multiple years, against a national standard of no more than 10%. The October 2024 DOJ findings letter concluded that GDC leadership "has lost control of its facilities" and faulted the department for placing "too much blame on gangs and insufficient emphasis on understaffing." Approximately 31% of the system's roughly 49,000 incarcerated people are validated members of 315 different security threat groups — more than double the national average.

The staffing collapse is corroborated by on-record testimony from former GDC personnel. Russell Zirkle, a former GDC assistant warden, told GPS on the record that Smith State Prison was among the facilities running a 70-80% officer vacancy rate — a figure far beyond the national standard and consistent with the systemic vacancy range GPS has documented. GPS's own reporting, in "Two Commanders Say Georgia Hides Its Prison Staffing Crisis," carried Zirkle's account alongside that of Tyler Ryals, a former GDC sergeant forced out in 2024 after whistleblowing, who told GPS he had personally been the only security person on the entire Telfair compound of roughly 1,250 maximum-security inmates.

For Jenkins specifically, the staffing picture is complicated by its private operation. CoreCivic-run facilities sit outside some GDC personnel reporting channels, and GPS's database does not carry a Jenkins-specific vacancy rate. But the systemic finding applies: GPS treats staffing collapse and gang assumption of facility control as the integrated structural finding that explains per-facility violence, classification, mortality, and infrastructure-failure narratives across the system.

The classification-drift pattern is particularly relevant to a medium-security facility like Jenkins. GPS has documented that Georgia's medium-security prisons are functioning as higher-security facilities without adequate staffing or infrastructure — housing close-security inmates in facilities designed and staffed for medium-security populations. Jenkins's own population sits at 97.2% of rated capacity, a figure that does not by itself indicate classification drift but which leaves little margin for absorbing the transfers and reclassifications that have characterized the system's response to gang violence and lockdowns elsewhere.

Reports of Violence and Safety Concerns

GPS has received recurring reports of violence at Jenkins Facility through its tip channels and internal analysis systems. Multiple anonymous tips in 2026 describe stabbing incidents involving older incarcerated people — described in some reports as elders — in housing units at the facility. GPS's internal AI classification system flagged at least one Jenkins incident as high-severity violence with associated safety concerns. A separate report describes an incarcerated person found unresponsive during a routine count, prompting a medical response and facility-wide lockdown and shakedown, with the cause remaining undetermined.

These reports sit below the evidentiary threshold for individual citation — they are pattern context, not confirmed findings — but they are consistent with the broader violence pattern GPS has documented across Georgia's prisons. The facility's single recorded homicide in GPS's mortality database, combined with the recurring stabbing reports, suggests Jenkins has not been insulated from the violence that has defined the system's recent years.

GPS's aggregate signal data for Jenkins over the past twelve months shows three distinct sources reporting family safety concerns, spanning April through July 2026, at high and moderate severity. These are family-level reports — concerns raised by relatives of incarcerated people about safety conditions at the facility — and they represent a small but persistent signal that conditions at Jenkins are generating anxiety beyond its walls.

What the Record Does Not Show

The absence of certain data points is itself analytically significant. Jenkins does not appear in GPS's published reporting on the major gang-war events of 2025-2026 — the Washington State Prison killings, the April 2026 statewide lockdown, the Blood-on-Blood factional war — as a named site of mass violence. The facility's mortality record, while substantial at 20 deaths since 2020, is dominated by natural and medical causes rather than the homicide clusters that have defined facilities like Smith State Prison or Washington State Prison.

That said, GPS's record on Jenkins is constrained by the facility's private operation. CoreCivic-run facilities generate less GDC-specific public documentation than state-run prisons, and GPS's mortality database relies on GDC reporting that runs approximately two months late. The 20 deaths on record are a floor, not a complete accounting.

Sources

This analysis draws on Georgia Department of Public Health food-safety inspection records for Jenkins Facility; GPS's mortality database and aggregate signal data; GPS's systemic findings on staffing collapse, classification drift, food-service sanitation, and sexual violence across the Georgia prison system; on-record testimony from former GDC assistant warden Russell Zirkle and former GDC sergeant Tyler Ryals as carried in GPS's reporting "Two Commanders Say Georgia Hides Its Prison Staffing Crisis"; and anonymous tip and internal analysis records collected by GPS staff. The facility profile information — including capacity, population, leadership, and CoreCivic operation — comes from GPS's standing facility records.