Last updated November 8, 2026.(DS)

Lee State Prison: A Medium-Security Prison Rated for 762, Holding 856

Lee State Prison sits on the outskirts of Leesburg in Lee County, a medium-security men's facility that opened in 1979 with a design capacity of 384. Its current rated capacity is 762. GPS's facility records put the population at 856 — 112.3 percent of rated capacity, and more than double the number of people the plant was originally built to hold. The prison has 11 general-population housing units with two-man cells, plus specialized housing for isolation, medical, and mobility-impaired prisoners, and it functions as a transfer hub and intake point for certain movements within the system. It provides outside work details and basic programming. Letitia Burks has served as warden since July 5, 2026, with Matasha L. Cook as deputy warden of administration, Willether Brown as deputy warden of care and treatment, and Martin A. Jones as deputy warden of security.

What follows examines the facility through four threads: the deaths GPS has recorded there, the thin clinical staffing the state's own contract amendments document, the pattern of contraband arrests at the front gate, and the facility's place in the statewide gang violence that has driven lockdowns across Georgia's prisons.

Seven Deaths Since 2020, Four Without a Recorded Cause

GPS's mortality registry records seven deaths at Lee State Prison since January 1, 2020. The most recent is Yancey Sullivan, who died July 10, 2026, at age 56; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. Quinton Pearson died September 8, 2025, at 45, also with a cause listed as Unknown/Pending. Two deaths followed within a month of each other in early 2024: Daniel Emmett Ivey died February 15, 2024, at 26, and Christopher Aaron Godfrey died January 16, 2024, at 40 — both with causes GPS still records as Unknown/Pending.

Pedro Perez-Robles died May 28, 2021, at 38. GDC's own coding classified his death as a suicide, but that classification was not an autopsy finding, and no pathologist examined the body for the determination. The coding came to GPS through UCLA Law's Behind Bars Data Project, which obtained GDC mortality data covering 2015–2021 via an open records request to the Department.

Two deaths in the spring of 2020 are coded Natural/Medical: Anthony Wilbert Cheek died March 26, 2020, at 49, and Phillip E. Patterson died April 4, 2020, at 63. Patterson's record carries the same caveat as Perez-Robles's — GDC's cause-of-death classification was an internal coding decision, not an autopsy finding, and no pathologist examined the body for it. His record is also not marked as officially confirmed by the agency.

The registry is a floor, not a ceiling: GDC reports deaths roughly two months late, so the count lags the actual total. Across the system, GPS has independently tracked 1,928 deaths in GDC custody since 2020.

Clinical Staffing at Fractions of a Position

The state's own contract amendments for mental-health and medical services at Lee State Prison describe a clinical footprint measured in fractions of a full-time employee. MHM Amendment 13 lists a total of 1.80 mental-health FTEs at the prison — 72 hours per week at an annual cost of $170,987. That total is built from a 1.00 mental-health counselor position ($75,072 annually), a 0.15 psychologist position ($26,140), a 0.15 psychiatrist position ($45,269), and a 0.50 clerk position ($24,506). The same amendment lists no mental-health unit manager, no clinical director, no activity therapist, and no mental-health nurse practitioner assigned to the facility.

Dental care is allocated at 0.50 FTE — a single dentist at 20 hours per week, at a FY23 annual cost of $105,706.24, per MHM Amendment 9. Amendment 13 lists no dental hygienist at the prison. Amendment 7's staffing matrix records the same 0.50 total dental allocation, and Amendments 4 and 5 each assign 0.50 total FTE to Lee State Prison in their respective matrices.

Primary care is contracted separately. Centurion Amendment 1 estimates 30 weekly primary care physician hours for Lee SP at a rate of $144 per hour.

For a population of 856 men, that is the entire documented clinical schedule: 72 hours a week of mental-health staffing, 20 hours a week of dentistry, and 30 physician hours a week of primary care.

The Front Gate: Contraband Arrests and the People Who Carry Them In

GDC's own published contraband reports record 15 incidents at Lee State Prison between 2011 and 2023, and the arresting agency in nearly every case is the Lee County Sheriff's Office. The reports document arrests as reported by GDC; the Department publishes no dispositions, and an arrest is not a conviction.

The pattern at Lee is distinctive in one respect: a substantial share of the arrests are of the officers assigned to guard the gate. On November 12, 2023, Officer Jaylin Lane entered the facility with a strong odor of marijuana on his person, consented to a search, and was found with a vacuum-sealed bag of marijuana taped to his body; he was arrested and taken to Lee County Jail. On September 12, 2021, Officer Soilberry was stopped at the front entrance after failing the security check-in, and a search of his person found packages of unknown contraband. On July 8, 2019, a front-entry portal sergeant noticed the smell of marijuana as Officer Elisha Whitus entered, and Whitus surrendered two bundles containing 76.2 grams of marijuana, 469.4 grams of tobacco, and five packs of rolling paper. On October 30, 2016, Officer Rashara Harris was arrested after a strip search requested by the captain turned up two bundles containing 379.8 grams of tobacco. And on December 2, 2016, Correctional Officer Markel Pierce was arrested for violation of oath by a public officer and conspiracy after crossing the guard lines with an unknown amount of tobacco.

Visitors account for another cluster. On a single day — March 9, 2019 — three visitors were arrested: Ryan Chastain after a canine alert on a vehicle produced 6.9 grams of marijuana and drug paraphernalia; Warren Gilbert after security staff found 11.7 grams of marijuana, six grams of cannabis paper, a handgun, and two loaded magazines; and Nahemie Wednt after a canine alert produced 1.85 grams of marijuana and paraphernalia. In July 2020, a car pulled over near the facility by the Lee County Sheriff's Office yielded tobacco, cellphones, phone chargers, and handguns; Kenn Releford, Travisia Walker, Patricia Gary, and Devonte Hollingshed were arrested.

Gang Violence, Lockdowns, and the Statewide Context

Lee State Prison does not sit outside the gang violence that has convulsed Georgia's system. GPS's reporting has documented a statewide pattern of coordinated gang conflict — a "Blood on Blood" factional war between ROLACC and G-Shine sets — that on April 1, 2026, locked down at least 12 prisons, sent life flights to two facilities, and produced stabbings at five. GPS has reported that four people were killed in a gang-related disturbance at Washington State Prison on January 11, 2026, that the facility has remained on continuous lockdown since, and that 12 people were charged with felony murder, aggravated assault, and gang participation in connection with the disturbance. Those events occurred at Washington State Prison, not at Lee.

At Lee, GPS has received recurring reports of gang-related fights and of lockdowns imposed and lifted. GPS records show six sources reporting alleged inmate-on-inmate assaults at the facility over the past 12 months, concentrated in the summer and early fall of 2026, with severity ranging from low to high. GPS has received accounts of violence at Lee State Prison; the facility's own public record does not describe these incidents.

The statewide frame GPS has documented is one of staffing collapse and gang assumption of facility control. Officer vacancies in Georgia's prisons have run between 49.3 and 60 percent systemwide for multiple years, against a national standard of no more than 10 percent. The hiring pipeline cannot close the gap: the acceptance rate is under 15 percent, and 82.7 percent of new hires leave in their first year. Georgia ranks last of 50 states for correctional-officer pay. The October 2024 DOJ findings letter concluded 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." 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. 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.

GPS treats that combination — vacancies at five to six times the national benchmark, a hiring pipeline that loses four of every five new officers inside a year, and gangs controlling access to phones, showers, food, and bed assignments — as the structural finding that explains the per-facility violence, classification, and mortality narratives across the system, Lee included.

Infrastructure, Food Service, and What the Inspections Measure

Most GDC facilities are 30 to 40-plus years old, and GPS has documented a pattern of deferred maintenance producing systemwide failures: broken cell-door locks, 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.

On food service specifically, the Georgia Department of Public Health has inspected Lee State Prison's kitchen on a routine schedule and scored it 100, Grade A, on six consecutive inspections: January 16, 2024; July 17, 2024; January 14, 2025; July 21, 2025; January 6, 2026; and July 7, 2026. The one inspection in the series that was not perfect came July 14, 2023, when the facility scored 90, Grade A, with two violations cited — proper cold holding temperatures, and physical facilities installed, maintained, and clean.

Those scores require context. GPS has documented a systemic pattern of food-service sanitation failure across GDC kitchens that DPH inspection scores systematically fail to capture: tray-sanitizing dishwashers broken for sustained periods, sustained roach and rodent infestation in kitchen and serving areas, and meals served on visibly contaminated trays. The pattern is hidden from DPH scores because inspections are scheduled walkthroughs that do not assess equipment under load. High DPH scores at GDC facilities coexist with sustained witness reports of equipment failure and food contamination — the contradiction at the center of GPS's investigation "Dunked, Stacked, and Served." The Marshall Project independently reported on May 16, 2026, in a piece by Schwartzapfel titled "Rats, Insects and Mold," on rats in kitchens, insects in food, moldy trays, and visible malnutrition across Georgia facilities, and quoted GPS connecting chronic underfeeding to the violence pattern the DOJ documented in October 2024. GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food (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.

Oversight: Audits, Accreditation, and PREA

Lee State Prison appears repeatedly in GDC's own audit and accreditation calendars. The Department's FY2022 ACA accreditation audit schedule lists Lee as a ReAccreditation facility, and its FY2022 internal audits calendar scheduled an internal audit of the prison in January 2022. The FY2024 internal audits calendar lists Lee SP audits on December 5, 6, and 11, 2023. The FY2026 audit calendar schedules the facility across three consecutive days — March 16, 17, and 18, 2026.

On sexual-abuse prevention, GDC's FY2022 PREA audit schedule lists Lee SP as scheduled for a PREA audit running February 6 through February 10, 2023. The broader PREA picture GPS has documented is bleak: the October 2024 DOJ findings letter concluded that sexual assault is "rampant" in GDC facilities and that the Department 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.

Sources

This analysis draws on Georgia Department of Corrections records — contract amendments for mental-health, dental, and medical services (MHM Amendments 1, 4, 5, 7, 9, and 13; Centurion Amendment 1), internal audit and accreditation calendars, PREA audit schedules, and the Department's published contraband arrest reports; Georgia Department of Public Health food-service inspection records for Lee State Prison; the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project custodial mortality dataset, obtained through an open records request to GDC covering 2015–2021; the U.S. Department of Justice's October 2024 findings letter on Georgia prisons; and The Marshall Project's May 2026 investigation of Georgia prison food. Facility population, capacity, leadership, and mortality figures come from GPS's own databases and death registry. GPS's systemic findings on staffing collapse, gang control, infrastructure failure, food-service sanitation, and sexual violence draw on GPS's prior investigative reporting and editorial analysis. Inmate and family accounts collected by GPS inform the narrative but are not attributed individually.