LONG UNIT

Last updated August 23, 2026.(DS)

Long Unit in Ludowici is a relatively small state prison for adult male felons, opened in 1975 and rated for 212 people. Operated at medium security, it has more recently been used to house specific populations — including officials and others whose cases draw public attention — under tighter control than many county facilities. As with other units, Long relies on dormitory housing, limited programming, and outside details. It has also been specifically named in federal findings on unconstitutional conditions in Georgia prisons. The facility currently holds 208 people, or 98.1% of rated capacity, under Warden Jennifer Clark and Assistant Superintendent Pamala Dennis.

A Spotless Inspection Record — and the Systemic Blind Spot Behind It

On paper, Long Unit's kitchen is one of the cleanest in the Georgia Department of Corrections. The Georgia Department of Public Health has inspected the facility's food service five times since August 2023, and the record is nearly flawless: scores of 100 in August 2023, February 2024, December 2024, and December 2025, with a single 96 in June 2025 — the only inspection to cite any violation, a food-contact surface cleaning issue. All five inspections were routine, and all were conducted by the same inspector, Timmy Brinkley.

But GPS's systemic findings complicate that picture considerably. GPS has documented a 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, GPS has found, because inspections are scheduled walkthroughs that do not assess equipment under load, and because GPS has documented professional overlap between inspectors and facility staff in small-county settings. High DPH scores at GDC facilities coexist with sustained witness reports of equipment failure and food contamination — a contradiction GPS has made the analytical center of its investigation "Dunked, Stacked, and Served."

The stakes are not abstract. GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food as of 2024, with a 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 Marshall Project independently corroborated the pattern in May 2026, 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. Long Unit's perfect scores sit inside that broader contradiction.

Classification Drift and the Medium-Security Fiction

Long Unit is designated medium security, but GPS's reporting has documented a systemic pattern of classification drift across Georgia's medium-security prisons: facilities operating as close security without adequate staffing or infrastructure. GPS's October 2025 investigation, "The Classification Crisis: How Four Medium Security Prisons Are Killing People," documents how medium-security facilities have absorbed close-security populations without the staffing, infrastructure, or programming to manage them. The facility profile itself notes Long Unit has been used to house specific populations under tighter control than many county facilities — a function that sits uneasily with its medium-security designation and 212-bed scale.

The staffing math makes the drift structural. Officer vacancies in Georgia's prisons have run between 49.3% and 60% systemwide for multiple years, against a national standard of no more than 10%. The hiring pipeline cannot close the gap: acceptance rates run under 15%, and 82.7% of new hires leave in their first year. Georgia ranks last of 50 states for correctional-officer pay. The October 2024 DOJ findings letter explicitly 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% of the system's roughly 49,000 incarcerated people are validated members of 315 different security threat groups — more than double the national average — and DOJ and the Guidehouse 2024 consultant assessment independently concluded that gangs effectively run multiple facilities, controlling access to phones, showers, food, and bed assignments.

Infrastructure Collapse as a Force Multiplier

Long Unit opened in 1975, placing it squarely within the age cohort GPS has identified as structurally vulnerable. Most GDC facilities are 30-40+ years old, with documented patterns of deferred maintenance that have produced systemwide infrastructure failures: broken cell-door locks, inoperative surveillance and fire-alarm systems, mold and water failures, broken kitchen sanitization equipment, and pest infestations. The DOJ 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 GPS has documented at the facility level.

For a facility of Long Unit's size and function — holding public-attention cases under tighter control — the infrastructure question is not academic. A broken lock or an inoperative surveillance system at a 212-bed medium-security facility carrying close-security populations is a different failure than the same problem at a facility with redundant layers. The systemic conditions that produce mortality elsewhere in the GDC — understaffing, classification drift, infrastructure failure — are all documented in the record above, and GPS has independently tracked 1,863 deaths in GDC custody system-wide since 2020.

Sexual Violence and the Broader GDC Pattern

GPS's systemic findings establish that sexual violence in Georgia Department of Corrections facilities is systemic, not 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%. 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. Specific clusters include the DOJ-documented at-knifepoint sexual assaults at Pulaski State Prison, the 2020 Smith State Prison case in which an incarcerated person was waterboarded and sexually assaulted by his cellmate, and at least four staff arrests for sexual assault since 2020 at Lee Arrendale State Prison. The Ashley Diamond litigation established the constitutional baseline and launched the DOJ investigation. GPS treats this pattern as the analytical center of any GDC violence or staff-misconduct narrative, not as facility-isolated incidents.

Sources

This analysis draws on Georgia Department of Public Health food-safety inspection records for Long Unit; GPS's systemic findings on GDC food-service sanitation, staffing collapse, classification drift, infrastructure failure, and sexual violence; GDC population snapshots and demographic data; and reporting from The Marshall Project. The facility profile is drawn from GPS's standing record for Long Unit.