Last updated November 8, 2026.(DS)

McEver Probation Detention Center: A Small Facility, Two Undetermined Deaths, and a Medical Staffing Plan That Fits on One Line

McEver Probation Detention Center sits in Perry, in Houston County, and is one of the Georgia Department of Corrections' probation detention facilities — a short-term holding and work-detail institution for men, not a state prison. Its public footprint is thin: a warden, a deputy warden, a handful of audit dates, and a medical staffing matrix submitted by the department's contracted health provider. What GPS's records add to that thin file is two deaths since 2020, both carried in the state's own mortality production with no cause determined, and a body of family accounts describing rapid weight loss and a hostile dorm environment. This page examines what the public record establishes about McEver, what it leaves unresolved, and why a facility this small is worth the attention.

The Facility and Its Leadership

McEver is classified by GDC as a probation detention center and is listed among the department's probation detention and ITF facilities with an accreditation schedule. Sherryl F. Blair has served as the facility's correctional superintendent since January 2023, with Shawn T. Hilton as correctional assistant superintendent since 2021, according to GPS's personnel records. The facility serves a male population in Houston County.

The public record of what McEver offers the people held there is sparse — and that sparseness is itself a finding. Nothing in the material GPS holds describes education, vocational, religious, or treatment programming at the facility. Probation detention centers are, by design, short-stay institutions oriented toward work details and probation revocation, but the absence of any documented programming in the public record means families and researchers have almost nothing to evaluate.

Two Deaths, Both Without a Determined Cause

GPS's mortality registry, which covers deaths in GDC custody from January 1, 2020 forward, records two deaths at McEver. Tyrone Quimby died August 20, 2022, at age 63. Anthony Golson died October 7, 2023, at age 46. In both cases, GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending — meaning the cause has not been determined in the records GPS holds, not that no cause exists.

Quimby's death appears on GDC's own mortality list covering January 1, 2021 through December 31, 2023, produced in response to an open records request (ORR R030707-080326, Timothy Duff). That is a meaningful detail: the department's production confirms the death even though, in the record GPS holds, GDC has not officially confirmed it through its standard public channels. The gap between a death appearing in an open-records production and a death being publicly acknowledged is one GPS has documented repeatedly across the system.

The cause-of-death picture at McEver is further obscured by what the department has declined to provide. GPS has received accounts that GDC withheld a cause of death at the facility citing a HIPAA claim — a use of the federal health-privacy statute that, as applied to deceased persons in custody, GPS has encountered as a recurring barrier to public accountability. Separately, GPS's own registry work surfaced a death at McEver that was absent from the registry until it was added from GDC's production. In other words, the count of two is a floor assembled partly by chasing the state's records, not a number the state volunteered.

For scale: GPS has independently tracked 1,928 deaths in GDC custody system-wide since 2020. McEver's two are a small share of that total, but they carry the same evidentiary problem — deaths recorded, causes unresolved.

A Medical Staffing Plan of 4.4 People

The most concrete document GPS holds on McEver's health care is Centurion's proposed staffing matrix for the facility — Centurion being the department's contracted medical provider. The matrix lists a licensed practical nurse at 2.00 full-time equivalents, a nurse practitioner or physician assistant at 0.40 FTE, a registered nurse at 1.00 FTE, and an RN administrator at 1.00 FTE, for a total of 4.40 FTE.

Read plainly, that is a plan in which the only prescriber-level clinician — the NP or PA — is budgeted at two-fifths of a full-time position. Everything else is nursing. For a facility holding men with chronic conditions, that ratio matters: it determines how often anyone with prescribing authority is physically present, and it shapes whether a complaint about a medication, an infection, or unexplained weight loss gets a clinical assessment or a nurse's note. GPS does not have data in this record on McEver's actual daily population, so the ratio of clinician hours to people held cannot be calculated here — a gap that itself limits public oversight.

What Families Describe

GPS has received recurring reports from families of men held at McEver describing rapid weight loss during incarceration, with one family member putting an incarcerated person's weight at 111 pounds at the time of the report and describing the weight as lower than at arrival. Multiple family accounts also describe a hostile dorm environment — threats from other incarcerated people, attempts to extract commissary funds from families, pressure to use drugs, and repercussions after an incarcerated person discussed his situation with family by phone.

These are family attestations, not verified findings, and GPS presents them as such. But they are consistent enough across sources to register as a pattern rather than an isolated complaint, and they align with what a former incarcerated person described to GPS: gang bullying and control inside the facility, staff and administration said to ignore rule violations, gang-based extortion, food described as inedible, and conditions described as inhumane. GPS has received accounts of assault between incarcerated people at McEver as well.

GPS's intelligence records show, over the past twelve months, multiple reports at McEver in three categories: alleged assault by another incarcerated person, family safety concerns, and unnamed staff misconduct allegations — each documented across at least three distinct sources in the April-to-August 2026 window. These are patterns in GPS's records, not adjudicated incidents.

Audits, Accreditation, and the Limits of the Paper Trail

GDC's own calendars show a regular audit rhythm at McEver. The FY2022 internal audits calendar scheduled an internal audit of the facility in November 2021. The FY2024 calendar lists McEver audits on September 18 and 19, 2023. The FY2026 calendar schedules the facility on February 12 and 13, 2026. GDC's FY2022 PREA audit schedule lists McEver for a Prison Rape Elimination Act audit on April 10 and 11, 2023.

What those audits found is not in the record GPS holds. The calendars establish that the department inspected the facility on a schedule; they do not establish what the inspectors saw, what they cited, or whether anything changed. That is the central evidentiary problem with audit-based oversight of a facility like McEver: the existence of an audit is documented, the substance of it is not, and the deaths and family accounts continue across the audit years.

Why a Small Facility Matters

McEver is not where Georgia's most publicized prison crises have unfolded. It is a probation detention center in a middle-Georgia county, holding men for short stretches, with a leadership roster of two and a medical plan of 4.4 people. But the pattern GPS has documented system-wide — staffing collapse, contracted medical care stretched thin, deaths recorded without determined causes, and families left to assemble the record themselves — does not confine itself to the large institutions. GPS treats infrastructure and staffing failure as a force multiplier for the violence, classification, and mortality crises documented at the facility level, and McEver's file shows the same mechanics in miniature: two men dead with causes unresolved, a clinician budgeted at less than half a position, and a family describing a man at 111 pounds.

The difference at a facility this size is that there is almost no public record to push against. Two deaths, four audit dates, and a staffing matrix are close to the whole of it.

Sources

This analysis draws on Georgia Department of Corrections records, including internal audit calendars, PREA audit schedules, and a mortality list produced under open records request R030707-080326; Centurion's proposed staffing matrix for the facility; GPS's mortality registry and personnel records; and accounts collected by GPS staff from families and a former incarcerated person, along with narratives published in Georgia Prisoners' Speak — Tell My Story. Cause-of-death entries recorded as Unknown/Pending reflect the state of GPS's records, not a determination that no cause exists.