METRO TRANSITIONAL CENTER

Last updated September 13, 2026.(DS)

Metro Transitional Center (MTC) sits in Atlanta, in DeKalb County — a close-security transitional center for women operated by the Georgia Department of Corrections, led by Superintendent Latia Nicole Alexander, with Traci Seemore as Assistant Superintendent. Its designation is reentry: a step-down facility where women nearing release are supposed to build job skills and prepare for life outside. The accounts GPS has collected from inside describe something closer to a waystation — a place where classification is used as a punitive instrument, violence goes unanswered, and the reentry function itself is contested. GPS has recorded no deaths at Metro Transitional Center in its mortality tracking, a zero that sits awkwardly beside witness accounts of serious assaults and of deaths at the facility being recorded as something other than what witnesses say they were.

A Reentry Mission That Witnesses Say Does Not Function

The most direct challenge to Metro's stated purpose comes from an anonymous account GPS received describing the facility as the largest transitional center in Georgia where "half the place doesn't work" — incarcerated people sitting idle rather than working, with limited job slots and the facility characterized as a revenue generator for GDC rather than a functioning reentry program. That account is a single tip and should be weighed as such, but it is not contradicted by anything else in the record, and it aligns with the structural picture: GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food (2024), with $1.60 per day proposed for FY27 — under 60 cents per meal — against the FDA Thrifty Food Plan estimate of roughly $10 per day for an adult's nutritionally adequate diet. The state spends approximately 14 times more on medical care for incarcerated people ($432 million) than on their food.

The Marshall Project corroborated the food pattern independently 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. GPS has separately 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 contradiction between high inspection scores and sustained witness reports of equipment failure and contamination is the analytical center of GPS's investigation "Dunked, Stacked, and Served."

Classification as Punishment, and the Road to Pulaski

Multiple inmate accounts collected by GPS describe Metro staff using security classification increases to move women out — specifically, to Pulaski State Prison. One witness described a staff member raising an incarcerated person's security level to effectuate the transfer; another described staff sending women to Pulaski rather than guiding them toward rehabilitation. A third account describes a person sentenced for simple possession housed alongside individuals convicted of serious violent crimes — a classification failure that cuts directly against a transitional center's purpose.

The destination is the point. Pulaski is where the Department of Justice documented constitutional violations in its October 2024 investigation, and where GPS has documented gang members using violence to extort incarcerated women and their families as far back as 2022. In February 2026, Pulaski's new warden, Wendy Jackson — who had previously served as Superintendent at Metro Transitional Center from 2023 to 2026 — reported retaliation, intimidation, and unsafe conditions at Pulaski. When a staff member at Metro uses a classification increase to send a woman to Pulaski, the accounts GPS has received describe that transfer not as a neutral administrative act but as punishment dressed as procedure.

Violence, Non-Intervention, and the Solitary Response

GPS has received multiple accounts of serious violence at Metro. Witnesses describe an incarcerated person assaulted with a makeshift weapon, sustaining injuries that required a serious medical procedure. Another account describes a large group assault on a single individual during which a captain observed the attack, expressed alarm, and then left without intervening — not returning that night. GPS has also received accounts of homicides at the facility being misrepresented as suicides, and of an incarcerated person described by others as a "walking target."

What followed the violence is as troubling as the violence itself. Multiple witnesses report that a woman seriously injured in a large group assault at Metro was placed in solitary confinement and released only after she begged to come out, even after housing assignment changes. The logic is inverted: the person attacked is isolated while the attackers remain in general population. This recurs across the witness testimony GPS has collected, and it mirrors the broader GDC pattern the DOJ faulted in October 2024, criticizing the Department for placing "too much blame on gangs and insufficient emphasis on understaffing."

Medical Emergencies Read as Drug Use

One of the most specific accounts GPS has received from Metro concerns a woman who experienced a seizure. According to an inmate witness, a staff member at the facility refused to allow medical staff to assist her, assuming she was under the influence of K2. The account is consistent with a broader pattern GPS has documented across GDC facilities: medical emergencies dismissed as drug-seeking or malingering, with consequences ranging from delayed care to death.

The fear dynamic that surrounds such accounts is documented elsewhere in the women's system. At Lee Arrendale State Prison — Georgia's largest women's facility — GPS has documented that incarcerated women hesitate to report medical neglect because they fear solitary confinement or the loss of privileges. The same structure appears in the Metro accounts: women who are victimized are isolated, women who report medical emergencies are suspected of drug use, and the institutional response to vulnerability is discipline rather than care.

Staffing Collapse and What It Produces at a Women's Facility

The violence and non-intervention described at Metro cannot be understood apart from the staffing collapse that defines GDC custody. 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%; at Valdosta State Prison the rate reached 80% by April 2024. 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 concluded explicitly that "the leadership of the Georgia Department of Corrections has lost control of its facilities." Approximately 31% of the system's roughly 49,000 incarcerated population 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. 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.

For a women's transitional center, that collapse has a specific shape. When a captain at Metro observes a group assault and leaves without intervening, that is not merely an individual failure — it is what understaffing produces. When a woman is placed in solitary after being attacked, that is what a facility without adequate classification capacity produces. The accounts GPS has received from Metro are not anomalies; they are the predictable downstream effects of a system that has lost the capacity to protect the people it holds.

The Sexual Violence Context in Georgia's Women's Facilities

The October 2024 DOJ findings 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%. 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.

The documented clusters concentrate in women's facilities. The DOJ documented at-knifepoint sexual assaults at Pulaski State Prison. At Lee Arrendale State Prison, at least four staff members have been arrested for sexual assault since 2020, including the November 2024 Cameron Cheeks plea — a hire-fire-rehire case that GPS treats as an artifact of the staffing and hiring-standards collapse. GPS has also documented three women strangled in Arrendale's A Unit between 2022 and 2024 — Sherry Joyce, Hallie Reed, and Angela Anderson — a figure exceeding the entire BJS-recorded national women-in-state-prison homicide total across 2001–2019. In July 2025, Sheqweetta Vaughan was found dead in her cell at Arrendale.

At Metro specifically, GPS has received accounts of sexual assault and of male officers at Pulaski physically assaulting incarcerated people while female officers observed. The pattern is systemic; it is not facility-isolated, and it forms the analytical center of any violence or staff-misconduct narrative involving GDC women's facilities.

Leadership Movement Between Reentry and Punishment

The leadership record at Metro reflects the broader instability GPS has documented across GDC facilities. Latia Nicole Alexander has served as Superintendent since January 2024, with Traci Seemore as Assistant Superintendent since June 2026. Before that, Wendy A. Jackson served as Superintendent at Metro from 2023 to 2026 before moving to Pulaski State Prison as Warden in 2025. Gregory L. Sampson held a Warden 3 post at the Metro Reentry Facility in 2025.

The movement of leadership between Metro and Pulaski is not incidental. When the person who ran a transitional center moves to run the facility where women are sent as punishment, the line between reentry and retribution blurs. The inmate accounts GPS has collected describe exactly this dynamic — a staff member at Metro sending women to Pulaski rather than guiding them toward rehabilitation. The leadership record does not prove those accounts, but it is consistent with them in a way that warrants attention.

Infrastructure as a Force Multiplier

Most GDC facilities are 30 to 40-plus years old, with documented patterns of deferred maintenance that have produced systemwide infrastructure failures: broken cell-door locks (a 2012 Hays audit found roughly 42% non-functional, and the Guidehouse 2024 assessment confirmed the pattern), 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 documented at the facility level — including at Metro, where the accounts GPS has received describe a physical environment in which the reentry mission is not the operating reality.

Sources

This analysis draws on GPS's own systemic findings and investigative reporting, including documentation of the GDC staffing collapse, food-service sanitation failures, infrastructure decay, and the systemic sexual violence pattern; the October 2024 Department of Justice findings letter; the Guidehouse 2024 consultant assessment; The Marshall Project's May 2026 investigation of Georgia prison food; GDC personnel records; and inmate and family accounts collected by GPS staff at Metro Transitional Center and Pulaski State Prison. GPS has independently tracked 1,890 deaths in GDC custody since 2020.