METRO REENTRY FACILITY

Last updated October 4, 2026.(DS)

A Reentry Mission Inside a System in Crisis

Metro Reentry Facility occupies the renovated former Metro State Prison in Atlanta, in DeKalb County. The original building opened in 1980; the site was reopened in 2018 under the state's prisoner-reentry initiative and is dedicated to reentry rather than long-term warehousing. It houses roughly 300–350 men who are within a defined window of release or parole eligibility, and it runs intensive programming — cognitive-behavioral classes, job-readiness and vocational training, education and life-skills courses, and family-reunification support — with the stated goal of reducing recidivism by preparing participants for a supervised return to the community. Its current rated capacity is 355, against an original design capacity of 420; GPS's facility record lists a population of 354, or 99.7 percent of rated capacity. Gregory L. Sampson has served as warden since January 2025, with Adrienne J. Bunkley and Robert Owens as deputy wardens and Latrese Davis Schofield as Deputy Warden of Care and Treatment.

That mission — release preparation, not warehousing — is the frame the rest of this page has to be read against. The men held here are, by design, close to the end of their sentences. The deaths and conditions documented below therefore land on a population that the state has formally designated as being prepared to go home.

Thirty-Three Deaths Since 2020

GPS's mortality registry records 33 deaths at Metro Reentry Facility since January 1, 2020 — a floor, not a ceiling, since GDC reports deaths roughly two months late. Twenty of those are coded Natural/Medical, twelve Unknown/Pending, and one Accident. The full list is maintained at GPS's facility death registry.

The most recent deaths recorded are Thomas Allen Mckendrick, who died July 6, 2026, at age 82; Cedric Clement Pierce, who died April 13, 2026, at 61; Samuel Dennis Hunt, who died March 1, 2026, at 64; and Donald Woods, who died January 31, 2026, at 65 — all four with cause listed as Unknown/Pending, meaning GPS does not yet know the cause. Robert Rodriguez Johnson died January 1, 2026, at 46, with cause listed as Natural/Medical. In the fall of 2025 the registry records four Natural/Medical deaths within nineteen days: Rodney Corbin, who died October 23, 2025, at 55; Stephen Mott, who died October 20, 2025, at 52; Wilson Beavers, who died October 10, 2025, at 66; and John Whitfield, who died October 5, 2025, at 61.

Earlier deaths include Sammy Bernard Palmer, who died April 25, 2025, at 54, and Willie James Johnson, who died April 11, 2025, at 74, both Unknown/Pending; Harden Millard Walker, who died March 30, 2025, at 70, Natural/Medical; Joshua Jean Hanks, who died December 3, 2024, at 36, Unknown/Pending; Larry Jones, who died November 1, 2024, at 76, Natural/Medical; and Timothy Crumbley, who died October 5, 2024, at 65, with the registry listing the cause as Accident. Benjamin August Harter died September 14, 2024, at 85, Unknown/Pending; Keithal Landon Greatheart died June 19, 2024, at 63, Natural/Medical; Richard Kevin Meadows died January 24, 2024, at 63, Natural/Medical; and Lakeith Shunta Bonner died the same day, January 24, 2024, at 40, Unknown/Pending. James Joseph Marino died November 4, 2023, at 40, Unknown/Pending; Roy Edward Harrell died October 20, 2023, at 75, Natural/Medical; Bobby C Gayton died January 29, 2023, at 81, Natural/Medical; Charlie B Bowen died December 27, 2022, at 78, Natural/Medical; Farrell Todd Collins died November 13, 2022, at 43, Natural/Medical; and Rebecca Lynn Harkins died November 8, 2022, at 56, Natural/Medical.

The pattern in the ages is worth stating plainly: this is a reentry facility, and the men dying in it include people in their thirties and forties alongside men in their seventies and eighties. A 36-year-old and an 85-year-old are both on the same list.

Silas Westbrook: A Death That Began 150 Miles Away

One death at Metro Reentry belongs to a larger event at another facility, and the location has to be kept straight. On January 11, 2026, a gang-related disturbance at Washington State Prison killed three men at the scene — Teddy Dewayne Jackson, 27; Ahmod Dewayne Hatcher, 23; and Jimmy Lee Trammell, 42, who was days from release. A fourth person, Dajhmere Ladaveon Hall, 30, had been found dead at Washington State Prison two days earlier, on January 9, with cause held Unknown/Pending. Washington State Prison was placed on lockdown after the brawl and, per GPS's records, never reopened over the following five-plus months. On April 28, 2026, twelve incarcerated people were charged with felony murder, aggravated assault, and gang participation in connection with the disturbance.

Silas Westbrook, 42, was injured in that January 11 riot at Washington State Prison. According to GDC statements, he was transferred to Metro Reentry Facility in DeKalb County after being hospitalized with minor injuries from the disturbance, suffered a medical emergency upon arrival, and was pronounced deceased on January 17, 2026. GDC's Office of Professional Standards opened an investigation into his death, and his body was turned over to the county coroner and then to the GBI crime lab to determine the official cause of death. GPS's registry records Westbrook's death as part of the same five-deaths week — January 9 through January 17 — that runs from Hall's death through the three riot deaths to Westbrook's.

The Westbrook case is the clearest illustration of why facility-level death counts in Georgia cannot be read in isolation. A man injured at one prison died at another, and the official cause of his death is still pending at the state crime lab.

Heat, Water, and Food: What GPS Has Received From Inside

GPS has received recurring accounts from incarcerated people at Metro Reentry Facility describing the absence of air conditioning and the failure to provide ice as expected during hot periods. Multiple accounts describe drinking water at the facility as hot, and as carrying a strong chlorine taste; several report that drinking the hot water causes cramps and diarrhea. Accounts also describe food at the facility as poor enough to induce nausea. Separately, GPS has received reports that some incarcerated people at the facility are able to obtain ice and then hoard and sell it to others — an internal contraband economy forming around a basic heat-mitigation supply.

These accounts sit against a systemwide pattern GPS has documented. GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food as of 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. The state spends approximately 14 times more on medical care for incarcerated people ($432 million) than on their food. On May 16, 2026, The Marshall Project independently reported 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.

GPS has also 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 obscured 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 Systemwide Conditions That Reach This Facility

Metro Reentry does not sit outside the structural crisis GPS has documented across GDC. 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'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.

Staffing is the other half. Officer vacancies in Georgia's prisons have run between 49.3 percent and 60 percent systemwide for multiple years, against a national standard of no more than 10 percent. The hiring pipeline cannot close the gap — acceptance rate under 15 percent, with 82.7 percent of new hires leaving in their first year — and 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." Former GDC assistant warden Russell Zirkle has said on the record that Georgia prisons were running officer vacancy rates of 70 to 80 percent, an account GPS documented in its reporting on the state's staffing crisis. 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.

Sexual violence is systemic across GDC as well. 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 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.

Programming and the Reentry Promise

The programming at Metro Reentry is the point of the facility, and it is also the part of the record that is hardest to verify from outside. GDC's Standard Operating Procedures describe the framework the facility operates within: SOP 108.08 governs Career Technical Education, providing job skills and training for institutional work assignments and post-release employment, with eligibility tied to disciplinary record and GED requirements; SOP 108.04 governs High School Equivalency testing centers; SOP 503.01 establishes faith and character-based initiatives in designated dormitories and facilities; SOP 106.11 covers religious accommodations; and SOP 107.03 sets staff development requirements for counselors and multi-functional correctional officers delivering cognitive-behavioral programs. SOP 407.02 governs commissary and offender store accounts.

What those policies do not establish is what is actually delivered at Metro Reentry on a given week, or whether the men held there receive the vocational hours, the cognitive-behavioral programming, or the family-reunification support the facility's mission describes. GPS has received accounts from inside the facility describing basic habitability failures — heat, water, food — that would be in tension with any intensive programming schedule. The gap between the reentry mission on paper and the conditions described by the people living inside it is the analytical question this page leaves open.

Sources

This analysis draws on GPS's facility record and mortality registry for Metro Reentry Facility; GDC public statements and Office of Professional Standards records concerning the death of Silas Westbrook; GDC Standard Operating Procedures on career technical education, special education, high school equivalency testing, faith and character-based initiatives, religious accommodations, staff development, and commissary accounts; the October 2024 U.S. Department of Justice findings letter on Georgia prisons; the 2024 Guidehouse assessment; reporting by The Marshall Project on Georgia prison food conditions; on-record statements from former GDC assistant warden Russell Zirkle and former GDC sergeant Tyler Ryals; and inmate and family accounts collected by GPS staff.