PATTEN PROBATION DETENTION CENTER
Facility Information
- Address
- 27 South 10th Street, Lakeland, GA 31635
- Phone
- (229) 482-8241
- Fax
- (229) 482-8385
- Mailing Address
- P.O. Box 278, Lakeland, GA 31635
- County
- Lanier County
- Operator
- GDC (Georgia Dept. of Corrections)
Leadership & Accountability (as of 2025 records)
Officials currently holding positional authority at this facility, with deaths attributed to GPS-tracked records during their leadership tenure. Inclusion reflects role-based accountability, not legal findings of personal culpability. Death counts shown as facility / career.
| Role | Name | Since | Deaths this facility / career |
|---|---|---|---|
| CORRECTIONAL SUPERINTENDENT (facility lead) | Bell, Jacob T | 2025-01-01 | — / — |
| CORRECTIONAL ASST. SUPT (facility deputy) | Brooken, Candice | 2023-01-01 | — / — |
About
Patten Probation Detention Center, a GDC-operated facility in Lakeland, Georgia, has recorded two in-custody deaths with unknown causes since 2020, amid systemic crises of understaffing, food deprivation, and infrastructure decay documented across Georgia’s prisons.
Mortality Statistics
2 deaths documented at this facility from 2020 to present.
Deaths by Year
- 2026: 0
- 2025: 0
- 2024: 0
- 2023: 0
- 2022: 1
- 2021: 0
- 2020: 1
Food Safety Inspections
No inspection records are on file with the Georgia Department of Public Health for this facility. GPS has filed an open records request asking where these records are maintained.
What the score doesn't measure. DPH grades kitchen compliance on inspection day — food storage, temperatures, pest control. It does not grade whether today's trays are clean. GPS reporting has found broken dishwashers at most Georgia state prisons we've documented; trays go out wet, stacked, and visibly moldy — including at facilities with recent scores near 100.
Who inspects. Most Georgia state prisons sit in rural counties — often with fewer than 20,000 people, several with fewer than 10,000. The environmental health inspector lives in that community and often knows the kitchen staff personally. Rural inspection regimes don't have the structural independence you'd expect in a city-sized health department. Read the scores accordingly.
Read the investigation: “Dunked, Stacked and Served: Why Georgia Prison Trays Are Making People Sick”
Analysis written on August 2, 2026.
Two Deaths, Unknown Causes
Patten Probation Detention Center, located in Lakeland, Lanier County, is operated by the Georgia Department of Corrections. The facility is led by Superintendent Jacob Bell, with Assistant Superintendent Candice Brooken and Chief of Security Niobie Clarkson. GPS’s mortality database records two deaths at Patten since its tracking began in 2020, both with causes listed as unknown or pending. Johnny Lee Dale died in custody on February 23, 2020; Robert Dewayne Coleman died on August 13, 2022. No further details about the circumstances of these deaths have been released by GDC, and the causes remain unclarified.
The lack of transparency surrounding in-custody deaths at Patten reflects a broader pattern GPS has documented across the state system. In “The Empty Column,” GPS reporting detailed how GDC, after briefly publishing causes of death in early 2025, abruptly removed that information from its monthly death lists, reverting to a policy that conceals how incarcerated people die. As a result, families, advocates, and the public are left without basic information about fatalities inside Georgia’s facilities. These two deaths at Patten sit within a system-wide toll that GPS has independently tallied at 1,859 since 2020, a figure that is almost certainly an undercount due to GDC’s reporting delays.
A System in Collapse
The deaths at Patten occurred against the backdrop of systemic failures that GPS has documented across the Georgia Department of Corrections. Officer vacancies have persisted between 49.3 and 60 percent systemwide for multiple years—far above the national standard of 10 percent—and Georgia ranks last among all states in correctional-officer pay. The hiring pipeline is broken: fewer than 15 percent of applicants are accepted, and 82.7 percent of new hires leave within their first year. The October 2024 U.S. Department of Justice findings letter explicitly concluded that GDC leadership “has lost control of its facilities” and that understaffing, rather than gang activity alone, is the primary driver of violence. Former GDC sergeant Tyler Ryals, forced out after whistleblowing, told GPS he was once the sole security officer responsible for an entire compound of roughly 1,250 maximum-security prisoners.
Food deprivation compounds the crisis. GPS has documented that GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food—under 60 cents per meal—versus the FDA’s Thrifty Food Plan estimate of roughly $10 per day for a nutritionally adequate diet. The state allocates about 14 times more to medical care for incarcerated people than to their food. The Marshall Project independently corroborated these findings in May 2026, reporting rats in kitchens, insects in food, moldy trays, and visible malnutrition across Georgia facilities. GPS’s own investigation, “Dunked, Stacked, and Served,” exposed systemic food-service sanitation failures, including broken tray-sanitizing dishwashers, roach and rodent infestations, and meals served on visibly contaminated trays—conditions that health inspection scores systematically fail to capture because inspections are scheduled walkthroughs that do not assess equipment under load.
Infrastructure decay has also reached crisis levels. Most GDC facilities are 30 to 40 years old, and GPS has found widespread deferred maintenance leading to broken cell-door locks, inoperative surveillance and fire-alarm systems, mold, water failures, and pest infestations. The DOJ’s 2024 findings and a 2024 consultant assessment both confirmed that infrastructure collapse accelerates violence and gang control, with the DOJ noting that gangs effectively run multiple facilities, controlling access to phones, showers, food, and bed assignments. Sexual violence is endemic: the DOJ found that assault is “rampant” and that GDC fails to protect incarcerated people. Of 456 sexual-abuse allegations recorded in 2022, only 35 were substantiated. The state has never submitted a PREA certification of full compliance in the law’s two-decade history.
Patten Probation Detention Center, as part of this same system, is not insulated from these structural failures. While no specific incident reports have surfaced from Patten, the facility operates under the same staffing shortages, funding constraints, and oversight gaps that have produced lethal conditions elsewhere. The two deaths with unknown causes recorded here must be understood within that larger pattern of neglect and opacity.
Sources
This analysis draws on GPS’s mortality database, GPS editorial systemic findings, GPS investigative reporting (including “The Empty Column” and “Dunked, Stacked, and Served”), and GDC facility records.