PAULDING PROBATION DETENTION CENTER
Facility Information
- Address
- 1295 Industrial Blvd N, Dallas, GA 30132
- Phone
- (770) 443-7807
- Fax
- (770) 443-7876
- County
- Paulding 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) | Barnes, Ronald Steve | 2022-01-01 | — / — |
| CORRECTIONAL ASST. SUPT (facility deputy) | Hines, Darian RAY | 2022-01-01 | — / — |
About
GPS has identified no specific incidents or claims tied to Paulding Probation Detention Center, but the facility operates within a correctional system that Georgia Prisoners' Speak (GPS) and the U.S. Department of Justice have documented as suffering from systemic understaffing, violence, and infrastructure failure.
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 May 29, 2026.
Limited Direct Documentation
The Paulding Probation Detention Center is a small detention center located at Hays State Prison, operated by the Georgia Department of Corrections. GPS's mortality tracking database records zero deaths at this facility, and no public news reports, lawsuits, or inspection findings specific to Paulding PDC have surfaced in GPS's intelligence system. The center’s internal leadership is identified as Ronald Barnes (warden), with Darian Hines (assistant superintendent) and Eric Johnson (chief of security). While this absence of incident-level documentation may reflect the facility’s size and low-security role, it leaves open the question of whether systemic deficiencies documented across the GDC affect conditions there.
A System in Crisis: The Context GPS Has Uncovered
GPS’s broader investigations — corroborated by the U.S. Department of Justice’s October 2024 findings letter and a 2024 consultant assessment by Guidehouse — describe a state prison system in systemic collapse. Staffing vacancies have run between 49.3% and 60% for multiple years, with some facilities exceeding 80%. The hiring pipeline cannot close the gap: over 82% of new officers leave within their first year, and Georgia ranks last nationally in correctional-officer pay. The DOJ found that “the leadership of the Georgia Department of Corrections has lost control of its facilities,” pointing to understaffing as a root cause rather than simply gang activity.
Infrastructure deterioration compounds the crisis. GPS reporting notes that most GDC facilities are 30–40+ years old, with broken cell-door locks, inoperative surveillance systems, mold, and kitchen sanitation failures now documented across the system. The DOJ and Guidehouse assessments confirm that these failures enable violence and gang control in housing units, and GPS’s own investigation “Dunked, Stacked, and Served” has traced how health inspection scores often fail to capture the true extent of food-service contamination and equipment breakdown. In Georgia, the state spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food — roughly 60 cents per meal — a figure the FDA’s Thrifty Food Plan suggests is less than one-sixth of a nutritionally adequate diet.
Sexual violence is pervasive. The DOJ letter concluded that sexual assault is “rampant” in GDC facilities, and the state has never submitted a PREA certification of full compliance to federal authorities. GPS’s own documentation of systemic sexual violence — including at facilities like Pulaski and Lee Arrendale State Prisons — underscores the fact that these are not isolated incidents but an artifact of understaffing and broken oversight.
While none of these systemic findings have been directly observed at Paulding PDC, the facility exists squarely within this institutional landscape. The absence of incident reports does not confirm acceptable conditions; it may instead reflect the same data scarcity that GPS’s investigation has mapped across lower-profiled detention units. Continued monitoring and source collection will be necessary to determine whether Paulding PDC is affected by the same systemic pressures.
Sources
This analysis draws on Georgia Prisoners’ Speak editorial investigations, including "The Classification Crisis" (Nov. 2025), "Dunked, Stacked, and Served," and coverage of the DOJ’s October 2024 findings; the Guidehouse 2024 assessment; and corroboration from The Marshall Project’s May 2026 reporting on food and sanitation. Facility personnel data and mortality records are from GPS’s internal databases. No inmate or family witness accounts specific to Paulding PDC have been received.