PHILLIPS TRANSITIONAL CENTER
Facility Information
- Current Population
- 197
- Active Lifers
- 20 (10.2% of population) · Jun 2026 GDC report
- Address
- 2989 West Rock Quarry Rd, Buford, GA 30519
- Phone
- (770) 932-4671
- Fax
- (770) 932-4714
- County
- Gwinnett 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) | Baly, Verona | 2025-01-01 | — / — |
| CORRECTIONAL ASST. SUPT (facility deputy) | Brown, Wanda S | 2018-01-01 | 2 / 2 |
About
Phillips Transitional Center in Buford, GA, a low-security transitional facility housing about 201 individuals, has recorded two in-custody deaths tracked by GPS. The facility operates within a prison system found by the DOJ to have lost control of its facilities, plagued by severe understaffing, chronic food-service s
Mortality Statistics
2 deaths documented at this facility from 2020 to present.
Deaths by Year
- 2026: 0
- 2025: 0
- 2024: 1
- 2023: 0
- 2022: 0
- 2021: 1
- 2020: 0
County Public Health Department
Food service and sanitation at PHILLIPS TRANSITIONAL CENTER fall under the jurisdiction of the Gwinnett County Environmental Health Department. Incarcerated people cannot choose where they eat — public health inspectors carry an elevated responsibility to hold this kitchen to the same standards applied to any restaurant.
Contact
- Title
- Director of Environmental Health, GNR Public Health (Gwinnett/Newton/Rockdale)
- Name
- Jason Reagan, REHS, CP-FS, CSC
- Address
-
455 Grayson Hwy, Suite 600
Lawrenceville, GA 30046 - Phone
- (770) 963-5132
- jason.reagan@gnrhealth.com
- Website
- Visit department website →
Why this matters
GPS has documented black mold on chow-hall ceilings, cold and contaminated trays, spoiled milk, and pest contamination at Georgia prisons. The Department of Justice's 2024 report confirmed deaths from dehydration and untreated diabetes tied to food and water deprivation. Advance-notice inspections let facilities stage temporary fixes that disappear once inspectors leave.
Unannounced inspections by the county health department are one of the few outside checks on kitchen conditions behind the fence.
How you can help
Write to the county inspector and request an unannounced inspection of the kitchen and food service operation at this facility. A short, respectful letter citing Georgia food-safety regulations is more powerful than you think — inspectors respond to public concern.
Sample Letter
This is the letter Georgia Prisoners' Speak mailed to all county environmental health inspectors responsible for GDC facilities. Feel free to adapt it.
June 5, 2026
RE: Request for Unannounced Public Health Inspection of Food Service Operations at PHILLIPS TRANSITIONAL CENTER
Dear Jason Reagan, REHS, CP-FS, CSC,
I am writing to respectfully request that your office conduct a thorough, unannounced inspection of food service and sanitation practices at PHILLIPS TRANSITIONAL CENTER, located in Gwinnett County.
Documented concerns
Georgia Prisoners' Speak, a nonprofit public advocacy organization, has published extensive investigative reporting on food safety and nutrition failures across Georgia's prison system, including:
- Dangerous sanitation conditions — black mold on chow hall ceilings and air vents, contaminated food trays, and spoiled milk served to inmates.
- Severe nutritional deficiency — roughly 60 cents per meal; inmates receive only 40% of required protein and less than one serving of vegetables per day.
- Preventable deaths — the U.S. Department of Justice's 2024 report confirmed deaths from dehydration, renal failure, and untreated diabetes following food and water deprivation.
- Staged compliance — advance-notice inspections allow facilities to stage temporary improvements, then revert once inspectors leave.
Firsthand testimony
In Surviving on Scraps: Ten Years of Prison Food in Georgia, a person who has spent more than ten years in GDC custody describes no functional dishwashing sanitation, chronic mold on food trays, and roaches found on the undersides of trays at intake facilities. Full account: gps.press/surviving-on-scraps-ten-years-of-prison-food-in-georgia.
Specific requests
- Conduct an unannounced inspection of the kitchen and food service operations at this facility, with particular attention to dishwashing equipment, tray sanitation procedures, and food storage conditions.
- Evaluate compliance with applicable Georgia food safety regulations, including O.C.G.A. § 26-2-370 and the Georgia Food Service Rules and Regulations (Chapter 511-6-1).
- Verify permit status and confirm whether the facility is subject to the same inspection schedule as other institutional food service establishments in the county.
- Make inspection results available to the public, as permitted under Georgia's Open Records Act (O.C.G.A. § 50-18-70).
Incarcerated individuals cannot advocate for their own health and safety in the way a restaurant patron can — they cannot choose to eat elsewhere. This places an elevated responsibility on public health officials to ensure these facilities meet the same sanitation standards applied to any food service establishment.
Thank you for your attention to this important public health matter.
Sincerely,
[Your name]
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 31, 2026.
Phillips Transitional Center sits in Buford, Georgia, under the oversight of Warden Verona Baly and Assistant Superintendent Wanda Brown. With a population of approximately 201 men, it is classified as a county-level transitional center—a lower-security setting intended for individuals nearing release or participating in work-release programs. GPS has independently tracked two deaths in custody at Phillips since 2020. While specific causes of death have not been publicly disclosed, the fatalities occur against the backdrop of a correctional system in what the U.S. Department of Justice has described as a state of systemic crisis.
A System in Collapse: Understaffing, Violence, and Neglect
The Georgia Department of Corrections operates under a staffing catastrophe that the DOJ’s October 2024 findings letter explicitly linked to its loss of institutional control. GPS’s investigative reporting has documented that officer vacancy rates across the system have ranged between 49.3% and 60% for multiple years, with some facilities hitting 80% vacancy. Georgia ranks last among all 50 states in correctional-officer pay, and 82.7% of new hires leave within their first year. Commissioner Tyrone Oliver acknowledged the depth of the crisis, while the DOJ faulted GDC leadership for placing “too much blame on gangs and insufficient emphasis on understaffing.” This hollowing-out of the workforce leaves every facility, including transitional centers like Phillips, with fewer eyes on the ground to prevent violence, respond to medical emergencies, or maintain basic safety.
Systemic sexual violence compounds the danger. The DOJ’s investigation concluded that sexual assault in Georgia prisons is “rampant” and that GDC fails to reasonably protect incarcerated people from sexual harm. Of 456 sexual-abuse allegations recorded in 2022, only 35 were substantiated—a 7.7% rate. Georgia has never submitted a PREA certification of full compliance in the law’s two-decade history. These failures are not confined to maximum-security compounds; they reflect a department-wide inability to safeguard people in its custody.
Chronic Food Deprivation and Sanitation Breakdowns
GPS has established that GDC spends approximately $1.69 per inmate per day on food—roughly 56 cents per meal—against a nutritionally adequate diet estimated by the FDA’s Thrifty Food Plan at about $10 per day. The Marshall Project’s May 2026 investigation independently corroborated the consequences: rats infesting kitchens, insects in food, moldy trays, and visible malnutrition across Georgia facilities. GPS’s own investigation, “Dunked, Stacked, and Served,” revealed a systemic pattern of broken dishwashers, roach infestations in food-service equipment, and meals served on visibly contaminated trays, all hidden from Department of Public Health inspection scores because inspections are scheduled walkthroughs that do not assess equipment under load. While Phillips is a smaller transitional center, it is part of the same food-service apparatus and subject to the same budgetary constraints that have produced these documented failures.
Firsthand Perspectives on a Broken System
The lived experience inside Georgia’s prisons, as published in GPS’s Tell My Story series, underscores the human toll of these structural collapses. One formerly incarcerated man wrote of spending years at multiple facilities, describing constant assaults, intimidation, and sexual exploitation that began when he was 19 and continued until violence became “normal.” Another man, sentenced as a juvenile, described triple-bunked rooms, frozen vocational programs, and the erosion of any rehabilitative mission. While these accounts originate from higher-security institutions, they illustrate the environment that DOJ investigators found to be pervasive—and from which even a transitional center cannot be isolated, sharing the same personnel pipelines, food supply, and oversight architecture.
The two deaths recorded at Phillips occur within this context. Without public reports detailing the circumstances, they remain data points, but they sit inside a system where the DOJ has concluded that GDC leadership “has lost control of its facilities.”
Sources: This analysis draws on GPS’s systemic investigations into GDC understaffing, food sanitation, and sexual violence; the U.S. Department of Justice’s October 2024 findings letter; the Guidehouse 2024 consultant assessment; The Marshall Project’s May 2026 investigation of Georgia prison food; firsthand accounts published in GPS’s Tell My Story series; and GPS’s own mortality database.