PHILLIPS TRANSITIONAL CENTER

Last updated August 23, 2026.(DS)

A Close-Security Transitional Center in Gwinnett County

Phillips Transitional Center sits in Buford, Gwinnett County, operating as a close-security facility serving a male population of 201. The facility is led by Superintendent Verona Baly, with Wanda Brown serving as Correctional Assistant Superintendent and Deputy Warden — a position she has held since 2018. The leadership roster also includes Deputy Warden of Security Preston Crowder and Chief of Security Bunny Jurnigan. As a transitional center at Phillips State Prison, the facility sits within a system GPS has documented as struggling with cascading structural failures — from staffing collapse to infrastructure decay — that shape conditions at every GDC site, including this one.

Two Deaths in Custody

GPS's mortality database records two deaths at Phillips Transitional Center since tracking began in January 2020. Anthony Lamar Johnson died in custody at the facility on October 10, 2021. More than three years later, Wayne A. Lockett died on December 23, 2024. GPS's records classify one of the two deaths as natural or medical in cause; the other remains unknown or pending. These figures are a floor, not a ceiling — GDC reports deaths approximately two months late, meaning recent fatalities may not yet appear in the count.

The two deaths at Phillips sit within a system-wide mortality crisis. GPS has independently tracked 1,887 deaths in GDC custody since 2020, with 333 recorded in 2024 alone — the highest annual total in the tracking period. Homicides account for 260 of those deaths system-wide, suicides 119, and overdoses 54. Nine deaths have been categorized as medical neglect and one as deliberate indifference. Against that backdrop, the two deaths at Phillips — one medical, one unresolved — represent a facility-level data point in a pattern GPS has documented across the entire system.

Staffing Collapse and the Loss of Institutional Control

The October 2024 Department of Justice findings letter concluded that "the leadership of the Georgia Department of Corrections has lost control of its facilities," faulting GDC for placing "too much blame on gangs and insufficient emphasis on understaffing." GPS's reporting documents officer vacancy rates running 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 DOJ and the Guidehouse 2024 consultant assessment independently concluded that gangs effectively run multiple facilities, controlling access to phones, showers, food, and bed assignments. Approximately 31% of the system's roughly 49,000 incarcerated people are validated members of 315 different security threat groups — more than double the national average. GPS treats staffing collapse and gang assumption of facility control as an integrated structural finding that explains the per-facility violence, classification, mortality, and infrastructure-failure narratives documented across the system.

Infrastructure Decay 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. A 2012 audit at Hays State Prison found approximately 42% of cell-door locks non-functional, a finding the Guidehouse 2024 assessment confirmed. GPS has documented broken cell-door locks, inoperative surveillance and fire-alarm systems, mold and water failures, broken kitchen sanitization equipment, and pest infestations across the system. The DOJ's October 2024 findings, the Guidehouse 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.

Food Service Failures Hidden From Inspection Scores

GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food, with a 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. The Marshall Project independently corroborated the pattern in May 2026, reporting rats in kitchens, insects in food, moldy trays, and visible malnutrition across Georgia facilities.

GPS has documented a systemic pattern of food-service sanitation failure across GDC kitchens that Department of Public Health inspection scores systematically fail to capture. Tray-sanitizing dishwashers have been broken for sustained periods; inmate-maintenance worker accounts collected at Dooly State Prison describe thousands of roaches inside kitchen equipment. Sustained roach and rodent infestation in kitchen and serving areas, and meals served on visibly contaminated trays, have been corroborated by a Coastal State Prison resident's account and by The Marshall Project's investigation. The pattern is hidden from DPH scores because inspections are scheduled walkthroughs that do not assess equipment under load, and because GPS has documented professional overlap between inspectors and facility staff in small-county settings. 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."

Sexual Violence as a Systemic Failure

The October 2024 DOJ findings letter concluded that sexual assault is "rampant" in Georgia Department of Corrections facilities 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%. 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.

Specific clusters documented across the system include at-knifepoint sexual assaults at Pulaski State Prison, the 2020 Smith State Prison case in which an incarcerated person was waterboarded and sexually assaulted by his cellmate, and at least four staff arrests for sexual assault since 2020 at Lee Arrendale State Prison, Georgia's largest women's facility. GPS has also documented three women strangled in Lee Arrendale's A Unit between 2022 and 2024 — a figure exceeding the entire BJS-recorded national women-in-state-prison homicide total across 2001–2019. The Ashley Diamond litigation established the constitutional baseline and launched the DOJ investigation. GPS treats this pattern as systemic — the analytical center of any GDC violence or staff-misconduct narrative, not as facility-isolated incidents.

Sources

This analysis draws on GPS's own investigative reporting and mortality database, the October 2024 Department of Justice findings letter, the Guidehouse 2024 consultant assessment, and independent reporting by The Marshall Project. Facility leadership and staffing information comes from GPS's personnel records.