PULASKI STATE PRISON

Analysis written on May 31, 2026.

Deadly Medicine: The Doctor Who Left a Trail of Bodies

For a decade, Dr. Yvon Nazaire oversaw medical care at Pulaski State Prison. In that time, according to an investigation by Georgia Prisoners' Speak (GPS), at least 22 women died under his watch. The doctor came to Georgia with a documented history of malpractice deaths in New York—a record the state knew about when it hired him. Despite that, and despite mounting evidence that he denied women critical care, the state praised Nazaire for cost-cutting and later gave him a raise. The scale of the neglect eventually drew national attention, but two cases in particular illustrate its human toll.

Mollianne Fischer was left in a vegetative state in May 2014 after she failed to receive adequate medical attention at Pulaski. Bonnie Rocheleau, who had long suffered from COPD, developed pneumonia and died in March 2015 because she, too, was denied appropriate treatment. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution detailed both cases in January 2025, drawing on court records that confirmed the lapses. These deaths were not isolated; they were the predictable outcome of a medical system that, as GPS’s reporting shows, prioritized savings over survival.

Sexual Violence and the Abandonment of Safeguards

When the U.S. Department of Justice released its civil rights findings on Georgia’s prison system in October 2024, it concluded that sexual assault is “rampant” and that the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) does not reasonably protect incarcerated people, including LGBTI individuals, from sexual harm. The DOJ specifically cited at-knifepoint sexual assaults at Pulaski State Prison. The systemic failure is underscored by GDC’s own numbers: of 456 sexual-abuse allegations recorded systemwide in 2022, only 35 were substantiated (7.7%), and a 2022 audit by PREA Auditors of America found that not one of 388 reviewed investigation files met the law’s standards. Georgia has never submitted a PREA certification of full compliance in the law’s two-decade history.

The problems reached into the facility’s leadership. On February 24 and 25, 2024, Deputy Warden Alonzo L. McMillian allegedly engaged in improper sexual contact with a prisoner and had an ongoing “sexual relationship” with her, arrest warrants state. McMillian and another supervisor, Clark, were arrested on May 2, 2024, and the GDC terminated both the same day. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted that their arrests came as the prison system faced the DOJ’s widening investigation, and suggested the misconduct could signal a larger systemic breakdown.

Staffing Collapse and the Erosion of Custodial Control

Pulaski’s security apparatus has effectively collapsed under the weight of chronic understaffing. GPS’s systemic analysis, corroborated by the DOJ and a 2024 consultant assessment, documents officer vacancy rates running between 49% and 60% systemwide for years—higher in many facilities. At Valdosta State Prison, the rate hit 80% by April 2024. The consequences at Pulaski are stark.

In July 2023, eleven incarcerated women used broomsticks, a crowbar, shanks, and locks to destroy property in a building disturbance; only nine security staff responded, using chemical spray to quell the incident. In a separate case, a prisoner was stabbed and assaulted by ten people hours before staff noticed—and only after an outsider called to report it. GPS has received reports of a severe assault at the facility where a prior warning call went unaddressed. Family members have described gang members using violence to extort incarcerated women and their relatives.

A firsthand account published in GPS’s Tell My Story series captures the daily reality. An incarcerated woman who was at Pulaski from 2023 through July 2025 wrote:

“The security bubble was empty. There were no officers stationed in the dorms. We went for hours with no supervision. When something happened—a medical emergency, a fight, someone overdosing on K2—other inmates had to call their families and have them call the facility to send help. That’s how we got help. We called our mothers.”

Fights sometimes lasted more than thirty minutes, leaving blood and urine on the floor, and victims often avoided seeking medical care. Afterwards, the entire dorm faced mass punishment—commissary privileges revoked, lockdowns imposed—while the actual combatants often suffered no consequence. Block movement to medical, dental, education, and mental health appointments was routinely cancelled; on multiple documented days in May 2024, no officer came to let anyone out. When movement did happen, people were forced to sit outdoors for hours in extreme weather with no bathroom access and, as the author put it, “for how ever long before an officer came to let us back in.”

Food Safety in Freefall: A Failing Inspection and Chronic Neglect

The nutritional environment at Pulaski mirrors the broader failures: GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food, versus the FDA Thrifty Food Plan estimate of roughly $10 for an adequate diet. At that funding level, the system runs on roughly 60 cents per meal, and the consequences show up in kitchen sanitation scores.

On January 29, 2026, a routine DPH inspection gave Pulaski’s kitchen a score of 67—an F. The inspector found a nonfunctional handwashing sink, sewage backups in the kitchen and food-service areas, and food waste stored in a manner that exposed it to pests. A follow-up on February 6 returned a score of 96, but the underlying conditions are persistent; prior inspections in 2025 yielded scores of 73 and 78 (C), following a 67 in August 2025. Only one routine inspection in the past two years reached an A (90 in October 2024), and that was before the sewage problems surfaced.

However, GPS’s broader investigation into GDC kitchens—titled “Dunked, Stacked, and Served”—has found that DPH scores systematically understate the reality. Inspections are scheduled walkthroughs that do not test equipment under load, and in some small-county settings, professional overlap between inspectors and facility staff obscures violations. At other GDC prisons, GPS has documented tray-sanitizing dishwashers broken for sustained periods, roach and rodent infestation inside kitchen equipment, and meals served on visibly contaminated trays. 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. For the 1,184 women at Pulaski, the combination of systemic underfunding and failed sanitation means a meal service that fails to meet even minimal safety standards, let alone nutritional adequacy.

Retaliation and Lockdowns Under New Leadership

Wendy Jackson was appointed warden of Pulaski State Prison on April 16, 2025. Within ten months, GPS reporting documented a pattern of retaliation, intimidation, extended lockdowns, and a non-functional grievance process under her leadership. Families began sounding the alarm, describing an “untested warden” and a crisis of unsafe conditions. Multiple incarcerated people and family members have reported that under Jackson, lockdowns have been prolonged, with cells’ water turned off, showers and clean clothing denied for extended periods, personal property—including security locks—confiscated, and phone access restricted to a single call over many days. The grievance system, one of the few avenues for redress, was effectively non-functional, leaving women without a mechanism to challenge the conditions.

The Tell My Story account echoes these complaints, noting that during lockdowns in 2024 and 2025, personal items were taken and “the entire dorm” was punished for the actions of a few. The warden’s own interactions with incarcerated people, according to witness accounts collected by GPS, have included verbal confrontations and what inmates describe as retaliatory housing placements for those who contact outside advocates or facility leadership.

A Facility Caught in a Broken System

Pulaski State Prison is not an outlier; it is a concentrated expression of the forces that the DOJ found unconstitutional, that the Guidehouse assessment described as beyond GDC’s control, and that GPS’s systemic reporting has mapped across the state. The facility was designed for 500 people; today it houses 1,184, nearly 2.4 times its original capacity. Officer postings remain critically short, and gang influence fills the vacuum. The physical plant itself, like most GDC facilities, is 30-plus years old, with documented patterns of broken cell-door locks, inoperative fire alarms, water failures, and pest infestation. These conditions amplify the violence, the sexual predation, and the medical neglect that have already taken 26 lives at Pulaski alone since GPS began tracking mortality—including Deneica Nichelle Randall, 28, who died in March 2026; Ronika Lashawn Carswell, 50, in December 2025; and Candace Lajon Morgan, 41, in June 2025. While the system-wide death toll since 2020 stands at 1,818, the patterns at this single medium-security women’s prison mirror the lethal dysfunction of the entire GDC.

Sources

This analysis draws on reporting by Georgia Prisoners’ Speak, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and The Marshall Project; the U.S. Department of Justice’s October 2024 civil rights findings; Georgia Department of Public Health food-safety inspection records; federal court filings; firsthand narratives from GPS’s Tell My Story series; and inmate and family accounts collected by GPS staff.