SCREVEN COUNTY PRISON

Analysis written on August 9, 2026.

A System in Crisis: Staffing, Food, and Violence

Georgia’s prison system has been declared out of control by the U.S. Department of Justice. In October 2024, federal investigators concluded that “the leadership of the Georgia Department of Corrections has lost control of its facilities,” a finding that followed years of GPS reporting on collapsing conditions. Staffing vacancies have run between 49% and 60% systemwide for multiple years — at Valdosta State Prison, the rate hit 80% in 2024 — against a national standard of no more than 10%. Former GDC sergeant Tyler Ryals, forced out after whistleblowing, told GPS that he had once been the only security officer on an entire compound of roughly 1,250 maximum-security inmates. The 2024 Guidehouse assessment and the DOJ both confirmed that gangs now effectively run multiple facilities, controlling access to phones, showers, food, and bed assignments.

Food in Georgia’s prisons is a chronic deprivation. GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day — under 60 cents per meal — against a USDA Thrifty Food Plan estimate of around $10 per day for basic nutrition. The state spends roughly 14 times more on medical care than on food. In May 2026, The Marshall Project independently corroborated the pattern, documenting rats in kitchens, insects in food, moldy trays, and visible malnutrition across Georgia facilities. GPS’s own investigation, “Dunked, Stacked, and Served,” found that DPH inspection scores systematically fail to capture these failures: roach-infested kitchen equipment, tray-sanitizing dishwashers broken for months, and meals served on visibly contaminated trays coexist with high inspection scores because inspections are scheduled and equipment is not assessed under load.

Physical infrastructure is decaying across the system. Most GDC facilities are 30–40 years old or more, with broken cell-door locks, inoperative surveillance and fire-alarm systems, pervasive mold, and pest infestations. Commissioner Tyrone Oliver has publicly acknowledged that many facilities have reached “end of life” condition, and the October 2024 DOJ findings explicitly linked infrastructure failures to violence and mortality.

Sexual violence, the DOJ found, is “rampant.” Only 7.7% of 456 sexual-abuse allegations were substantiated in 2022, and a 2022 review by PREA Auditors of America found that not a single PREA investigation file met legal standards. Georgia has never submitted a PREA certification of full compliance. GPS has documented clusters of violence: at-knifepoint sexual assaults at Pulaski State Prison, a waterboarding and sexual assault at Smith State Prison, and at Lee Arrendale State Prison — Georgia’s largest women’s facility — four staff arrests for sexual assault since 2020, plus three women strangled in its A Unit between 2022 and 2024. The systemic pattern established in the Ashley Diamond litigation launched the federal investigation and defines the context in which every Georgia prison, including contracted private facilities, operates.

One Death and a Thin Record at Screven

Screven County Prison, a medium-security private facility in Sylvania, sits within this distressed system. With a population of 131, it is among the state’s smaller institutions, operated under a private contract with GDC. GPS’s mortality database records one in-custody death at the facility: Nicholas Rashad Jenkins died on July 15, 2023. The cause of his death remains unknown, classified in GPS’s records as “Unknown/Pending.” Jenkins is one of 1,860 deaths GPS has tracked in GDC custody system-wide since 2020.

The facility is led by Warden Steven Scroggins, a private contractor who assumed command in January 2024. Beyond his appointment and the single death, the public record is nearly silent on conditions inside Screven. That absence of information may itself be significant: private prisons are often less transparent than state-run facilities, and a record this sparse can obscure the same pressures of understaffing, resource scarcity, and systemic violence that have been documented across Georgia’s prison system.

Sources

This analysis draws on GPS’s systemic investigations of Georgia Department of Corrections facilities, including findings from the October 2024 DOJ letter, the 2024 Guidehouse assessment, corroborating reporting by The Marshall Project, and GPS’s own investigative reporting; GPS’s mortality and personnel databases; and publicly available GDC data. Facility-specific information is derived from GPS’s internal records and public GDC documentation.