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SMITH STATE PRISON

State Prison Close Security GDC (Georgia Dept. of Corrections) Male
45 Source Articles 3 Events

Facility Information

Original Design Capacity
750 (at 148% capacity)
Bed Capacity
1,526 beds
Current Population
1,112
Active Lifers
286 (25.7% of population) · Jun 2026 GDC report
Life Without Parole
195 (17.5%)
Why design capacity matters: Adding beds to a prison does not increase medical facilities, educational programs, kitchen capacity, counseling services, or recreation areas. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Plata that severe overcrowding beyond design capacity violates the 8th Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
Read: Brown v. Plata - A Legal Roadmap for Georgia's Prison Crisis →
Address
9676 Hwy 301 North, Glennville, GA 30427
Phone
(912) 654-5000
Fax
(912) 654-5305
Mailing Address
P.O. Box 726, Glennville, GA 30427
County
Tattnall County
Opened
1993
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.

RoleNameSinceDeaths
this facility / career
Warden (facility lead) Mims, Charles Michael2025-01-013 / 35
DEPUTY WARDEN (facility deputy) Warren, Willesha2022-01-0125 / 25
DEPUTY WARDEN (facility deputy) Carver, Keenan2024-01-019 / 9
DEPUTY WARDEN (facility deputy) Kennedy, Ashley L2024-01-019 / 9
DEPUTY WARDEN (facility deputy) Foulks, Rodney2024-01-017 / 7

About

Smith State Prison, a close-security men’s facility in Glennville, Georgia, has recorded 37 deaths since 2020 amid chronic understaffing, rampant violence, and a corruption scandal that led to the RICO indictment of its warden. A 2024 shooting of an Aramark employee by an inmate with a smuggled gun underscored the secu

Mortality Statistics

39 deaths documented at this facility from 2020 to present.

Deaths by Year

  • 2026: 4
  • 2025: 1
  • 2024: 6
  • 2023: 11
  • 2022: 5
  • 2021: 7
  • 2020: 5

View all deaths at this facility →

County Public Health Department

Food service and sanitation at SMITH STATE PRISON fall under the jurisdiction of the Tattnall 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
EH Specialist
Name
Lance Dasher
Address
P.O. Box 353
Glennville, GA 30427
Phone
(855) 473-4374
Email
Lance.Dasher@dph.ga.gov
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.

Email the Inspector

Food Safety Inspections

Georgia Department of Public Health

Latest score: 72 (Feb 16, 2026)
View DPH report ↗

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”

Recent inspections

DateScorePurpose
Feb 16, 202672Routine
Jun 27, 202585Routine
Jan 19, 202482Routine
Jun 29, 202384Routine

Source: Georgia Department of Public Health — data last refreshed April 24, 2026. Search all Georgia inspections ↗

Analysis written on June 21, 2026.

Donald B. Smith State Prison in Glennville is a close-security prison for men that opened in 1993 and holds some of Georgia’s highest-custody prisoners. It houses 1,112 men—72.9% of its 1,526-bed rated capacity but far more than its original 750-bed design—and has become a symbol of the Georgia Department of Corrections’ deepest crises. GPS’s independent mortality tracking records 37 deaths at Smith since 2020, part of a statewide toll that has now reached 1,819 in-custody deaths over the same period. The facility’s story is one of extreme violence, a warden indicted under the state’s RICO Act, the on-site gun murder of a kitchen worker, and a cascading collapse of staffing and safety that mirrors systemic failures across Georgia’s prisons.

The Saint Laurent Squad: A Warden’s RICO Indictment and the Contraband Empire

On May 12, 2026, a Tattnall County grand jury indicted former Smith State Prison Warden Brian Adams on six felony counts: violation of Georgia’s RICO Act, making false statements, tampering with evidence, and two counts of violating his oath as a public officer. The case, brought by the Georgia Attorney General’s Office after 39 months, accused Adams of accepting U.S. currency through a pattern of racketeering activity associated with the “Saint Laurent Squad,” a sprawling contraband operation allegedly run from inside the prison by inmate Nathan Weekes. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Weekes and his associates were charged with three murders related to the scheme, including the mistaken-identity killing of 88-year-old Bobby Kicklighter, who was shot to death in his bed in Glennville in 2021—a hit intended for a correctional officer cracking down on contraband.

Adams was arrested in February 2023 and dismissed, yet The Georgia Virtue reported that he remained as warden for some eighteen months after GDC learned of at least two murders allegedly orchestrated from behind Smith’s walls. GBI agents alleged that Adams gave false statements in an April 2022 interview, denying he had been solicited or bribed by an inmate in the prior decade. A civil lawsuit filed in Tattnall County State Court in May 2026 also named Adams and former Corrections Officer Ireon Moore, alleging they allowed contraband—cell phones, narcotics, weapons, designer clothing, and tobacco—to flood the facility and facilitated a criminal conspiracy to kill a non-complicit officer. The suit claimed financial arrangements were carried out through text messages and that Moore was paid to participate.

GPS’s intelligence system recorded a surge in staff-misconduct allegations in the year leading up to June 2026: eight reports naming specific individuals, seven of them concentrated in May 2026—the same month the grand jury returned its indictment. GPS’s own reporting, including the investigative piece “The Game They Learned,” has traced how a closed promotion pipeline produced all 43 of Georgia’s current state wardens from within GDC’s own ranks, insulating figures like Adams from outside scrutiny. The AJC’s broader investigation documented that more than 425 GDC employees had been arrested for on-the-job crimes since 2018, with many escaping prison time—making Smith’s warden emblematic of a department-wide pattern.

A Gun in the Kitchen: The 2024 Murder of Aureon Grace

On June 16, 2024, at 4:30 a.m., inmate Jaydrekus Hart obtained a loaded handgun inside Smith State Prison and shot 24-year-old Aramark food service employee Aureon Shavea Grace to death in the prison kitchen; Hart then turned the gun on himself. Georgia Public Broadcasting reported that investigators later alleged someone had used a drone to smuggle the firearm into the facility. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution detailed that prison staff had been repeatedly warned by inmates that a gun was on the premises, yet no lockdown was initiated and no extensive search conducted. There were no guards in the area where Grace was shot. The AJC also reported that Hart was not authorized to be in the kitchen at that hour but was allegedly favored by staff and permitted to violate rules with impunity.

Deshonda Hagins, Grace’s mother, filed a lawsuit in Fulton County State Court against GDC in July 2025, alleging the prison’s failure to act on the warnings. The lawsuit noted that GDC accused Grace of helping Hart smuggle the gun, a claim her mother denied, saying the weapon was present before Grace started the job. The shooting triggered a system-wide lockdown of all GDC facilities and prompted Governor Brian Kemp to announce a 12-month, in-depth assessment of the state corrections system by consultants from Guidehouse Inc. A former corrections officer told the AJC that Smith’s back gate, used to bring in supplies, lacked a metal detector—potentially allowing contraband including weapons to enter undetected. The incident laid bare a security vacuum: a gun smuggled into a close-security prison, a kitchen worker killed, and no guards present to intervene.

37 Deaths Since 2020: A Chronicled Toll of Homicide and Neglect

GPS’s facility-level mortality database records 37 deaths at Smith State Prison since 2020, peaking at 11 in 2023—a year in which the AJC documented a record 37 prison homicides statewide. The names and manners of death tell a story of unrelenting violence and supervisory neglect. In March 2023, 71-year-old Anthony Joseph Zino III was found dead from asphyxia due to neck compression; the Tattnall County coroner noted the body was badly decomposed and that Zino had likely been dead for days before anyone noticed—a consequence, the AJC reported, of understaffing that made a “mockery of official processes for checking on high-risk inmates.” That same year, Justin Tyler Smith, 37, died from an epidural hematoma after being punched and falling; Quenton G. Mayo, 30, was stabbed to death by four prisoners; Calvin Darrell Denson Jr., 31, died of a stab wound in a fight involving seven inmates; and James Adams Jr., 72, was beaten to death with blunt force trauma to the head and neck.

The violence also killed a correctional officer: Robert Danford Clark, 42, was assaulted with a homemade weapon on October 1, 2023, and died of multiple stab wounds. Earlier, in 2021, 26-year-old Hiwatha Abdulcah Hakeem Jr. was stabbed by four prisoners; a lawsuit later alleged the attackers had a history of violence and that prison officials failed to provide timely medical care. Desmond Hill, 35, was strangled in April 2021 after calling his mother the day before to say his cellmate had threatened to kill him. In many cases, the violence was gang-related; officials believe a gang altercation on April 1, 2026 that left two inmates airlifted to hospitals again triggered a statewide GDC lockdown. GPS’s intelligence system captured four inmate-on-inmate assault allegations and four in-custody death reports in the 12 months preceding June 2026, alongside three new lawsuits filed during the same period.

Two-Thirds Vacant: The Staffing Crisis and Its Lethal Consequences

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in January 2025 that two-thirds of correctional officer positions at Smith State Prison were unfilled, leaving only 53 officers at a facility designed for 160—a ratio that creates an environment where violence goes uninterrupted and inmates can die unnoticed. Former officer Andrew Phillips described to The Marshall Project how he was once the sole officer assigned to an area housing 600 men. When inmates set mattresses on fire, all the fire extinguishers were empty; Phillips worked 11 consecutive days, enduring assaults and feces thrown at him, before escorting a stabbing victim to the hospital. He described the environment as “too brutal, too disgusting” and permanently resigned from GDC in February 2023.

The same Marshall Project investigation documented that prison staff in Georgia are so overstretched they failed to notice a dead and decomposing body for five days—a reality corroborated by the Zino case at Smith. Overworked and sleep-deprived officers are more likely to use excessive force, and guards working alone have watched fatal attacks on prisoners without immediately intervening, the AJC reported. GPS’s systemic analysis of GDC staffing found officer vacancies systemwide ranging between 49% and 60% for multiple years, with Georgia ranking last among 50 states for correctional officer pay. The U.S. Department of Justice’s October 2024 findings letter concluded that “the leadership of the Georgia Department of Corrections has lost control of its facilities,” and faulted GDC for blaming gangs while ignoring understaffing. At Smith, the numbers bear that out: 53 officers, no metal detector at the supply gate, and a culture where contraband flows freely.

Waterboarded and Sexually Assaulted: The 2020 Case and a Broader Crisis

In 2020, a prisoner at Smith State Prison was tied up, beaten, waterboarded, and sexually assaulted by his cellmate. When hospitalized, bars of soap that had apparently been used in the sexual assault fell out of his body; he had ligature marks on his neck and most of his upper teeth were broken, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. The case is one of the specific clusters cited in GPS’s systemic finding that sexual violence in Georgia prisons is pervasive. The DOJ’s October 2024 findings concluded that sexual assault is “rampant” and that GDC does not reasonably protect incarcerated people, including LGBTI individuals. Of 456 sexual-abuse allegations recorded statewide in 2022, only 35 were substantiated—7.7%—and GDC’s own consultants found in 2022 that not one of 388 reviewed PREA investigation files met legal standards.

The normalization of sexual exploitation at Smith stretches back decades. In a firsthand account published by Georgia Prisoners’ Speak — Tell My Story, author Forever19 described how, as a 19-year-old sent to Smith in the 1990s, an older convict coerced him into sex: “I felt like if I didn’t do it, I would’ve gotten hurt. I’ve never told anyone this before. It’s been bothering me for a long time.” The abuse continued for nearly a year, and fighting back sent both men to solitary. The author’s narrative captures how predation becomes survival, and how the system’s violence becomes internalized. GPS’s broader reporting on sexual violence treats the Smith cases as emblematic of a prison system that has never submitted a PREA certification of full compliance in the law’s two-decade history.

From Grade C Kitchens to a 53-Cent Menu: Food as Cruelty

On February 16, 2026, a routine food-safety inspection by the Georgia Department of Public Health awarded Smith State Prison a score of 72—a Grade C. Violations included improper cold-holding temperatures, food not properly labeled or in original containers, and missing thermometers. The score continues a downward trend: 84 in 2023, 82 in 2024, and 85 in 2025 (all Grade B). The failing grade is the surface of a deeper starvation economy. GPS has documented that GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food—under 60 cents per meal—and has proposed a cut to $1.60 per day in the upcoming fiscal year, against an FDA Thrifty Food Plan estimate of roughly $10 per day for an adult man. The state’s own budget documents show a proposed $528,167 increase for food contracts in FY2027, a figure dwarfed by the need.

While the state underfeeds, it maintains a commissary system that charges incarcerated people extraordinary markups. GDC’s own commissary master reveals systemwide markups averaging 59.8% in FY2024, with items like Welch’s Fruit Snacks marked up 104% over contract price. The result is a dual trap: chronically hungry men must buy overpriced snacks to supplement their diets, fueling a system that GPS’s investigation “Dunked, Stacked, and Served” showed is riddled with broken dishwashers, roach infestation, and contaminated trays across GDC kitchens. The Smith kitchen where Aureon Grace was killed was part of that same food service apparatus—one that routinely fails to meet basic sanitation standards while the state’s own numbers confess to nutritional neglect. GPS’s reporting in “Starved and Silenced” described inmates “wasting away” on a few spoonfuls of grits and bologna, a reality that dovetails with a prison environment in which hunger, illness, and violence reinforce one another.

The Warden Who Turned On the Heat: Cruelty, Promotion, and a System That Rewards It

In a Tell My Story account published by GPS, author Jacs described working as an inmate orderly in the tier unit at Telfair State Prison in July, when temperatures inside cells already baking from metal-plated windows exceeded 110 degrees. The Unit Manager, Jacob Beasley, had deliberately turned on the heaters in those cells. When an officer asked why, Beasley replied that the men were “supposed to be punished” and that he was making sure they were. “I was in shock. How could someone be this evil?” Jacs wrote.

Beasley later became the warden of Smith State Prison. He was warden during the period when the facility was so violent that a staff member—Aureon Grace—was shot and killed by an inmate with a gun. He has since been promoted to warden at GDCP in Jackson, Georgia’s largest state prison. GPS’s article “Unqualified and Unprepared” dissects how decades of insular promotions and resistance to outside expertise have created a leadership vacuum with devastating consequences. Beasley’s trajectory—from documented deliberate cruelty to the helm of two major prisons—illustrates the closed pipeline that GPS’s reporting in “The Game They Learned” identifies as having produced every one of Georgia’s 43 sitting wardens. The culture that permitted a unit manager to weaponize heat as punishment is the same culture that produced the RICO-indicted Adams and the chaos at Smith.

Structural Decay: Classification Drift, Broken Infrastructure, and a Broken System

Smith State Prison’s 1,112 men live in a facility originally designed for 750, retrofitted into a 1,526-bed close-security complex. GPS’s October 2025 investigation “The Classification Crisis” documented a systemic pattern of classification drift across Georgia’s prisons: medium-security facilities forced to operate as close-security without adequate staffing or infrastructure. Close-security prisons like Smith face analogous pressure, functioning at security levels their resources cannot sustain. That pressure compounds other infrastructure failures GPS has tracked systemwide: broken cell-door locks, inoperative surveillance and fire-alarm systems, and kitchen sanitation breakdowns.

The U.S. Department of Justice has scrutinized GDC since September 2021, and its 2024 findings explicitly linked understaffing and infrastructure decay to a loss of institutional control. A state Senate study committee heard testimony in August 2024 on contraband, overcrowding, aging facilities, and understaffing. The Southern Center for Human Rights sued GDC over poor conditions as early as 2021. Yet GPS’s exposé on the justice system functioning as a criminal enterprise documented alleged obstruction of investigations and evidence withholding by the Georgia Attorney General’s Office in corruption cases—suggesting that the accountability mechanisms that might address these systemic failures are themselves compromised. In this context, Smith State Prison is not an anomaly; it is the logical product of a system in which staffing collapse, classification drift, eroded infrastructure, and a closed promotion culture converge to produce predictable, fatal outcomes.

Sources

This analysis draws on investigative reporting from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Georgia Virtue, Georgia Public Broadcasting, and The Marshall Project; official Georgia Department of Public Health food-safety inspection records; GPS’s independent mortality database, which tracks deaths in GDC custody; GPS’s internal intelligence system capturing staff misconduct, violence, and litigation signals; firsthand witness accounts published in GPS’s Tell My Story series; and GPS’s own systemic investigations into food, sexual violence, classification, and the GDC leadership pipeline.

Recent reports (62)

Source-attributed observations and allegations from news coverage and reports submitted to GPS. Each entry credits its source.

  • ALLEGATION According to The Georgia Virtue Published: Jun 22, 2026
    Adams and Moore facilitated a criminal enterprise within the prison that led to Kicklighter's murder.
    "The lawsuit, filed by the family of Bobby C. Kicklighter, alleges that Adams and Moore facilitated a criminal enterprise operating from within the prison, which led to Kicklighter's murder in a botched murder-for-hire scheme in 2021."
    Read source →
  • ALLEGATION According to The Georgia Virtue Published: Jun 22, 2026
    Adams and Moore facilitated a criminal enterprise within the prison that led to Kicklighter's murder.
    "The lawsuit, filed by the family of Bobby C. Kicklighter, alleges that Adams and Moore facilitated a criminal enterprise operating from within the prison, which led to Kicklighter's murder in a botched murder-for-hire scheme in 2021."
    Read source →
  • ALLEGATION According to WTOC Published: May 1, 2025
    A former employee sexually assaulted a corrections employee.
    "A former employee of Smith State Prison in Georgia has been charged with sexual assault involving a corrections employee."
    Read source →
  • ALLEGATION According to The Georgia Virtue Published: May 13, 2026
    Adams allegedly participated in a RICO organization (Yves Saint Laurent Squad) and accepted currency bribes through a pattern of racketeering associated with the enterprise run by inmate Nathan Weekes.
    "They also contended that Adams participated in a RICO organization, being Yves Saint Laurent Squad run by then-Smith State Prison inmate Nathan Weekes, and he committed the offenses of Bribery and False Statements and Writings in furtherance of the RICO organization. Adams, they said, was bribed when he accepted currency through a pattern of racketeering associated with the RICO enterprise."
    Read source →
  • ALLEGATION According to The Georgia Virtue Published: May 13, 2026
    Agents alleged that Adams provided false statements in an April 13, 2022 interview when he stated he had not been solicited or bribed by a GDC inmate in the past 10 years.
    "Agents alleged that Adams provided false statements in an April 13, 2022 interview when he stated he has not been solicited or bribed by a Georgia Department of Corrections inmate in the past 10 years."
    Read source →

Timeline (131)

June 22, 2026 (approx.)
Georgia Court of Appeals declines appeal other
The Georgia Court of Appeals declined to hear an appeal from Brian Adams and Ireon Moore, citing lack of jurisdiction due to the use of an incorrect appellate procedure after the new direct-appeal statute took effect.
Source: The Georgia Virtue
June 22, 2026
Adams and Moore facilitated a criminal enterprise within the prison that led to Kicklighter's murder. report
June 22, 2026
Adams and Moore facilitated a criminal enterprise within the prison that led to Kicklighter's murder. report
May 13, 2026
Tattnall County Grand Jury Indicts Former Smith State Prison Warden arrest
A Tattnall County grand jury indicted a former warden from Smith State Prison on Tuesday.
Source: The Georgia Virtue
May 13, 2026 (approx.)
Civil Lawsuit Filed Against Brian Adams and Ireon Moore in Tattnall County State Court lawsuit
A lawsuit filed in Tattnall County State Court seeks damages from former Warden Brian Adams and former Corrections Officer Ireon Moore, alleging they allowed contraband including cell phones, narcotics, and weapons, and facilitated a criminal conspiracy to kill a non-complicit…
Source: The Georgia Virtue
May 13, 2026
Adams allegedly participated in a RICO organization (Yves Saint Laurent Squad) and accepted currency bribes through a pattern of racketeering associated with the enterprise run by inmate Nathan Weekes. report
May 13, 2026
Agents alleged that Adams provided false statements in an April 13, 2022 interview when he stated he had not been solicited or bribed by a GDC inmate in the past 10 years. report
May 13, 2026
The civil suit alleges Adams should have noticed contraband including cell phones, narcotics, weapons, designer brand clothing, jewelry, and tobacco at Smith State Prison. report

Source Articles (36)

The Game They Learned: How GDC's Closed Promotion Pipeline Made Its Own Wardens — and Its Own Indictments
May 16, 2026
Dunked, Stacked, and Served: Why Georgia Prison Trays Are Making People Sick
Apr 10, 2026
The Man Who Turned On the Heat
Apr 6, 2026
GDC prisons locked down statewide after multiple inmates injured in 'gang-related' fights - WGXA
Google News - GDC · Apr 3, 2026
GDC prisons locked down statewide after multiple inmates injured in ...
Google API · Apr 3, 2026

Former leadership

Officials who previously held leadership roles at this facility.

RoleNameTenureDeaths
this facility / career
WARDEN 3 (facility lead) Beasley, Jacob2023-01-01 → 2024-12-3117 / 54
Warden (facility lead) Adams, Brian2019-10-01 → 2023-02-0817 / 17
CORRECTIONAL SUPERINTENDENT (facility lead) Todd, Curtis J2025-01-01 → 2025-01-31— / 1
DEPUTY WARDEN (facility deputy) McFarlane, Andrew M2019-01-01 → 2022-12-3117 / 50
Deputy Warden of Security (facility deputy) Henderson, Marcus2019-01-01 → 2023-01-0117 / 17
DEPUTY WARDEN (facility deputy) COX, Eric2021-01-01 → 2021-12-317 / 50
DEPUTY WARDEN (facility deputy) Epperson, Alicia2022-01-01 → 2022-12-315 / 5
DEPUTY WARDEN (facility deputy) Brown, Vashti J2019-01-01 → 2020-12-315 / 5
DEPUTY WARDEN (facility deputy) Smith, Tarmarshe A2016-01-01 → 2017-12-31— / 36

View full GDC Leadership Accountability page →

Location

9676 Hwy 301 North, Glennville, GA 30427 31.97303, -81.91568

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Aerial View

Aerial view of SMITH STATE PRISON

Architecture documents what the building was designed to hold. See the system-wide receipts at gps.press/warehouse.

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