SPECIAL MANAGEMENT UNIT
Facility Information
- Bed Capacity
- 192 beds
- Current Population
- 149
- Active Lifers
- 46 (30.9% of population) · Jul 2026 GDC report
- Life Without Parole
- 32 (21.5%)
- Address
- 2978 Hwy 36 West, Jackson, GA 30233
- Phone
- (770) 504-7610
- Fax
- (770) 504-7623
- Mailing Address
- P.O. Box 3877, Jackson, GA 30233
- County
- Butts County
- Operator
- GDC (Georgia Dept. of Corrections)
Leadership & Accountability (as of 2026 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Warden (facility lead) | COX, Eric | 2025-01-01 | 1 / 51 |
| DEPUTY WARDEN (facility deputy) | Wiley, Flemister E | 2024-01-01 | 5 / 5 |
| DEPUTY WARDEN (facility deputy) | Nash, Torika R | 2024-10-16 | 4 / 4 |
| Deputy Warden of Security (facility deputy) | Douglas, Jalaludin K | 2026-04-16 | 1 / 1 |
| Deputy Warden of Security (facility deputy) | Reynolds, Shavari | 2026-04-16 | 1 / 1 |
About
Georgia’s supermax prison, the Special Management Unit (SMU) in Jackson, has spent a decade defying court orders meant to curb solitary confinement—a story of falsified records, contraband-fueled financial crime, and at least eight in‑custody deaths that mirrors the systemic collapse documented across the Georgia…
Mortality Statistics
8 deaths documented at this facility from 2020 to present.
Deaths by Year
- 2026: 1
- 2025: 2
- 2024: 2
- 2023: 1
- 2022: 1
- 2021: 1
- 2020: 0
County Public Health Department
Food service and sanitation at SPECIAL MANAGEMENT UNIT fall under the jurisdiction of the Butts 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
- Robert Waggoner
- Address
-
463 Ernest Biles Dr., Suite A
Jackson, GA 30233 - Phone
- (770) 504-2230
- Robert.Waggoner@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.
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.
July 21, 2026
RE: Request for Unannounced Public Health Inspection of Food Service Operations at SPECIAL MANAGEMENT UNIT
Dear Robert Waggoner,
I am writing to respectfully request that your office conduct a thorough, unannounced inspection of food service and sanitation practices at SPECIAL MANAGEMENT UNIT, located in Butts County.
Documented concerns
Georgia Prisoners' Speak, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit investigative newsroom, 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 July 19, 2026.
The Supermax and the Settlement That Was Never Honored
The Special Management Unit is a 192-bed ultra‑restrictive housing unit on the grounds of Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison (GDCP) in Jackson. Built to contain men deemed the state’s highest security risks, it operates through near‑total isolation: single‑ or double‑celling with sharply limited out‑of‑cell time and intensive security procedures. As of mid‑2026 the facility held 149 people. Its existence has been shadowed for more than a decade by a single, extraordinarily persistent lawsuit that exposed how Georgia’s prison leadership resisted even court‑mandated reform.
In 2015, a man named Timothy Gumm filed a handwritten lawsuit from his solitary cell at the SMU. The case, eventually litigated as a class action by the Southern Center for Human Rights, challenged the constitutionality of the isolation itself. In 2019, the Georgia Department of Corrections reached a settlement that promised sweeping changes: regular out‑of‑cell time, meaningful reviews of placement, educational programming, and more. The agreement was supposed to transform the SMU. Instead, GDC officials stalled, falsified records, and—by their own admission, according to court findings—had no intention of complying. The Atlanta Journal‑Constitution later reported that the agency ran a deliberate “stalling strategy” until the consent decree’s term was about to expire.
Contempt, Fabrication, and a Judge’s Warning
In April 2024, U.S. District Judge Marc T. Treadwell issued a blistering 100‑page contempt order. Georgia Prisoners’ Speak reported that the judge found GDC had falsified documents, backdated prisoner review forms, and made false statements to the court about its compliance. The AJC confirmed that the agency was “thumbing their noses” at the settlement’s requirements. Among the findings: GDC official Ahmed Holt had sworn under oath that prisoners received mandated out‑of‑cell time, educational programming, and adequate staffing—all claims contradicted by the evidence. The contempt order exposed a pattern of institutional deception that extended beyond the SMU. Multiple outlets, including the AJC and Georgia Prisoners’ Speak, documented how GDC defendants ran a multi‑year campaign to avoid honoring the injunction on schedule.
The Death of Ricardo Daughtry and the Falsification of a Life
Less than two months after Judge Treadwell’s ruling, Ricardo Daughtry—the 40‑year‑old lead plaintiff in the SMU lawsuit—was found dead in his cell. The Atlanta Journal‑Constitution obtained prison records showing that no one had checked on Daughtry for nearly seven hours before his body was discovered, despite a policy requiring checks every 15 to 30 minutes. Even more disturbing, the AJC also reported that GDC documents listed Daughtry as attending “table time,” recreation, and the book cart after he had already been pronounced dead. The death and the ghostly paper trail became the most macabre illustration of the record‑falsification culture Judge Treadwell had denounced.
A Supermax Phone, a $11 Million Heist, and GDC’s Imprint
Even while the SMU was supposed to be the most tightly controlled environment in the state, contraband cellphones flowed inside with impunity—with staggering consequences. Arthur Lee Cofield Jr., a man who entered GDC in 2008 at age 16 for armed robbery, managed to acquire a contraband cellphone inside the SMU. In the summer of 2020, Warden Jose Morales discovered the device; federal investigators later used its data to unravel an $11 million scheme.
The AJC detailed how Cofield, using the phone from his supermax cell, accessed the Charles Schwab account of billionaire movie executive Sidney Kimmel and orchestrated a wire transfer. He amassed $31 million in a bank account at one point, purchased 6,106 American Eagle gold coins from an Idaho company, had a private plane fly the coins to Atlanta, and bought a $4.4 million mansion in Buckhead. Cofield pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and aggravated identity theft and was sentenced to 135 additional months in federal prison. That Georgia’s “top‑security” facility could not stop a single prisoner from repeatedly obtaining a contraband cellphone, even after GDC learned of his financial crimes as early as 2018, spoke to the broader breakdown of control inside its walls.
The System Running Through the SMU
The SMU did not rot in isolation. It sat inside a prison system that, by 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice called unconstitutional. The DOJ’s October 2024 report concluded that Georgia’s prisons were inhumane—people were assaulted, stabbed, raped, and killed in woefully understaffed facilities. An earlier investigation by GPS had documented that officer vacancy rates statewide ran between 49.3% and 60% for years. Former GDC assistant warden Russell Zirkle told GPS, in an on‑the‑record interview, that some prisons—including Smith State Prison—were operating with 70% to 80% vacancies, a figure that left single officers responsible for entire compounds housing maximum‑security prisoners.
That staffing collapse fed the contraband problem that enabled Cofield’s theft, but it also underpinned a culture of concealment. In March 2024, GDC stopped including a preliminary cause of death in its monthly mortality reports, obscuring how many people were being killed or dying by suicide. Georgia Prisoners’ Speak has independently tracked 1,849 deaths in GDC custody since 2020, a toll that Commissioner Tyrone Oliver dismissed as “propaganda” while the AJC documented his agency’s refusal to release full incident reports and its practice of hurriedly fixing buildings before federal inspections. GPS’s reporting describes a system that routinely misled lawmakers, courts, and the public.
Deaths Inside the SMU
GPS’s own mortality records show that at least eight people have died while held at the Special Management Unit since tracking began. The most recent include Antony Ramon Penick, 32 (May 2026); Michael Ogletree, 33 (October 2025); and Lashon Boddie, 30 (September 2025)—all recorded under a category that signals deaths without a publicly disclosed cause. The facility is currently led by Warden Eric Cox, who was appointed in January 2026, with a new layer of deputy wardens installed only months later. Those recent leadership changes have not yet altered the fundamental dynamic: a supermax that for a decade has been defined by court‑ordered reforms that never arrived, a paper trail that cannot be trusted, and a body count that continues to grow.
Sources
This account draws on reporting by the Atlanta Journal‑Constitution, Georgia Prisoners’ Speak, and The Marshall Project; federal court filings, including U.S. District Judge Marc T. Treadwell’s contempt order; on‑record testimony from former GDC assistant warden Russell Zirkle published by Georgia Prisoners’ Speak; and mortality and staffing data tracked independently by GPS.
Recent reports (22)
Source-attributed observations and allegations from news coverage and reports submitted to GPS. Each entry credits its source.
- ALLEGATION According to Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published: Jan 7, 2024The GDC learned as early as 2018 that Cofield was pulling off financial crimes but did not charge him until 2020, and he was able to repeatedly acquire contraband cellphones even in the state's top security prison.
"While the Georgia Department of Corrections had learned as early as 2018 that Cofield was pulling off financial crimes, he wasn't charged until 2020, when federal authorities uncovered the $11 million theft."
Read source → - ALLEGATION According to Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published: Jan 7, 2024Cofield allegedly orchestrated similar thefts from unspecified online accounts in Alabama between January 2018 and February 2019, converting stolen money into gold.
"Cofield also was named as the sole defendant in a federal criminal case in Alabama last year contending that he orchestrated similar thefts from unspecified online accounts between January 2018 and February 2019."
Read source → - ALLEGATION According to Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published: Jan 7, 2024Fulton County prosecutors allege that Cofield ordered a 2018 shooting outside a southwest Atlanta recording studio, motivated by jealousy over a young woman.
"Prosecutors allege that Cofield, who called himself YAP Lavish, ordered the shooting and that it was carried out by two formerly incarcerated men who were part of his YAP crew."
Read source → - ALLEGATION According to Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published: Jan 7, 2024Cofield at one time had amassed $31 million in a bank account, as revealed by a contraband cellphone seized from him in the state's top security prison.
"A contraband cellphone seized from him in the state's top security prison showed that he at one time had amassed $31 million in a bank account."
Read source → - ALLEGATION According to Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published: Jan 21, 2025Ahmed Holt swore under oath that prisoners were receiving required out-of-cell time, educational programming, and adequate staffing, all of which evidence contradicted.
"Holt swore in 2022 that prisoners were getting time out of their cells at tables. Evidence showed they were not. Holt said required educational programming was provided via televisions in cells. In fact, two entire wings of the unit had no TVs. Holt claimed that the unit had adequate staffing. Evidence strongly suggested otherwise."
Read source →
Timeline (43)
Source Articles (12)
Former leadership
Officials who previously held leadership roles at this facility.
| Role | Name | Tenure | Deaths this facility / career |
|---|---|---|---|
| DEPUTY WARDEN (facility deputy) | King, Sheneca | 2025-01-01 → 2025-11-30 | 2 / 80 |