TELFAIR STATE PRISON
Facility Information
- Original Design Capacity
- 480 (at 260% capacity)
- Bed Capacity
- 1,400 beds
- Current Population
- 1,250
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 →
Read: Brown v. Plata - A Legal Roadmap for Georgia's Prison Crisis →
- Address
- 170 Longbridge Road, Helena, GA 31037
- Mailing Address
- P.O. Box 549, Helena, GA 31037
- County
- Telfair County
- Operator
- GDC (Georgia Dept. of Corrections)
- Warden
- Andrew McFarlane
- Phone
- (229) 868-7721
- Fax
- (229) 868-6509
- Staff
- Deputy Warden Security: Denisha Foster
- Deputy Warden Security: Rickey Wilcox
- Deputy Warden C&T: Tonja Keith
- Deputy Warden Admin: Darrell Wooten
About
Telfair State Prison in McRae-Helena is a close-security prison for adult male felons that opened in 1992. It combines open-dorm housing with multiple double-bunked cell units and segregation/isolation cells for high-risk or hard-to-manage prisoners. Telfair has been the subject of national scrutiny for extreme violence, including multiple inmate and staff homicides, and for the documented death of a prisoner from heat exposure after being left in an outdoor cage – incidents that figured prominently in the U.S. Department of Justice’s findings on Georgia prisons.
Mortality Statistics
56 deaths documented at this facility from 2020 to present.
Deaths by Year
- 2026: 3
- 2025: 15
- 2024: 11
- 2023: 8
- 2022: 5
- 2021: 3
- 2020: 11