WARE STATE PRISON

Analysis written on August 2, 2026.

Ware State Prison sits on the outskirts of Waycross in Ware County—a close‑security facility built for 500 but now rated at 1,546, housing roughly 1,447 men. In the six years since 2020, GPS’s independent mortality records show 85 people have died inside its walls: 35 from natural causes, 19 homicides, 12 suicides, eight overdoses, two accidents, and nine still awaiting final classification. The Atlanta Journal‑Constitution previously reported ten killings between July 2020 and August 2024; GPS’s own investigation, “At Least Nineteen: The Murders the State Didn’t Prosecute,” has since documented a fuller toll—finding that Georgia’s own autopsies name a suspected perpetrator in eleven of the homicides, with no public record of a prosecution in any of them. The facility has become a concentrated expression of the violence and institutional breakdown that, GPS tracking shows, has produced 1,859 deaths in Georgia Department of Corrections custody since the beginning of the decade.

The August 2020 Riot and the Official Minimization

On August 1, 2020, malfunctioning cell‑door locks allowed a group of incarcerated men to exit their rooms at Ware. What followed was not a minor scuffle. According to reporting by the Atlanta Journal‑Constitution, the men took two correctional officers hostage, beat and stabbed one of them, and ignited a mass disturbance in which hundreds of prisoners ransacked the facility. GDC’s own incident records, obtained by the AJC, show that 33 homemade weapons were used and 55 security staff were directly involved. A mass employee exodus followed. Yet the department publicly described the event only as a “disturbance,” while internal records reveal hostage‑taking, escape attempts, and repeated uses of force.

GPS’s reporting further describes that GDC responded with a punitive facility‑wide lockdown that stretched for months, cutting electrical power to housing units during the South Georgia summer heat—a measure that independent inmate witnesses characterized as collective retaliation.

Nineteen Killings, No Prosecutions: The Homicide Ledger

The July 2020 death of Robert Lee Wilson III, stabbed multiple times in an incident involving sixteen other prisoners, began a pattern that has not stopped. Since then, at least eighteen more men have been killed inside Ware. The AJC’s homicide‑tracking coverage named several: Christopher Arnett Rawls (strangled, September 2020), Christopher Eli Gresham (stabbed, September 2021), Kyle Anthony Strother (stabbed, June 2022), Va’Darian LaVianta Carr (stabbed, September 2022), Alfonso Marquez Moore (beaten to death, June 2023), Thomas Jerome McCoy (stabbed, October 2023), Leonardo Lamonte Anderson (stabbed, April 2024), Christopher Michael Drake Taylor (stabbed, May 2024), Samuel Keith Ellis (multiple sharp‑force injuries, August 2024). GPS’s mortality database adds the 2025‑2026 cluster: Christopher Barrett (homicide, December 2025), Christopher Henry (homicide, February 2026), Anthony Grover (homicide, May 2026), Kojack Thomas Jr. (homicide, May 2026), and Justin Pulley (homicide, May 2026). In several cases GDC incident reports show multiple inmates involved, evidence of sustained inter‑prisoner warfare.

“At Least Nineteen: The Murders the State Didn’t Prosecute,” published by Georgia Prisoners’ Speak and fact‑checked by the organization, establishes that Georgia’s own GBI forensic records name a suspect in eleven of these deaths. GPS could find no public record that anyone was ever indicted, prosecuted, or even charged. The practical immunity granted to those who kill inside Georgia’s prisons is nowhere more starkly visible than at Ware.

Something Is Wrong with the Counts

The case of DonTavis Mintz illustrates how far supervision has collapsed. Mintz died at Ware State Prison and his body lay undiscovered for days; when his remains were returned to his mother, Narissa Wright, she could identify him only by a single tooth. Georgia Public Broadcasting reported that Wright alleged no counts or welfare checks were conducted. The AJC’s investigation confirmed that official staffing and security lapses had left bodies undetected.

GPS has collected dozens of inmate accounts asserting that physical assaults at Ware are routinely classified by staff as “horseplay” rather than logged as incidents. The cumulative effect is a system in which serious violence disappears from official records—undercutting any claim that the facility is under control.

Gang Control of the Living Space

Multiple sources describe a prison where gangs have usurped the housing assignment function. Inmate accounts, derived analyses by GPS staff, and family reports consistently describe gang‑affiliated individuals occupying single‑occupancy cells and barring non‑affiliated prisoners from those areas. As a result, men without gang ties sleep on dayroom floors or are packed in severely overcrowded cells. Witnesses report that large knives are widespread, and the violence concentrates on weekends, when staffing is at its thinnest.

GPS’s intelligence system recorded eighteen distinct sources reporting inmate‑on‑inmate assaults over a seven‑month period into mid‑2026, with a spike in May 2026 that included multiple credible corroborations. Families have alleged that correctional staff have, during periods of reduced administrative oversight, facilitated unauthorized housing transfers that consolidate gang power. These patterns are consistent with the Department of Justice’s October 2024 finding that gangs effectively run several Georgia facilities, controlling access to phones, showers, food, and beds.

$85,000 in Settlements, a Trail of Unresolved Harm

The State of Georgia’s liability ledger, obtained through open‑records requests, shows five settlements tied to incidents at Ware State Prison since 2015: - $2,500 for David Michael Slaughter (incident 2015) - $50,578 for Christopher Stewart (incident 2016) - $10,000 for Denard Brown, a payout linked to a documented in‑custody death (incident 2019) - $2,500 for Bennie James Johnson (incident 2021) - $20,000 for Jimmy Mack Rice (incident 2023)

The payments, totaling more than $85,000, do not specify the underlying claims, but they demonstrate a steady stream of liability that tracks the facility’s violence record.

Food Scores and the Hidden Sanitation Crisis

The Georgia Department of Public Health has inspected Ware’s kitchen seven times since April 2023, awarding scores of 94 to 98—all Grade A. Yet that picture is incomplete. GPS has documented a systemic pattern across GDC kitchens in which high DPH scores coexist with broken tray‑sanitizing dishwashers, roach and rodent infestation, and meals served on visibly contaminated trays. The investigation “Dunked, Stacked, and Served” found that the scheduled walkthrough inspections do not assess equipment under load and are compromised in small‑county settings by professional overlap between inspectors and facility staff.

At Ware, a formal complaint filed by family members in 2026 detailed routine service of undercooked or raw meat, dangerously short portion sizes, and a request for an immediate health inspection directed to the GDC Ombudsman. The Marshall Project independently reported in May 2026 that rats, insects, and moldy trays are common in Georgia prison kitchens. The state spends roughly $1.69 per person per day on food—under sixty cents per meal—against an FDA estimate of $10 per day for a nutritionally adequate diet, a gap GPS has highlighted as a contributor to malnutrition and tension.

Staffing Vacuum and Weekend Lawlessness

Ware’s violence operates on a schedule. GPS’s internal analysis of incident timing found that a disproportionate share of recorded violence occurs on weekends, when correctional staffing is minimal. The systemic finding holds: officer vacancies have run between 49 and 60 percent statewide for years, reaching 80 percent at Valdosta State Prison by April 2024, and Georgia ranks last of all fifty states in correctional‑officer pay. The Department of Justice explicitly faulted GDC in October 2024 for placing “too much blame on gangs and insufficient emphasis on understaffing.” Former GDC sergeant Tyler Ryals told GPS he was once the sole security officer on an entire compound of roughly 1,250 maximum‑security inmates.

At Ware, the weekend vacuum combines with gang territorial control to produce the homicide wave documented above. GPS reporting has further revealed, in its investigation “Two Commanders Say Georgia Hides Its Prison Staffing Crisis,” that command staff are aware of the lethal staffing gaps and that contraband—cell phones, drugs, knives—proliferates in the void. A June 2024 shooting at Smith State Prison, where a smuggled firearm killed a food‑service worker, exemplified the consequences of that vacuum.

When Georgia stopped publishing cause‑of‑death data for prisoners in February 2025, a transparency gap GPS documented in “The Empty Column: Georgia Won’t Say How Prisoners Die,” the families of those killed at Ware were left with even less information than before. In that darkness, the killings continue.

Leadership and Personnel

As of mid‑2026, Ware State Prison is led by Warden James Spann, who assumed command on July 5, 2026. Deputy Warden of Security Martella L. Walker came on board in September 2025, and Deputy Warden of Administration Aiyesha Johnson began in January 2026. The facility maintains a CERT team and Tier II special‑management units, but the underlying staffing crisis has repeatedly proven insufficient to interrupt the violence, classify deaths honestly, or restore the basic safety that constitutionally required conditions demand.

Sources

This analysis draws on reporting from the Atlanta Journal‑Constitution, Georgia Public Broadcasting, and the Georgia Department of Corrections; Georgia Department of Public Health food‑safety inspection records; GDC settlement ledgers obtained under the Georgia Open Records Act; GPS’s own mortality database, intelligence signals, and investigative reporting—including “At Least Nineteen: The Murders the State Didn’t Prosecute,” “Dunked, Stacked, and Served,” “Two Commanders Say Georgia Hides Its Prison Staffing Crisis,” and “The Empty Column”; the October 2024 Department of Justice findings letter; and inmate, family, and anonymous tip accounts collected and evaluated by GPS staff.