Last updated November 8, 2026.(DS)

Wheeler Correctional Facility: A Privately Run Prison at the Center of Georgia's Contraband Economy

Wheeler Correctional Facility sits in Alamo, in Wheeler County, and is one of the two largest prisons in Georgia. It opened in 1998 with a design capacity of 1,000 and is privately operated by CoreCivic under contract with the Georgia Department of Corrections. Its rated capacity is now 2,874, and GPS's facility records put the current population at 2,865 — 99.7 percent of rated capacity. The plant is a mix of eight main units: three cellblocks with three pods each housing 80-88 people, three dormitory-style units with six pods of roughly 48 each, three dormitory-style units with seven pods of 64-84 each, and two segregation units totaling 178 beds. The facility includes single cells, intensive therapeutic housing, and a CERT Team. Shawn Gillis has served as warden since January 2024.

Three threads run through what follows. The first is death: GPS's registry records 45 deaths at Wheeler since January 1, 2020, four of them homicides. The second is contraband — specifically the contraband cellphone, which at Wheeler has functioned less as a smuggling nuisance than as a business platform. The third is what families describe: assaults, extortion, and complaints that go quiet without resolution.

Forty-Five Deaths Since 2020, and a Registry That Keeps Growing

GPS's mortality registry — a floor, not a ceiling, since GDC reports deaths roughly two months late — records 45 deaths at Wheeler Correctional Facility since January 1, 2020. By cause category, 16 are coded Natural/Medical, 15 Unknown/Pending, 7 Other, 4 Homicide, and 3 Suicide. The full list is maintained at GPS's Georgia prison deaths page.

The most recent entries show how thin the official record often is. Jacob V Reyes died July 25, 2026, at Wheeler; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. Damon Luke Crowe died April 26, 2026, at Wheeler; Unknown/Pending. Demetrice Labron Joshen died November 21, 2025, at Wheeler; Unknown/Pending. Dustin James Parham died November 2, 2025, at Wheeler; the registry lists the cause as Homicide. Jeffrey Scott Lay died July 25, 2025, at Wheeler; Other. Robert Lee Hodges died June 26, 2025, at Wheeler; Unknown/Pending. Baldemar Jaramillo died June 10, 2025, at Wheeler; Homicide. Saquan Dewest Anderson died March 3, 2025, at Wheeler; Homicide. Carlos White died December 24, 2024, at Wheeler; Unknown/Pending. Russell Anthony Waters died July 29, 2024, at Wheeler; Unknown/Pending. David R Folmar died July 15, 2024, at Wheeler; Unknown/Pending. Stoney Joe Allen died June 21, 2024, at Wheeler; Unknown/Pending. Ronnie Joseph Cranford died June 2, 2024, at Wheeler; Unknown/Pending. Antonio Perez Johnson died March 30, 2024, at Wheeler; Unknown/Pending. Tony Lamar Pruitt died January 4, 2024, at Wheeler; Unknown/Pending. Rodney Eugene Miller died November 25, 2023, at Wheeler; Unknown/Pending. Dorkneshes Thurmond died July 29, 2023, at Wheeler; Unknown/Pending. Justin Darrington Kohn died May 17, 2023, at Wheeler; Unknown/Pending. Benjamin Ryan Craig died May 6, 2023, at Wheeler; Unknown/Pending. David Clark died May 2, 2023, at Wheeler; Natural/Medical. Laparrish Dwayne London died March 21, 2023, at Wheeler; Homicide. Stanley L Jones died December 24, 2022, at Wheeler; Natural/Medical. Sherman James Meardith died May 25, 2022, at Wheeler; Suicide. Randy Leon Williams died November 4, 2021, at Wheeler; Other. Kenneth Earl Bishop died September 29, 2021, at Wheeler; Natural/Medical.

The London case is the one with independent news corroboration. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that LaParrish Dawayne London, 30, died on March 21, 2023, at Wheeler Correctional Facility from a stab wound to the chest.

Cause-of-Death Coding That Is Not an Autopsy Finding

The registry's cause categories carry a provenance problem that GPS has documented across the system and that applies directly here. Much of the coding traces to GDC's own classifications, obtained by the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project through an open records request covering 2015-2021 — not to autopsy findings. For William Bryan Yearwood, who died August 31, 2020, at age 60, the "Natural" manner-of-death coding is GDC's own classification obtained by UCLA through that open records request, and no pathologist examined the body for the purpose of that determination. The same holds for Corey DeShawn Kindell, whose "Undetermined" cause is GDC's own coding rather than an autopsy finding, with no pathologist examining the body for the determination.

GPS's internal validation compared its own recorded causes against the UCLA dataset across roughly 200 records where GPS already held a cause of death and found agreement about 84.5 percent of the time; most disagreements were cases where GPS recorded something more specific than GDC's "Undetermined." GPS's methodology holds that a later medical examiner, coroner, or autopsy determination would supersede GDC's coding.

The Contraband Cellphone as a Business Platform

If there is a single fact that defines Wheeler's recent public record, it is that a prison phone — an illegal one — has repeatedly been the instrument of crimes committed against people outside the walls.

The most detailed case is Patrick Marquelle Turner's. A Marion County, Florida, sheriff's investigation alleges Turner used a contraband cellphone while incarcerated at Wheeler Correctional Facility to contact an elderly resident whose caller ID was spoofed as the Marion County Sheriff's Office; investigators linked eight transactions across multiple accounts to Turner. WCJB reported the underlying allegations: that Turner defrauded a person older than 65 and committed grand theft, money laundering, and used a communication device in a felony, and that he used a contraband cellphone from prison to spoof the Marion County Sheriff's Office caller ID and impersonate an officer to scam an elderly resident. Turner was extradited from the Georgia Department of Corrections to Marion County, Florida, where he was booked into the Marion County Jail on charges including grand theft, defrauding a person older than 65, money laundering, using a communication device in a felony, and impersonating an officer.

A second case followed a similar script. KLTV reported that Marcus Allen Daniels allegedly ran a $13,000 bitcoin scam from prison using an illegal cellphone, targeting a Lindale woman by impersonating a sheriff's employee. A warrant for Daniels's arrest was issued on May 6 with a $1 million bond, and the warrant will be served automatically upon his release or parole from his current 20-year sentence. The phone at the center of that case was recovered in a shakedown at Wheeler Correctional Facility on April 14, 2026, when investigators recovered a cellphone from Daniels's cell.

Wheeler has also figured in narcotics distribution. The AJC reported that Jose Calderon, serving sentences for trafficking meth, used a contraband cellphone to broker the illegal distribution of kilos of meth to known drug dealers across the state; he was sentenced to 262 months. Separately, The Georgia Virtue reported that Dequatte Tucker directed a drug trafficking conspiracy from inside Georgia state prisons using contraband cell phones and was sentenced to 188 months after pleading guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute controlled substances, with much of the operation directed from inside Georgia state prisons. Co-defendant Roger Jenkins received 84 months, and co-defendant Corey Hill received 18 months. That investigation, involving multiple law enforcement agencies, resulted in the seizure of 21 firearms and over $17,000 and led to convictions for 33 additional defendants.

GPS has argued that the state cannot block or seize its way out of this problem and has called for registered, monitored phones inside prisons, with lawyers excluded — a position GPS grounded in the state's own arrest reports and the DOJ's findings. GPS's Spanish-language coverage noted that Volusia County, Florida, Sheriff Mike Chitwood has arrested roughly two dozen people in a year over a jury-duty scam he says operates from Calhoun State Prison and Wheeler Correctional Institution, with callers telling victims they missed jury service and directing them to Bitcoin machines.

Assaults, Extortion, and Complaints That Close Without Answer

GPS records show nine sources reporting alleged inmate-on-inmate assaults at Wheeler over the past twelve months, concentrated in six months between March and November 2026, alongside four sources reporting family fear for an incarcerated person's life, four alleging due-process violations, three alleging medical neglect, three alleging racial discrimination, and three alleging staff misconduct. Three external complaints were filed in that period, to the Georgia Department of Corrections, the Governor's Office of Georgia, and the Marion County Sheriff's Office. In April 2026, three separate sources reported a death in custody and three reported assaults.

Those aggregates sit alongside what families have told GPS directly. GPS has received accounts of assaults at Wheeler in which an incarcerated person was beaten by two others and sustained a broken nose, a broken jaw, broken fingers, and a knocked-out tooth, with a family member reporting that no punishment was imposed on those involved and describing an assistant warden as unconcerned. GPS has also received recurring reports of extortion at the facility — commissary debt used as leverage, with families describing sustained demands for money in exchange for an incarcerated person's safety. GPS's reporting has described one mother's account, published in Spanish, that she had paid more than $2,000 since June via Cash App because her son said he would be harmed if she did not.

A separate thread concerns how complaints end. GPS staff have identified a potential pattern at Wheeler in which family complaints are answered verbally, attributed to the incarcerated person's own conduct, and then dropped by both parties without resolution. GPS has received accounts of a stabbing at the facility and of a death that family members reportedly learned of from prison-related social media pages rather than official notice.

Audits, Inspections, and the Paper Record

GDC's own calendars place repeated scrutiny on Wheeler. The FY2022 internal audits calendar scheduled an internal audit of Wheeler in July 2022. The FY2023 calendar lists PREA audits at Wheeler on February 7-8, 2023, and again on June 28-30, 2023. The FY2024 internal audits calendar lists Wheeler audits on May 20 and 21, 2024. GDC's report also lists Wheeler as a private prison — a status the department's own records make explicit.

Food-safety inspections by the Georgia Department of Public Health tell a narrower story. Wheeler scored 100 (Grade A) on June 1, 2026; 94 on November 17, 2025, with three violations including handwashing facilities and backflow devices; 97 on May 19, 2025; 90 on December 2, 2024, with three violations including food-contact surface cleaning and physical facility condition; 96 on March 18, 2024; 93 on September 25, 2023; and 100 on May 3, 2023. GPS has documented a systemic pattern in which DPH scores fail to capture kitchen sanitation failure — broken tray-sanitizing dishwashers, roach and rodent infestation, contaminated trays — because inspections are scheduled walkthroughs that do not assess equipment under load. The high scores and the witness reports coexist; the contradiction is the analytical point.

What the Wider System Suggests About Wheeler

GPS treats several systemwide findings as the frame that explains per-facility patterns like Wheeler's. Officer vacancies across Georgia's prisons have run between 49.3 and 60 percent for multiple years against a national standard of no more than 10 percent; the hiring pipeline cannot close the gap, with an acceptance rate under 15 percent and 82.7 percent of new hires leaving in their first year, and Georgia ranks last of 50 states for correctional-officer pay. The October 2024 DOJ findings letter concluded that "the leadership of the Georgia Department of Corrections has lost control of its facilities" and faulted GDC for placing "too much blame on gangs and insufficient emphasis on understaffing." Roughly 31 percent of the system's incarcerated population are validated members of 315 different security threat groups — more than double the national average — and both DOJ and the Guidehouse 2024 assessment concluded that gangs effectively run multiple facilities, controlling access to phones, showers, food, and bed assignments.

GPS has also documented that sexual violence in GDC facilities is systemic: the DOJ found sexual assault "rampant," only 35 of 456 sexual-abuse allegations recorded in 2022 were substantiated, and PREA Auditors of America found that not one of 388 PREA investigation files reviewed in May 2022 met the law's standards. Georgia has never submitted a PREA certification of full compliance. And GPS has documented that GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food, under 60 cents per meal, against an FDA Thrifty Food Plan estimate of roughly $10 per day — a gap The Marshall Project independently reported on in May 2026, describing rats in kitchens, insects in food, and moldy trays across Georgia facilities.

These are systemwide findings, not facility-specific ones. But a 2,874-bed private prison running at 99.7 percent of capacity, with 45 deaths in GPS's registry since 2020 and a contraband phone economy that reaches elderly scam victims in two states, is the kind of place where those systemwide conditions would be expected to concentrate.

Sources

This analysis draws on Georgia Department of Corrections records, including internal audit calendars, PREA audit schedules, and mortality coding obtained by the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project through an open records request covering 2015-2021; Georgia Department of Public Health food-safety inspection reports; reporting from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, WCJB, KLTV, and The Georgia Virtue; GPS's own mortality registry and intelligence records; and accounts from families of incarcerated people at Wheeler collected by GPS staff.