WOMEN’S PROBATION DETENTION CENTER

Last updated August 29, 2026.(DS)

The Women's Probation Detention Center (WPDC) sits on the grounds of Smith State Prison in Claxton, Evans County — a female probation detention center operated by the Georgia Department of Corrections. Superintendent Alicia Epperson has led the facility since June 2024, with Deputy Warden Stephanie G. Love serving as second-in-command. The facility's public profile lists no programming beyond its core detention function, and its physical plant and opening date are not documented in GPS's standing record. What follows situates the WPDC within the systemic conditions GPS has documented across Georgia's prison system — conditions that bear directly on any facility holding women in GDC custody.

A Facility Without a Public Footprint

The Women's Probation Detention Center is one of the least-documented facilities in GPS's database. The standing record confirms its location, its population (female), its host facility (Smith State Prison), and its current leadership — but nothing about when it opened, how many housing units it contains, what security classification it operates under, or what programming it offers the women detained there. That absence is itself a finding: for a facility holding women in state custody, the public record offers no account of its physical plant, its capacity, or what services — educational, vocational, religious, or treatment — are available to the people confined within it. GPS's records indicate no programming is listed for this facility.

The Systemic Context: Staffing Collapse and Its Consequences

The WPDC operates inside a correctional system that the U.S. Department of Justice concluded in October 2024 has "lost control of its facilities." GPS's systemic findings document officer vacancy rates between 49.3% and 60% systemwide for multiple years — against a national standard of no more than 10% — with acceptance rates for new hires under 15% and 82.7% of new officers leaving within their first year. Georgia ranks last of 50 states for correctional-officer pay. The DOJ's October 2024 findings letter explicitly faulted GDC for placing "too much blame on gangs and insufficient emphasis on understaffing," and both DOJ and the Guidehouse 2024 consultant assessment independently concluded that gangs effectively run multiple facilities, controlling access to phones, showers, food, and bed assignments.

For a women's detention center, this staffing collapse carries specific and documented risks. GPS has documented that sexual violence in GDC facilities is systemic — the DOJ concluded sexual assault is "rampant" and that GDC does not reasonably protect incarcerated people, including LGBTI individuals, from sexual harm. Of 456 sexual-abuse allegations recorded in 2022, only 35 were substantiated (7.7%). GDC's own consultants, PREA Auditors of America, reviewed 388 PREA investigation files in May 2022 and found that not one met the law's standards. Georgia has never submitted a PREA certification of full compliance to the U.S. Department of Justice in the law's two-decade history.

Infrastructure and Food Service: The Conditions Beneath the Surface

GPS's systemic findings document that most GDC facilities are 30-40+ years old, with deferred maintenance producing systemwide infrastructure failures: broken cell-door locks, inoperative surveillance and fire-alarm systems, mold and water failures, broken kitchen sanitization equipment, and pest infestations. The DOJ October 2024 findings, the Guidehouse 2024 assessment, and Commissioner Oliver's public "end of life" statements all corroborate the pattern. GPS treats infrastructure collapse as a force multiplier for the violence, classification, gang-control, and mortality crises documented at the facility level.

The food-service picture is equally stark. GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food (2024), with a proposed $1.60 per day in FY27 — under 60 cents per meal — versus the FDA Thrifty Food Plan estimate of roughly $10 per day for a nutritionally adequate adult diet. The state spends approximately 14 times more on medical care for incarcerated people ($432 million) than on their food. The Marshall Project independently reported on May 16, 2026, rats in kitchens, insects in food, moldy trays, and visible malnutrition across Georgia facilities, quoting GPS connecting chronic underfeeding to the violence pattern the DOJ documented.

GPS has also documented a systemic pattern of food-service sanitation failure across GDC kitchens that Department of Public Health inspection scores systematically fail to capture: tray-sanitizing dishwashers broken for sustained periods, sustained roach and rodent infestation in kitchen and serving areas, and meals served on visibly contaminated trays. The pattern is hidden from DPH scores because inspections are scheduled walkthroughs that do not assess equipment under load, and because GPS has documented professional overlap between inspectors and facility staff in small-county settings. High DPH scores at GDC facilities coexist with sustained witness reports of equipment failure and food contamination — a contradiction that is the analytical center of GPS's investigation "Dunked, Stacked, and Served."

What This Means for Women at the WPDC

The WPDC's specific conditions are not documented in GPS's public record — no mortality data, no inspection scores, no litigation, and no facility-specific investigative reporting appear in the database for this facility. But the systemic findings above are not abstractions. They describe the operating environment into which every woman detained at the WPDC is placed: a system where staffing is catastrophically thin, where sexual violence is documented as rampant and inadequately investigated, where infrastructure is failing, and where food is both nutritionally inadequate and served under sanitation conditions that GPS has documented across the system.

The absence of facility-specific data for the WPDC is not evidence that these conditions do not exist there. It is evidence that the public record has not yet captured them. GPS's intelligence system has recorded no aggregate signals meeting the minimum threshold for publication at this facility, and no deaths in GDC custody have been recorded at the WPDC in GPS's mortality database. For a facility holding women in a system where GPS has documented three women strangled in Lee Arrendale State Prison's A Unit between 2022 and 2024 — a figure exceeding the entire BJS-recorded national women-in-state-prison homicide total across 2001-2019 — the silence of the record is itself a matter of concern.

Sources

This analysis draws on GPS's systemic findings across the Georgia Department of Corrections, including documentation of staffing collapse, infrastructure failure, food-service sanitation failures, and systemic sexual violence; the October 2024 U.S. Department of Justice findings letter; the Guidehouse 2024 consultant assessment; independent reporting by The Marshall Project; and GPS's standing facility record for the Women's Probation Detention Center.