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In-depth reporting on Georgia’s prison crisis — data-driven investigations, policy analysis, and the stories that need to be told.
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“Contained to One Dorm”: The Squad Left Wilcox at Noon. The Coroner Was Called at Two.
A tactical squad spent five hours turning out F2 dorm at Wilcox State Prison, then left at noon. The men were let out to shower. By two the coroner was called. GDC's own policies have four pages on the squad and no page for the hour after...
What the Videos Don’t Show
The prison videos on your feed aren't proof that the men in them can't be reached. Federal investigators read the same clips as proof of what a housing unit becomes when the state leaves it: half the posts empty, gangs deciding who sleeps where, drugs over a fence nobody watches. And the public already believes prisons don't fix anyone...
The Amplifier: How Five Unelected Officials Turned Georgia’s Prisons Into a Constitutional Crisis
Georgia's legislature wrote the sentences. Five appointees nobody elected decided how much of them people serve, and three times they turned the dial up, once by wiring their floor to judges' sentences so it rises on its own. The result is a prison system the DOJ says is unconstitutional...
When Nobody Comes: Surviving Georgia’s Prisons
Nine contributors describe what daily survival requires inside Georgia custody: boots worn into the shower, lunch carried back from breakfast, a fire alarm ringing into an empty post, and medication missed behind a locked door. Much of what keeps people alive is done by other prisoners...
Twenty Percent of the Jail
Georgia now reimburses rural county jails when more than 20 percent of their capacity is filled by people charged with delivering contraband to state prisons. Two sheriffs are in open revolt over the cost. Every dollar the state spends chases the supply chain it can see from a patrol car...
Bolted In: Georgia Prisons Lock the Fire Exits, and the State’s Own Inspectors Keep Finding Them Locked
State fire inspectors found barrel bolts on every fire exit at Ware State Prison in June and told GDC to remove them. In August they found the bolts still there, new ones on the dorm doors, empty control rooms and staff without keys. Inside Georgia's prisons, the same hardware is on the cell doors...
The Swing Space That Wasn’t: 524 New Beds, a Border-Wall Family, and No Contract Georgia Will Show
Georgia's General Assembly appropriated $86 million for modular prison units sold as temporary "swing space." GDC now calls them 524 permanent beds. The builder is owned by the Galveston family behind one of America's largest border-wall contractors. Update, September 2: the state has since produced five executed contracts with ModCorr LLC totalling $85,585,244, signed April 25, 2025. The solicitation behind them is still unaccounted for...
Pleading From a Laundry Bin: The Killing Baldwin’s Officers Were Warned About Is Now in Federal Court
Four Baldwin State Prison officers face a federal jury over the 2024 killing of Vincent Dyer — a death the complaint says they were warned about in writing the day before. GPS's registry corroborates every homicide the lawsuit lists. Discovery is open, and GDC's records are under subpoena...
The Board That Stopped Saying Yes: Georgia’s Lifer Parole Collapse, in Its Own Numbers
Georgia's parole board granted release to just 93 of 2,046 lifers in FY2024 — 4.5%. GPS compiled all 24 of the Board's own annual reports: a generation ago it granted one in five. The collapse was never announced, never explained, and never published as a rate — until now...
Nowhere to Put Him: How Georgia’s Bed Math Killed a Man Thirty Days From Home
Arthur Wimbush was killed at Phillips State Prison thirty days from release. The Chief of Security says every segregation bed was full, so there was nowhere to put a man who needed protecting. The medical examiner certified homicide. Georgia's bed math is the mechanism...
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