Investigations & Analysis

Featured Articles

In-depth reporting on Georgia’s prison crisis — data-driven investigations, policy analysis, and the stories that need to be told.

At Least Nineteen: The Murders the State Didn’t Prosecute

At least nineteen men have been killed by other prisoners inside Ware State Prison since 2020. Georgia's own autopsies name a suspect in eleven of the deaths. GPS could find no record that anyone was ever prosecuted...

The State Called His Death Natural. Reginald Jacobs Died of Thirst in a Prison Cell.

Reginald Jacobs Jr., 24, died of dehydration in a solitary cell at Calhoun State Prison after a lawsuit says staff shut off his water and left him for nine days. The state recorded it as a natural death — then quietly settled...

A Toothache Should Not Be a Death Sentence: The Last Three Weeks of James Byrd

James Byrd, 30, died in an Effingham County Prison isolation cell in January 2022 — three weeks after a toothache, days after staff acknowledged his infection to his family. The state's records listed no cause. Records obtained by GPS reveal a $10 million negligence claim still unresolved four years later...

Buried Alive: The Four-Year Deadline That Killed Habeas Corpus in Georgia

Georgia exempted death row from its four-year habeas deadline — the one group it gives lawyers and unlimited time. Everyone else gets four years, no attorney, and rationed law-library access to teach themselves a profession that takes seven years to learn. The deadline doesn't reject wrongful-conviction claims. It buries them unheard...

The Felon Train: How Georgia Turns Citizens into Convicts

“One in seven adults in Georgia is a felon. Do you really believe over a million people are just criminals? No. This system is rigged to keep the prisons full.”

Georgia’s justice system isn’t about justice—it’s about control. It’s about turning everyday people into lifelong convicts, feeding a machine built to profit from mass incarceration. People like Wayne Key, who spent a decade behind bars—not for violence, not for endangering others, but for the same substances now sold legally on every street corner.

The Felon Train isn’t just real—it’s running full speed, and once you’re on it, there’s almost no way off. Overcharging, forced plea deals, probation traps, and a parole board that answers to no one—it’s all designed to keep Georgia’s prisons full and its citizens powerless.

If you think this can’t happen to you, think again...

The 2,900-Calorie Menu That 53 Cents Can’t Buy

A Georgia legislator assured a constituent that state prisons serve a 2,900-calorie, dietitian-designed menu meeting "American Dietary Association" guidelines. The State's own budget funds about 53 cents a meal — and there is no American Dietary Association...

The Crime Lab: How Georgia Built Convictions on Junk Science — and Who Paid for It

For two decades Georgia's crime lab was run by a man who was not a physician or forensic pathologist, and built convictions on hair and fiber methods now known to be unreliable. At least 17 states reviewed such cases. Georgia didn't — and the guilty went free while the innocent went to prison...

The Receipts Were Always the Point

Courage didn't end the injustices we teach as history — documentation did. From John Howard to Ida B. Wells, reformers won by making suffering impossible to deny. GPS is that method turned on Georgia's prisons, with the entire record now given freely to the world...
A corroded, rust-stained institutional faucet drips discolored water beside aging exposed pipes in a decaying state facility.

There’s Nothing Wrong with the Water

Georgia's public-health agency confirmed Legionella in a South Georgia prison's water. Thirty days later, the corrections department told the men living there — in writing — that no outbreak existed. The contamination, and the antibiotics, followed them to the next prison...

Reopen the Doors — Normalization

Every harm this series documented flows from one choice: Georgia warehouses people instead of preparing them to return. There is a proven alternative — normalization — that is humane, far cheaper, and may be legally required. The finale of End the Warehouse, and the blueprint out...

Have information about conditions inside Georgia’s prisons? Help us investigate.

Report a Problem