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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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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 — and no contract, award, or payment appears anywhere in the state's public records...
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...
Georgia Parole Board Rejects Constitution
In 1994, 81% of Georgia voters gave the parole board constitutional authority to parole anyone 62 or older — an exception written into the same amendment that created life without parole. Thirty-two years later, the Board has no rule, no process, and no record of ever using it once...
Death at a Locked Gate: Georgia Fences Men In, Then Locks the Only Way Out
Corey July had twenty months left on a Floyd County sentence when he was chased across the Hancock State Prison yard and cornered at a locked gate. His killer got life without parole. But Georgia built the gate, locked it, and left no one watching the corridor between...
Five Hours in a Shower Stall
Georgia's own death investigators recorded what happened to four men at Washington State Prison. A man locked alone in a shower stall to cool down. A cell unchecked for fourteen hours. A tray at 10:19 nobody rose for. In each case the response to a medical crisis was a placement, not treatment...
Eight Questions for the Next Governor
On July 25 we sent the same eight questions on Georgia's prison crisis to both nominees for governor. One campaign answered all eight in writing. The other has not responded. We publish the answers we received, without endorsement, and the same offer stands...
Georgia’s Family-Package Monopoly | GPS
Georgia ended direct family packages and funneled families to one vendor: Union Supply. Single T-shirts at $4.55–$9.25 plus shipping and tax, packed by incarcerated women at Arrendale — and the state has never disclosed its cut...
“We Did a Lot of the Breaking”: Georgia’s Top Judge Asks Lawmakers to Fix the Post-Conviction System
Georgia's Chief Justice told a new House study committee that the state's post-conviction system is broken — and that the courts broke much of it. Inside the first meeting of the Blue-Ribbon Study Committee on Criminal Post-Conviction Litigation, and what to watch as it shapes the 2027 session...
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