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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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Rampant, Yet Compliant: The Paper Trail That Hides Sexual Violence in Georgia’s Prisons
Georgia's prisons have passed 273 straight PREA audits without a single failed standard. The DOJ calls sexual abuse there "rampant." GPS examines 15,542 allegations, a 3.5% substantiation rate, and the story of Ashley Diamond to expose the gap between Georgia's paperwork and its prisons...
What’s Really Behind Georgia’s Prison Crisis?
Georgia poured $2.4 billion in new money into its prisons since 2021 — on top of $12.2 billion spent since 2020 — and bought the deadliest years in the system's history. Follow the money to see who really built the crisis, and why firing one commissioner fixes nothing...
Two Commanders Say Georgia Hides Its Prison Staffing Crisis
Two former GDC commanders — a CERT commander pushed out after a sworn warning, and a deputy warden of security who quit rather than comply — independently say Georgia hides its prison staffing collapse by manipulating the numbers it reports to the public...
The Punishment for Speaking Up in Georgia’s Prisons
In Georgia's prisons, the surest way to become a target is to use the system as designed — file a grievance, sign a lawsuit, report an assault, talk to a lawyer. A review of Georgia Prisoners' Speak's own case files shows retaliation isn't a series of accidents. It is a system, and its purpose is silence...
The Abuse Provision: Georgia’s Forgotten Prison Clause
Georgia's constitution contains a clause no other state has: a ban on abusing any person "in being arrested, while under arrest, or in prison." Written by Reconstruction delegates in 1868, cited only ten times since, it may be the most powerful untested legal tool against the prison crisis...
The Crisis Georgia’s Prison Leaders Call ‘Propaganda’
The DOJ found Georgia's prisons unconstitutional. The state's own consultant called it an emergency. A federal judge asked whether the department considers itself above the law. Georgia's corrections leaders had a different word for the crisis: propaganda...
The Georgia Prison Commander Who Warned the State
Tyler Ryals rose to emergency-response commander across three Georgia prisons, then warned leadership in a sworn statement that conditions were unconstitutional. Twelve days later the state marked him "resigned." Two months after that, the DOJ agreed with him...
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...
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