Budget & Spending

Budget Trajectory: From $1.5 Billion to Nearly $1.8 Billion in Three Years

GDC's fiscal footprint has expanded dramatically in a short period. Actual expenditures in FY2024 were $1,526,654,104 — with $1,422,978,935 coming from State General Funds — according to confirmed data from the Fiscal Impact of Post-Conviction Reform in Georgia and GDC Mission vs. Reality collections. By FY2025, actual expenditures had jumped to $1,913,888,054, with $1,823,730,648 from State General Funds, representing a 25% increase in a single year. The Amended FY2026 budget settled at $1,799,204,979, and the FY2027 approved budget totals $1,778,839,635 — comprising $1,762,261,281 in State General Funds, $809,589 in Federal Funds, and $15,960,082 in Other Funds (GDC Budget FY2026-FY2027; FY2027 GDC Approved Budget — HB 974).

The FY2025 spike is not organic growth — it reflects the emergency $434 million infusion approved in the Amended FY2025 budget, followed by an additional $200 million in FY2026, for a combined $634 million in new corrections spending approved between January and May 2025 (Georgia's $600 Million Prison Spending Infusion). The Georgia General Assembly described this as a crisis response. What remains unanswered is why, after years of documented deterioration, the crisis only triggered emergency funding in 2025 — and whether the funding is being directed at root causes or at the same structural failures that produced the crisis in the first place.

A notable fiscal shift in the FY2027 budget is the introduction of $8,641,839 from the Opioid Settlement Trust Fund — split between Detention Centers ($2,547,035) and State Prisons ($6,094,804). Budget analysts should note this is characterized as a shift from State General Funds rather than new spending (FY2027 GDC Approved Budget — HB 974). While the opioid crisis in Georgia prisons is real — at least 49 drug overdose deaths occurred between 2019 and 2022 alone, up from just 2 in 2018, with at least 5 more confirmed through mid-2023 (Georgia Prison Drug Research) — redirecting settlement funds away from community treatment to correctional operations raises serious accountability questions.

The Spending-Outcomes Mismatch: More Money, More Deaths

The most damning finding in GDC's budget record is not the size of its expenditures — it is the inverse relationship between spending and outcomes. As the budget grew from $1.5 billion to nearly $1.9 billion, homicides inside Georgia prisons climbed from 8 in 2018 to over 100 in 2024 according to Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporting, while Georgia Prisoners' Speak documented 333 total deaths in GDC custody in 2024 — the deadliest year in state history, with 185 of those deaths (55.6%) among inmates age 50 and older and an average age at death of 51.4 (Gang Separation as Violence Reduction Strategy; The Case for Decarceration in Georgia; Aging Prison Population & Compassionate Release). The DOJ's October 2024 investigation documented 142 homicides between 2018 and 2023 alone (Legal Access in Georgia Prisons). Georgia's prison death rate stands at 584 per 100,000 inmates — 70% above the national average of 344 per 100,000 — with a homicide rate 8 times the national figure. An additional 301 deaths occurred in FY2025 custody (Aging Prison Population & Compassionate Release).

This is not a funding-deficiency problem in the conventional sense. Georgia incarcerates people at the 7th highest rate nationally — 881 per 100,000 residents — while maintaining a prison population of approximately 51,365 people as of December 2024 (GDC Inmate Statistical Profile; Georgia Incarceration Trends; Recidivism & Reentry Failures in Georgia). The daily cost of incarceration is $86.61 per person — compared to $2.89 per day for community supervision, a 30-to-1 ratio — with an annual per-inmate cost of $31,612 (Aging Prison Population & Compassionate Release). Yet assaults on inmates rose 54% and assaults on staff rose 77% between 2019 and 2024 (Staffing Crisis & Correctional Officer Turnover). The DOJ further found staffing below 50% statewide and below 30% at ten individual facilities. The system is not producing safety — it is consuming resources while manufacturing violence.

The contradiction extends to healthcare. Nationally, healthcare consumes 19% of daily incarceration costs compared to just 4% for food — a 6-to-1 ratio (Prison Malnutrition Crisis). In Georgia, approximately 14,000 inmates (27% of the population) receive mental health outpatient services, while 51.7% of all inmates receive some form of mental health outpatient care. GDC's total healthcare allocation is $345.8 million — approximately $19 per day per inmate — backed by a $2.4 billion, nine-year contract with Centurion Health effective July 2024. Healthcare contract increases alone have totaled $169 million since FY2022: $72 million in FY2025, $66 million in the Amended FY2025, and $31 million in FY2026. Despite this spending, the DOJ found that only approximately 10% of Hepatitis C and HIV-positive inmates were receiving treatment — a population that includes 1,807 Hepatitis C-positive inmates (7.53% of the population) and 640 HIV-positive inmates (1.33%). Georgia ranked 44th of 50 states in per-prisoner healthcare spending as recently as 2017, at $3,610 versus a $5,720 national median (Pew 2017). The gap between contract value and documented care delivery is not a rounding error — it is a system-level failure.

The Hidden Cost Driver: An Aging Prison Population

Embedded within GDC's budget trajectory is a structural cost driver that has received almost no public attention: the rapid aging of Georgia's prison population and the system's near-total failure to manage that demographic reality through any mechanism other than continued incarceration until death.

Of 47,391 active inmates in the GPS database, 12,777 (27.0%) are age 50 or older — more than 1 in 4. That share climbs through each age band: 8,694 (18.3%) are 55 or older; 5,404 (11.4%) are 60 or older; 2,904 (6.1%) are 65 or older; 1,320 (2.8%) are 70 or older; 548 (1.2%) are 75 or older; and 217 (0.5%) are 80 or older. Georgia's 27% rate for people 50 and older exceeds the national average, and nationally the trajectory points only upward — an estimated 400,000 people age 50 and older will be incarcerated by 2030, representing one-third of the total U.S. prison population. The number of people 55 and older in state prison custody increased 400% between 1993 and 2013 alone (Aging Prison Population & Compassionate Release).

The racial dimension of this aging population cannot be ignored. Georgia's overall prison population is 59.6% Black and 35.4% white, while Black Georgians represent only 33% of the state's general population. Among the aging lifer population specifically, 72% are Black. Of the 8,027 total lifers in GDC custody — with a mean age of 48.33 — 3,528 (44.6%) are already 50 or older. Among inmates 65 and older, 37.5% are serving life sentences, compared to 12.8% of those under 55. The 2,256 inmates serving life without parole include 779 (34.5%) who are already 50 or older (Aging Prison Population & Compassionate Release).

The cost implications are severe and largely unacknowledged in GDC's public budget presentations. Inmates age 65 and older cost approximately $8,500 per year in medical expenses alone — roughly nine times the $950 annual medical cost for inmates under 65, according to GDC's own Aging-Inmate Population Project data. Nationally, the ACLU calculates the average annual cost of incarcerating someone age 50 and older at $68,270 — double the standard rate of $34,135. Applying that figure to Georgia's approximately 12,180 people age 50 and older yields an estimated $831.6 million per year — roughly 46% of GDC's entire budget consumed by 24% of its population, with a differential cost above younger prisoners of approximately $415.8 million annually. Virginia found that 9% of its inmates — the elderly cohort — account for 86% of total medical costs. Florida found that 16% of its prisoners (those 50 and older) account for 40.1% of all medical episodes and 47.9% of hospital days. Federal Bureau of Prisons data shows that the highest-percentage aging facilities spend five times more per person overall and fourteen times more on medication than lower-aging facilities (Aging Prison Population & Compassionate Release).

GPS Research Collection #52 estimates the total healthcare burden for Georgia's 10,000-plus inmates over 50 at approximately $85 million annually. The full cost picture — housing, security, medical, and programming — is substantially larger. GDC has not published a public aging-population cost analysis. That omission is itself a policy choice.

These costs are being incurred in facilities structurally unprepared to house elderly people. Georgia's prisons were not designed for aging populations: bunk beds, inaccessible showers, extreme temperatures, and long distances without wheelchair ramps are standard. An OIG review found that a nationwide ADA compliance review had not been completed since 1996. Currently, 506 inmates are wheelchair-bound (1.04%), 197 require assisted living, 288 cannot work, and 332 require ambulance transport. Only 5 inmates are classified as terminally ill with fewer than six months to live under GDC's own PULHESDWIT scale — a number that strains credibility against a backdrop of 333 deaths in 2024 alone and reflects the structural gatekeeping embedded in the classification system. Cognitive impairment affects 15% of incarcerated people 55 and older, compared to 7% in the community — and the routines of prison life themselves, including dropping to the floor for alarms and standing in long medication lines, are associated with depression and suicidal ideation in older inmates (Aging Prison Population & Compassionate Release).

The Compassionate Release Gap: A Fiscal and Moral Failure

Georgia has two mechanisms for releasing medically compromised or elderly inmates before their sentences expire: medical reprieve and parole due to disability or advanced age. By every measurable standard, both have functionally collapsed — and the fiscal consequences of that collapse are now embedded in GDC's budget baseline.

Between 2001 and 2020, Georgia granted 1,224 medical reprieves in total — approximately 61 per year. By 2019 that number had fallen to 25, and to 41 in 2020. In FY2024, 2,046 life cases were considered for parole and 93 were granted — a 4.5% grant rate. The overall parole grant rate in FY2024 was 28%, a record low, down from 38% in 2019. No hearings are held, and no written explanations are provided for denials. In FY2025, total releases across all categories numbered 13,724, with only 2,951 (21.5%) age 50 or older and just 210 (1.5%) age 70 or older — despite the fact that people 50 and older constitute 27% of the incarcerated population and 57.4% of all deaths in custody (Aging Prison Population & Compassionate Release).

The structural barriers to release are not accidental. The GDC Medical Reprieve Coordinator controls the gateway to reprieve consideration — a structural conflict of interest in which the agency responsible for incarcerating someone also controls initial access to the process for releasing them. FAMM's October 2022 Report Card gave Georgia failing grades on both mechanisms: medical reprieve criteria were found "unnecessarily and cruelly strict," and the parole-due-to-disability pathway received a failing score for the absence of any meaningful implementation. Post-release medical reprieve conditions include 24/7 house arrest — with a provision that if the recipient's medical condition improves, return to prison is ordered. This creates a documented perverse incentive discouraging medical improvement and treatment compliance (Aging Prison Population & Compassionate Release).

The public safety justification for this approach is not supported by evidence. The recidivism rate for people released at age 50 and older is 21.3%, compared to 67.6% for those under 21 and 41% overall for federal releases. For people released between ages 50 and 65, that rate drops to approximately 2%. California's elderly parole program — covering people 50 and older who have served 20 or more years — operates at a recidivism rate of less than 3%. Louisiana reports approximately 0% recidivism for people who have served 26 or more years. When the federal government released more than 11,000 elderly and medically vulnerable prisoners under the CARES Act, only 17 were arrested for new crimes (0.15%) and only 8 returned for new criminal conduct. Compassionate release nationally carries a 3.5% recidivism rate compared to 41% for the general federal prison population. Twenty-three states plus the District of Columbia have elderly or geriatric parole statutes — Georgia is not among them in practice (Aging Prison Population & Compassionate Release).

The fiscal savings from a functioning release mechanism would be substantial. The ACLU calculates net savings of $66,294 per year for each elderly person released. Scenario modeling for Georgia projects: releasing 1,000 to 1,500 people age 65 and older with 20 or more years served would save $66.3 to $99.4 million per year; releasing 2,000 to 3,000 people age 60 and older with 15 or more years served would save $132.6 to $198.9 million; releasing 3,000 to 5,000 people age 55 and older with 10 or more years served would save $198.9 to $331.5 million annually. Virginia demonstrated the concept at smaller scale: releasing 62 eligible elderly prisoners saved $6.6 million. Columbia University projects $522 million per year in savings from elder parole in New York alone. If Georgia were to expand access to Medicaid-funded community care through CMS Section 1115 waivers, an estimated $4.7 billion nationally could shift annually from state corrections budgets to federal healthcare programs — a fiscal realignment Georgia is currently foreclosing by warehousing its aging population inside facilities rated 44th in the country for per-prisoner healthcare spending (Aging Prison Population & Compassionate Release).

Georgia approved $634 million in new corrections spending in 2025. In that same period, the parole grant rate hit a record low, compassionate release criteria remained among the strictest in the nation, and 57.4% of all deaths in custody continued to occur among people age 50 and older. The state is spending more to produce worse outcomes for a population it could, at lower cost and with lower recidivism risk, release. That is not a crisis response — it is a policy choice with a compounding price tag.