Budget & Spending

The Budget Surge: Funding a System in Crisis

The Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) budget has undergone a dramatic expansion, climbing from $1.53 billion in actual expenditures in FY2024 to a peak of $1.91 billion in FY2025, before settling at $1.78 billion in the FY2027 approved budget, according to the GDC Budget Baseline FY2025–FY2027 collection. The FY2026 amended budget of $1.80 billion included $634 million in new corrections spending approved between January and May 2025—the largest single-year infusion in state history, as documented by Georgia's $600 Million Prison Spending Infusion collection. Healthcare costs are a major driver: the GDC healthcare allocation reached $345.8 million, backed by a $2.4 billion, 9-year contract with Centurion Health effective July 2024. Healthcare contract increases alone totaled $169 million since FY2022, according to the Aging Prison Population collection.

Despite this fiscal surge, Georgia continues to incarcerate people at the 7th highest rate nationally—881 per 100,000 residents, higher than any country except El Salvador, according to the Recidivism & Reentry Failures in Georgia collection. The FY2025 budget, the highest on record, coincided with unprecedented mortality: Georgia Prisoners' Speak identified 333 deaths in calendar year 2024—the highest annual toll ever recorded—and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution confirmed at least 100 homicides, far exceeding GDC's acknowledged count of 66, as reported in the Gang Separation as Violence Reduction Strategy collection. Even in death, the aging crisis is unmistakable: 57.4% of all deaths in the GPS Mortality Database occurred in inmates aged 50+, and 55.6% of the 333 deaths in 2024 were in that age group, with an average age at death of 51.4, per the Aging Prison Population collection. This stark disconnect between spending and outcomes underscores a system where money flows into a broken structure without addressing the root causes of violence and mortality. The budget trajectory also reveals a pattern of emergency infusions rather than sustained, evidence-based reform.

Starvation Budgets: Prison Food and Public Health

GDC's food allocations are a stark illustration of fiscal neglect. The "Food and Farm Operations" line item remained virtually flat from FY2024 to FY2027, with actual spending of $30.9 million in FY2024 and an approved $31.3 million for FY2027, as detailed in the GDC Budget Baseline collection. Divided among approximately 52,753 inmates, this amounts to $1.61 per person per day, or just $0.54 per meal. By comparison, the American Correctional Association (ACA) recommends a standard akin to the National School Lunch Program federal reimbursement rate of roughly $3.66 per meal—meaning Georgia prisons operate at an unconscionable 14.8% of the recommended benchmark.

Even more alarming, the real‑terms value of prison food has collapsed. The same Baseline collection calculates a 60% decline since 2015, when an AJC investigation placed Aramark's per-meal cost at approximately $0.99 in 2015 dollars—the equivalent of about $1.34 today after inflation. This chronic underfunding is not without consequence. As the Prison Malnutrition Crisis collection documents, prisoners with diabetes cost 2.3 times more to treat, yet prison diets are laden with 303% of recommended sodium and 156% of recommended cholesterol—a nutritional profile that actively creates and worsens chronic disease. Nationally, healthcare spending in prisons outpaces food budgets by a 6-to-1 ratio, suggesting Georgia's starvation-level allocations may be a direct driver of ballooning healthcare liabilities. The vicious circle is now compounded by an aging prison population: 30.4% of all Georgia inmates have a chronic medical illness, 51.7% receive mental health outpatient services, and conditions such as HIV (1.33%), Hepatitis C (7.53%), and tuberculosis positivity (11.52%) impose heavy treatment burdens—all figures from the Aging Prison Population collection.

The Commissary Extraction Machine: Economic Exploitation Behind Bars

While the state starves its prison population through its food budget, the Georgia commissary system operates as a regressive extraction mechanism on the very families it is supposed to serve. A detailed analysis by the Georgia Prisoners' Speak Commissary Extraction Machine collection reveals that incarcerated people and their loved ones are charged unconscionable markups on basic necessities—from food and hygiene products to over-the-counter pain relief—with the state and its vendor pocketing the difference. The system is designed to generate revenue from a captive consumer base, extracting an estimated $3–5 million annually on just twenty common items alone, according to the collection.

Predatory pricing on essentials. Routine items carry markups that bear no relation to any reasonable wholesale or retail benchmar

The Graying Prison: Aging, Health, and Fiscal Strain

Georgia’s prison population is rapidly aging. According to the Aging Prison Population collection, 27.0% of the 47,391 active inmates in the GPS database—12,777 people—are 50 or older; 18.3% (8,694) are 55+; 11.4% (5,404) are 60+; and 2.8% (1,320) are 70+. This mirrors a national trend: the number of people 55+ in state prison custody increased 400% between 1993 and 2013, and projections estimate 400,000 people 50+ will be incarcerated by 2030—one third of the U.S. prison population. In Georgia, the aging crisis is especially concentrated among those serving life sentences: 44.6% of the state’s 8,027 lifers are 50+, and 37.5% of inmates aged 65+ are serving life sentences. The average lifer is 48.3 years old, and 72% of Georgia’s lifers are Black, though Black Georgians make up only 33% of the state population.

Soaring healthcare costs. An aging prison population is an expensive one. Georgia’s own analysis, cited in the collection, found that inmates 65+ cost $8,500 per year in medical care—nine times the $950 annual cost for those under 65. Nationally, the ACLU estimates that housing an average prisoner costs $34,135 per year, while housing a prisoner 50+ costs $68,270 per year—double the amount. Applying those rates, the collection estimates that Georgia’s 12,777 inmates aged 50+ could cost between $403.8 million (at the standard base rate) and $715.5 million (at the elderly rate) annually. The burden falls disproportionately: at Augusta State Medical Prison, 41.3% of the 1,154 inmates are 55+, and 55.2% are 50+. Statewide, 506 inmates require wheelchairs, 197 need assisted living, and 288 are unable to work.

Data from other states confirms the pattern. In the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in 2024, those 60+ accounted for 14% of the population but 27% of health system expenses, and the average annual health cost for an 80-year-old was 7.1 times that of someone under 30 ($237,325 vs. $33,411). In Alabama, the average age of the prison population has a near-perfect linear relationship (r=.88) with medical spending, and 84.4% of the variation in the average daily inmate cost can be explained by average age alone—each one-year increase in the average age raises the daily cost per inmate by $5.06, a statistically significant finding. Texas, facing similar pressures, required a supplemental appropriation of $148 million for managed health care in 2024.

The fiscal case for release—and Georgia’s failure to act. Evidence from multiple states demonstrates that releasing aging prisoners is both safe and cost-effective. California’s elderly parole process yields a re-conviction rate of just 1.8 percent. In Georgia, recidivism rates for those released at 50+ are 21.3%, and they drop to approximately 2% for releases between ages 50 and 65—far below the overall federal rate of 41%. The ACLU calculates a net savings of between $28,362 and $66,294 per year for every aging prisoner released, and Georgia’s own cost‑avoidance figures show that parole saved the state $343 million in FY2024. Daily community supervision costs only $2.89, compared to $86.61 per day for incarceration—a 30‑to‑1 ratio.

Yet Georgia’s mechanisms for releasing elderly and infirm prisoners remain drastically underused. Only five inmates are classified as terminally ill with fewer than six months to live. Medical reprieves have averaged about 61 per year over the past two decades, and in FY2024 the parole grant rate for life-sentenced individuals hit a record low of 4.5% (93 grants out of 2,046 cases considered), while the overall grant rate fell to a record low 28%. Meanwhile, 57.4% of all deaths in the GPS Mortality Database involve inmates aged 50+, and 301 people died in custody in FY2025 alone. The contrast with states that invest in robust medical release is stark: Illinois’ Joe Coleman Medical Release Act saw a 60% grant rate when applicants had legal counsel, versus 19% without, though even there one-third of applications are rejected.

The data paints an unmistakable picture: Georgia’s refusal to adopt meaningful compassionate release policies fuels both a humanitarian crisis and a massive, growing drain on the state budget. Every year of delay adds tens of millions in avoidable healthcare spending while elderly prisoners continue to fill hospital wards, wheelchairs, and graves.