Brief written October 25, 2026 from GPS Intelligence System data.(DS)

Where the Money Goes: Inside Georgia's $1.8 Billion Corrections Budget

Georgia's Department of Corrections is one of the largest line items in the state budget, and one of the least examined. The department's total appropriation peaked at $1,913,888,054 in FY2025 — an all-time high — then settled to $1,799,204,979 in the amended FY2026 budget and $1,787,672,791 for FY2027 under HB 974, the Senate Appropriations Committee substitute. Those headline numbers conceal the more consequential story: within a roughly flat top line, the state has been steadily reallocating money away from the prisons it operates and toward private contractors, medical vendors, and a surveillance apparatus that now spans ten separate technology streams. What has not moved is the spending that might change outcomes — food, education, vocational training, and reentry programming remain at fractions of a percent of the total.

This analysis draws on Georgia's enacted appropriations acts and Governor's Budget Reports, the Senate Appropriations Committee substitute for HB 974, GPS's own budget baseline and commissary investigations, Georgia Budget and Policy Institute analyses, and reporting by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Georgia Public Broadcasting.

The Peak, the Plateau, and What the Numbers Actually Say

The four-year window from FY2024 to FY2027 is the clearest view available of GDC's fiscal trajectory. Actual spending rose from $1,526,654,104 in FY2024 to $1,913,888,054 in FY2025 — a 25.4 percent increase, and the largest year-over-year jump in the visible window, roughly $387 million. The FY2026 original budget was set at $1,712,067,948, amended upward to $1,799,204,979, and FY2027 was approved at $1,787,672,791.

GPS's own budget baseline work has had to correct several widely circulated figures along the way. The "$1.8 billion" figure that appears throughout GPS reporting corresponds specifically to the FY2026 amended total, not to FY2025, which was higher. The frequently cited claim of "$634 million in new corrections appropriations — the largest single corrections funding increase in Georgia history" cannot be reconciled with the canonical line-item data: total line-item changes across the amended FY2026 and approved FY2027 budgets come to approximately $154 million combined ($87.1 million plus $67.0 million). The FY2024-to-FY2025 actual increase of roughly $387 million is the largest year-over-year increase in the window, and it still does not equal $634 million.

The composition of the budget is overwhelmingly state-funded. FY2025 actuals included $1,823,730,648 in State General Funds against just $3,309,597 in federal funds and $86,847,809 in other funds. Federal and other funds have been declining sharply — from $103,675,170 in FY2024 to $90,157,406 in FY2025, and budgeted at only $16,769,671 for FY2026 and FY2027 — placing nearly the entire funding burden on the state treasury.

State Prisons Shrink While Private Beds and Health Contracts Grow

Between FY2025 actual and FY2027 approved, the redistribution inside the GDC budget is stark. The State Prisons program — by far the largest, at $1,117,374,600 in FY2025 actual spending — was reduced to $929,889,321 for FY2027, a cut of $187,485,279 or 16.78 percent. Over the same period, Private Prisons grew from $152,648,138 to $173,541,185, an increase of $20,893,047 or 13.69 percent. The Health program grew from $389,939,841 to $427,216,930, up $37,277,089 or 9.56 percent. Offender Management grew $8,076,203, or 15.98 percent, to $58,614,564.

The private-prison line carries a specific story. The Governor's FY2027 proposal included $4,227,620 to add 160 beds at Coffee Correctional Institution and 103 beds at Wheeler Correctional Institution. The Senate Appropriations Committee rejected the expansion, saving that amount, with a stated rationale that reads as an implicit admission: "Space is not compatible with single cell needs of prison population." What the committee did approve was a $1,055,658 increase for Jenkins Correctional Institution and Riverbend Correctional Institution to fully utilize available beds at the correct tier rate added in HB 68. CoreCivic and GEO Group own and operate select facilities in the state.

Health is the fastest-growing major component. The Health program rose from $325,613,120 in FY2024 to $432,247,728 in FY2027 — a 33 percent increase in three years — and now represents roughly 24 percent of the total budget. In FY2027 alone, the Senate approved a $32,637,565 increase for the physical health contract (reduced from the Governor's proposed $47.9 million), a $12,127,034 increase for the mental health contract — approximately six times the Governor's proposed $1.9 million — a $3,681,328 pharmacy per diem increase, and a $1,498,347 dental contract increase. The amended FY2026 budget had already carried $38,869,898 for the physical health contract, including $15,000,000 specifically for outside-the-wire care and $12,923,790 to open additional beds.

The scale of the health contract is best understood through the litigation around it. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that GDC awarded a $2.4 billion contract for prison health care to Centurion Health without the competitive process required under state law, according to a lawsuit filed by the incumbent contractor, Wellpath. Georgia Public Broadcasting reported that GDC did not post a request for proposal — normally required for services over $100,000 — and was instead permitted to sign with Centurion under the same 2021 bid, citing emergency procurement. Wellpath, which had provided care since 2021 after GDC privatized a function that Georgia Correctional HealthCare at Augusta University had performed for 23 years, alleged in its complaint that it spent $40 million of its own money over three years to uphold the state's constitutional obligation, and that it was not given a fair chance to negotiate.

A Surveillance Apparatus Built Line by Line

The clearest pattern in the GDC budget is the accumulation of surveillance and security technology across overlapping appropriations, vendor relationships, and federal grants since at least 2017 — distributed in a way that obscures the total investment. GPS's analysis of the Overwatch and Logistics (OWL) Unit identified ten distinct technology streams feeding into a single command center: officer tablets, AeroDefense/AirWarden drone detection, managed access, electronic health records, Taser 10, the OWL Unit itself, mail screening, body-worn cameras, the Digital Forensics Unit, and the Data Intelligence Advanced Integration system.

The line items are concrete. The amended FY2025 budget carried $35,027,675 for managed access and drone detection — the single largest technology line item, supporting cell phone interdiction across all 35 of Georgia's operational state prisons — plus $7,224,150 for body cameras and tasers, $2,506,740 for officer tablets, $913,248 for off-site mail screening, and $15,048,183 for department-owned Electronic Health Records. The amended FY2026 budget added $13,387,475 more for managed access and drone detection, $2,450,500 for public safety supplies and equipment, $964,650 in start-up costs for six canine handlers, and $137,802 for three security threat group regional coordinators. FY2027 added $5,521,230 for additional OWL technology and $1,238,495 to annualize OWL personnel, $1,750,000 for data intelligence maintenance, $1,118,244 for an offender call monitoring contract, $409,040 for five managed access analysts, and $377,168 for three security threat group coordinators.

The capital side is larger still. The Governor's AFY2026 budget proposed $84,661,607 for fire alarm replacement, perimeter security and lighting, thermal cameras, and CCTV statewide, and $89,596,895 for design and construction to replace locking controls statewide — the latter reduced to $84,596,895 in the House, Senate, and Conference Committee versions. A separate $34,262,515 was appropriated in AFY2025 for locking control system replacement at various facilities, alongside $248,062 for a locking "tiger team" and $80,220,240 for four 126-bed modular correctional units. Those three AFY2025 lines sum to $114,730,817, matching the amount GDC's FY2025 Annual Report lists under "Locking Control Systems and Support."

Georgia State Representative Dale Washburn described the OWL function in a March 2025 legislative recap of HB 67: body cameras and tasers "will be linked to an Over Watch Logistics Unit (OWL), funded at $7.2 million, that will continuously monitor security cameras across the state, enabling a rapid response to disturbances."

Food at 55 Cents a Meal

Against that backdrop, the food line is almost invisible. GDC's Food and Farm Operations program was funded at $31,748,617 in FY2025 actual spending, $31,137,154 in the amended FY2026 budget, and $31,261,736 for FY2027 — a reduction of $486,881, or 1.53 percent, across the window. Computed against a population basis of 51,871, that works out to $1.65 per person per day, or $0.55 per meal.

The comparison to the department's own history is not flattering. A 2015 Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation documented GDC paying Aramark $2.973 per day per prisoner at two state prisons — roughly $0.99 per meal in 2015 dollars, or about $1.34 adjusted for cumulative inflation to 2026. GPS's baseline analysis characterizes the current $0.54 to $0.55 per-meal figure as a real-terms decline of approximately 60 percent, while noting that the 2015 figure was contract-specific at two facilities and the current figure is system-wide, so the comparison is not perfectly clean. Against the American Correctional Association's recommended approximately $3.66 per meal, GDC's spending is roughly 14.8 percent of standard; meeting it at current population would require approximately $211 million a year, about 6.8 times current spending.

The Senate Appropriations Committee rejected House-approved increases of $850,000 for farm equipment and $4,900,000 for food service contract increases in Food and Farm Operations, while approving $364,749 for four food service modular units. The FY2027 approved budget also carries $528,167 for food contracts in State Prisons.

Education Buried Inside a $900 Million Envelope

Education is not a standalone line item in GDC's budget. It is embedded within the State Prisons appropriation — which ranges from roughly $901 million to $938 million across the two budget years — with no dedicated allocation visible inside that envelope. GPS's baseline work flags that GDC's total education spending across all line items remains unresolved in published documentation, which means no precise per-inmate education figure for Georgia can be calculated.

What is visible is small. The FY2025 budget included $172,000 to increase funds for state technical college system vocational education contracts — approximately $3.44 per active incarcerated person per year against 47,282 active inmates. The amended FY2025 budget included $1.2 million to expand contracts for technical and vocational education programs and purchase related equipment; FY2026 carried $805,000. The amended FY2026 budget provided $93,672 for high school diploma program staff for accreditation, and the Governor's FY2027 proposal carried $953,033 for required staff to meet accreditation requirements.

The Senate cut that last figure by $104,000 and directed GDC to "explore virtual high school options" rather than staffing-based delivery. The combined two-cycle investment in expanded high school diploma programming comes to approximately $942,705 — not the approximately $1.3 million that full adoption of the Governor's proposal would have produced. The Senate also eliminated all funding for Metro Reentry programming, reducing it to $0 from the Governor's proposed $39,786, and did not continue the $150,000 Autry State Prison peer-led pilot funded in FY2026.

Set against these numbers, the new rehabilitation investment across both budget cycles is approximately $1,225,705. GPS's canonical surveillance-to-rehabilitation ratio, computed from line-item changes, is approximately 22 to 1 — substantially lower than the 46-to-1 figure GPS published previously, but still a ratio that describes a department spending twenty-two dollars on watching people for every dollar it spends on programming.

The Money That Never Enters the Budget

Two revenue streams flow to GDC outside the appropriations process entirely. The first is telecommunications. GDC's contract with Securus Technologies specifies a commission rate of 59.6 percent of gross revenue paid to the department — among the highest in the nation, against a national average of roughly 43 percent. In 2019, GDC received $8,062,200.60 in annual commissions; in 2022, $7.04 million. The contract also included a one-time $4,000,000 signing bonus to GDC, a minimum monthly guarantee of $325,000, and a Forensics Lab at $68,000 per month — $816,000 a year — staffed with two intake specialists, three digital forensics technicians, six intelligence analysts, one MAS intelligence analyst, and one intelligence operations program manager.

The second is commissary. GPS's investigation of twenty high-volume commissary staples documented markups ranging from competitive with retail to ten times retail cost, with markups of 83 to 1,150 percent above retail prices. Generic ibuprofen costs inmates $4.00 for 20 to 24 tablets that sell for $0.40 to $0.48 at Walmart. A 16-ounce jar of peanut butter costs $5.60 against $2.18 for Walmart's Great Value brand. A 3-ounce packet of ramen costs $0.90 against $0.15 at Walmart in bulk. The state's own vendor costs are frequently above retail: Georgia pays $2.60 per jar of peanut butter, 59 percent above Sam's Club retail, and $1.07 to $1.81 per can of tuna when Sam's Club sells at $0.83 to $0.91.

Where these revenues land is not publicly documented. GPS has flagged the GDC inmate welfare fund — the account into which commissary and telecommunications commissions typically flow — as an open records target, and notes that how GDC allocates the $8 million-plus in annual commission revenue has not been publicly reported. The aggregate amount Georgia families pay across all communication services has never been publicly reported either.

What the Spending Bought

The fiscal story cannot be separated from the outcomes it purchased. Georgia added roughly $700 million to its corrections budget between FY2022 and FY2026. Over the same period, according to GPS's accountability analysis, prison homicides rose from 8 annually to over 100, total deaths set records in consecutive years, staffing reached emergency levels at the majority of prisons, 29 of 34 facilities degraded to need critical upgrades, and the U.S. Department of Justice concluded that the state violates the Eighth Amendment by failing to protect incarcerated people from violence.

The spending was overwhelmingly operational — staffing, repairs, technology — rather than structural. It did not fund population reduction, parole expansion, geriatric release, reclassification, or independent oversight. Georgia has no prison ombudsman and no independent inspector general for corrections.

The human ledger behind those appropriations is not abstract. Marcus Walker died January 10, 2026, at Wilcox State Prison at age 20; GPS's registry lists the cause as Homicide. Torrey Wayne Forrester died July 1, 2024, at Washington State Prison at age 41; GPS's registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. Reginald Jerome Jacobs Jr. died February 6, 2023, at Calhoun State Prison at age 24; the registry lists Deliberate Indifference. James Merritt Byrd died January 23, 2022, at Effingham County Prison at age 30; the registry lists Medical Neglect. Brandon Allen Peters died November 23, 2020, at Georgia State Prison at age 44; the registry lists Medical Neglect.

Four earlier deaths appear in the historical record series — the Department's own cause coding, obtained by the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project through an open records request, and not autopsy findings. Agnes Bohannon died September 18, 2019, at Arrendale State Prison at age 59, coded by GDC as "Undetermined." Jimmy Lucero died June 30, 2016, at Augusta State Medical Prison at age 20, coded by GDC as "Natural." Bonnie Rocheleau died March 19, 2015, at Pulaski State Prison, coded by GDC as "Other." The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported settlements connected to three of these deaths: $1.5 million finalized in 2023 in the Bohannon matter, $550,000 in the Lucero matter, and $925,000 finalized in 2018 in the Rocheleau matter.

GPS has independently tracked 1,918 deaths in GDC custody since 2020 — a figure that is always a floor, since GDC reports deaths roughly two months late.

What the Budget Does Not Show

The most persistent feature of Georgia's corrections budget is what cannot be seen in it. GDC's per-inmate operating cost as calculated by the department itself — separating facility-only operating cost from administrative overhead, parole supervision, and capital outlay — has not been produced. Private prison contract spending requires confirmation through the Department of Administrative Services contract database. The specific procurement vehicle for the $35 million managed access deployment is not publicly visible. The Data Intelligence Advanced Integration system, funded at $1.95 million in FY2026, has no public description beyond its budget line and a single mention in April 2025 Board minutes. The GDC-OWL WiFi network appears nowhere in any budget document, board minutes, or procurement record under that name.

The state has also been willing to spend where the record is thin. Georgia paid $130 million to purchase the McRae Correctional Facility from CoreCivic in 2022, then budgeted $25,657,146 in FY2024 to open it — a figure the Governor's Budget in Brief lists under the State Prisons program. The amended FY2024 budget appropriated $436,753,665 for construction of a new state prison in Davisboro, Washington County. Balfour Beatty was awarded a contract valued at approximately $320 million by the Georgia State Financing and Investment Commission for a new state prison. NELSON Worldwide describes the Davisboro project as an 850,000-square-foot, $740 million facility accommodating 1,910 Level 4 and 5 residents.

In January 2025, Governor Kemp announced more than $600 million in additional corrections funding. The Georgia Budget and Policy Institute's Ray Khalfani observed that "Georgia's accelerated pace of prison spending is in tandem with its accelerated pace of growth in criminal legal system policies that place more Georgians under carceral control and debt." The budget documents bear that out: the money is committed, the population is not shrinking, and the line items that might alter either fact remain where they have always been — at the bottom, in the rounding error.

Sources

This analysis draws on Georgia's enacted general appropriations acts and Governor's Budget Reports for FY2024 through FY2027, including HB 68, HB 915, HB 973, and the Senate Appropriations Committee substitute to HB 974; GDC annual reports and Board of Corrections minutes; GPS's budget baseline series, commissary investigation, OWL Unit analysis, and mortality registry; Georgia Budget and Policy Institute budget primers and analyses; reporting by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Georgia Public Broadcasting; and federal and state audit records, including Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts examinations and the U.S. Department of Justice's findings report on Georgia prisons.