Not long ago — families tell GPS, and GDC’s own older policy documents confirm — you could pack a box at your own kitchen table: a few shirts, some socks, a jar of peanut butter, and mail it to your loved one in a Georgia prison. It cost a trip to the post office.
Today she shops from a catalog. One state-approved vendor sells her a single T-shirt for $4.55 to $9.25, socks for $1.35 a pair — plus shipping, plus Georgia sales tax — and only inside narrow windows: one food package per quarter, capped at 15 pounds or $100, whichever runs out first; one clothing package a month. She cannot mail the box herself anymore. The vendor ships it.
The vendor is Union Supply, a company Aramark bought in June 2022. The goods are packed for delivery by incarcerated women at Lee Arrendale State Prison. And GPS’s records requests and review of public documents have found no disclosure of what the state earns from it.
How the pipeline was built
For decades, Georgia families could send packages directly — food, clothing, shoes — on regular schedules. That era ended. GDC moved to a vendor-only model: packages may come only from an approved private seller. Access Securepak held the franchise first; Union Supply replaced it on January 1, 2017, and has held it since 1.
The rules, set by GDC policy (SOP 206.01), ration the lifeline: food packages four times a year, during quarterly windows; property packages once a month; shoes capped at $75 retail; no ordering by the incarcerated person themselves — the order must come from family or an approved contact.
Georgia never announced this as a revenue decision. But look at the money. GDC’s payments to Aramark — Union Supply’s new owner — began climbing almost immediately after the acquisition: $2.8 million in FY2022, then $6.1 million, $11.2 million, and $14.5 million by FY2025 (GPS analysis of Open Georgia payments). GPS’s analysis of the executed kitchen contract suggests roughly half of the FY2025 figure is kitchen service; the package program accounts for the rest.
The structure is the point: a captive customer (the family), a sole supplier (the vendor), and a silent partner (the state) — whose share of every T-shirt and jar of peanut butter has never been disclosed.
The labor inside it
Union Supply’s Georgia orders are fulfilled in part by the same system that consumes them. Georgia Correctional Industries lists an “Offender Package Program” at Lee Arrendale State Prison — Georgia’s largest women’s prison — where incarcerated women package food and property orders for delivery to the facilities their own families shop from.
Whether those women are paid is a matter of dispute. GCI points to a federal Prison Industry Enhancement program that carries a “prevailing wage.” Labor researchers document that Georgia’s version allows deductions of up to 80 percent — and that most of GCI’s industry work pays nothing at all. GPS has filed a records request for the Arrendale packaging line’s roster and pay records. GDC has not answered.
The price of a captive customer
The goods themselves are unremarkable — the same shirts, socks, and snacks any store sells. What is remarkable is the pricing structure: basics sold one at a time, at single-unit markups, to customers who may not comparison-shop because there is no one else to buy from. GPS reviewed an archived Georgia Union Supply package catalog and found:
- A single T-shirt: $4.55–$9.25 (multipacks at retail run $2–3 a shirt)
- Socks: $1.35 a pair
- Plus shipping. Plus Georgia sales tax.
On goods families were once allowed to mail in for free.
Other states at least say what the vendor pays them. The Marshall Project has reported Union Supply paying West Virginia’s corrections system a commission of about 17 percent of package sales. Georgia’s commission, if any, is not public. The contract that would show it has never been competitively bid or published — the program runs through GCI’s preferred-source structure, off the procurement registry entirely.
What Georgia won’t say
Three questions now sit with GDC’s records office:
- The ban. When, exactly, did Georgia end direct family packages — and who decided? The policy revision history is not public.
- The commission. Does the state take a cut of package sales, and how much?
- The wages. What are the women at Arrendale paid to pack the boxes?
Georgia’s incarcerated people did not choose this market. Their families were assigned to it.
Call to Action: What You Can Do
Georgia families are forced to buy from one vendor at marked-up prices while the state hides its cut. Payments hit $14.5 million last year. If you read this and scroll past, you're accepting that a captive market with no disclosed commission is fine. Share this story.
Spread the Word — It Takes One Click
Awareness without action changes nothing. Here’s how you can help push for accountability and real reform:
Join the GPS Advocacy Network — Sign up at https://gps.press/become-an-advocate/ and we’ll advocate on your behalf every week. GPS identifies your state legislators, crafts personalized letters on the most pressing prison issues, and sends them directly to the representatives who represent you. You receive a copy of every letter. It takes two minutes to sign up — we handle the rest.
Send a 60-Second Message — Pick an issue, get a ready-to-edit message with the verified facts already in it, and email your state House representative and senator directly from your own inbox at https://gps.press/send-a-message/. No signup, nothing stored — it takes about a minute.
Tell My Story — Are you or a loved one affected by Georgia’s prison system? GPS publishes first-person accounts from incarcerated people and their families. Submit your story at https://gps.press/category/tellmystory/ and help the world understand what’s really happening behind the walls.
Contact Your Representatives — Your state legislators control GDC’s budget, oversight, and the laws that created these failures. Find your Georgia legislators at https://gps.press/find-your-legislator/ or call Governor Kemp at (404) 656-1776 or the GDC Commissioner at (478) 992-5246.
Demand Media Coverage — Contact newsrooms at the AJC, local TV stations, and national criminal justice outlets. More coverage means more pressure.
Amplify on Social Media — Share this article and tag @GovKemp, @GDC_Georgia, and your local representatives. Use #GAPrisons, #PrisonReform, #GeorgiaPrisonerSpeak.
Message the Board of Corrections — The citizen board that oversees the GDC publishes no contact details for its members. GPS built the missing front door: pick a board member and a policy message and send it from your own email at https://gps.press/write-the-board/.
File Public Records Requests — Georgia’s Open Records Act gives every citizen the right to request incident reports, death records, staffing data, medical logs, and financial documents. Start with the GPS Action Toolkits at https://gps.press/toolkits/ — the Open Records Toolkit walks you through what to ask for, gives you ready-to-file request templates, and tells you what to do when the state says no. File directly with GDC at https://georgiadcor.govqa.us/WEBAPP/_rs/SupportHome.aspx.
Attend Public Meetings — The Georgia Board of Corrections and legislative committees hold public meetings. Your presence is noticed.
Contact the Department of Justice — File civil rights complaints at https://civilrights.justice.gov. Federal oversight has forced abusive systems to change before.
Support Organizations Doing This Work — Donate to or volunteer with Georgia-based prison reform groups fighting for change on the ground.
Vote — Research candidates’ positions on criminal justice. Primary elections often determine outcomes in Georgia.
Contact GPS — If you have information about conditions inside Georgia’s prisons, reach us securely at GPS.press.
Further Reading
Georgia’s Prison Commissary Extortion
The in-prison store: a $1.00 state contract, a 54–323% markup on basics, and 30.5% of sales remitted to GDC’s Central Office.
The 2,900-Calorie Menu That 53 Cents Can’t Buy
The appropriated food line works out to about 53 cents a meal — so families fill the gap, at captive-market prices.
Dunked, Stacked, and Served: Why Georgia Prison Trays Are Making People Sick
Inside the kitchens that produce the trays — and the sanitation scores that don’t match them.
Two Ways to Starve: Why Georgia’s Prison Deaths Don’t Say “Hunger”
How underfeeding hides in the data — and why commissary and packages became survival lines.
Federal Nutrition Guidelines vs. Georgia Prison Food Reality
What federal standards say a prison meal should be, measured against what Georgia actually serves.
GPS Intelligence System
The GPS Intelligence System maintains living research profiles that aggregate data, news, settlements, and analysis on Georgia’s prisons and the issues defining them. The profiles below provide deeper context for the issues raised in this article:
The channels between families and the people inside — mail, packages, money, and the steady monetization of each.
Georgia’s largest women’s prison — and the site of the state industry’s package-fulfillment line.
Explore the Data
GPS makes GDC statistics accessible to the public through several resources:
- GPS Statistics Portal — Interactive dashboards translating complex GDC reports into accessible formats, updated within days of official releases.
- GPS Lighthouse AI — Ask questions about Georgia’s prison system and get answers drawn from GPS’s investigative archive and data analysis.
- GPS llms.txt — A single machine-readable index of every GPS data resource, published using the open llms.txt standard. Point any AI tool (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity) at this URL and the model can navigate to facility profiles, intelligence briefs, mortality records, statistics, and the full investigative archive — no other configuration needed. It is the fastest way to ground an AI conversation in verified GPS data.
For a walkthrough of how to put these resources to work with AI, see How to Use GPS Data with AI Tools — a step-by-step guide for researchers, advocates, families, and journalists analyzing Georgia prison conditions, statistics, and policy with tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.
Contact GPS at media@gps.press for access to underlying datasets used in this analysis.
About Georgia Prisoners’ Speak (GPS)
Georgia Prisoners’ Speak (GPS) is a nonprofit investigative newsroom built in partnership with incarcerated reporters, families, advocates, and data analysts. Operating independently from the Georgia Department of Corrections, GPS documents the truth the state refuses to acknowledge: extreme violence, fatal medical neglect, gang-controlled dorms, collapsed staffing, fraudulent reporting practices, and unconstitutional conditions across Georgia’s prisons.
Through confidential reporting channels, secure communication, evidence verification, public-records requests, legislative research, and professional investigative standards, GPS provides the transparency the system lacks. Our mission is to expose abuses, protect incarcerated people, support families, and push Georgia toward meaningful reform based on human rights, evidence, and public accountability.
Every article is part of a larger fight — to end the silence, reveal the truth, and demand justice.
The Architecture Is the Evidence
Georgia built prisons for 24,657. They warehouse 52,771.
Dorms tripled. Cells double- and triple-bunked. Medical, kitchens, libraries — unchanged. Every facility, every design figure, every source.
See the receipts →- GDC notice, “New Offender Package Program Provider,” 2016; archived by GPS[↩]