# How We Count > How We Count Every number Georgia Prisoners’ Speak publishes about deaths in Georgia’s prisons is checkable. This page explains exactly what our death count includes, where each figure comes from, and… **Published**: 2026-07-14 **Source**: https://gps.press/how-we-count/ **Author**: Georgia Prisoners' Speak --- # How We Count Every number Georgia Prisoners’ Speak publishes about deaths in Georgia’s prisons is checkable. This page explains exactly what our death count includes, where each figure comes from, and why the true number is always higher than the one you see. ## The count is a floor, not a total 1,847+people who have died under GDC control since January 1, 2020 — **at least**, and rising, because GDC reports deaths about two months late. This figure is re-queried live every time the page loads. We publish this number with a plus sign, and we mean it. The Georgia Department of Corrections typically reports a death **about two months after it happens**. That means people have already died whom the state has not yet reported — so the real figure is higher than this one, right now, always. When you see a recent month or a current-year total that looks low, you are usually looking at a **reporting gap, not a safety improvement**. We flag or shade any incomplete window on our charts for exactly this reason. ## Who is counted Our count is every person who died while under the control of the Georgia Department of Corrections, since January 1, 2020, to the present — regardless of where they physically died: - State prisons - Private prisons operated under GDC contract - County prisons, transition centers, probation detention centers, and RSAT programs - People who died in a hospital while in GDC custody — if the state had custody, the state owns the death - Deaths GDC has officially reported, *and* deaths reported to us by families and incarcerated people that our editors have reviewed and approved **One rule, plainly:** if GDC had control of that person, their death is in the count. ## GDC reports that someone died. It will not say why. GDC used to report cause of death. **It stopped.** The agency still acknowledges *that* people die. It no longer says *how*. And when GPS filed an Open Records request for the **historical** causes — deaths from years when GDC *was* still reporting them — **GDC refused to produce those too.** That is not a change in disclosure policy going forward. Refusing to release causes of death you already determined, for people who already died, that you already published, is a decision that **the past should stop existing**. On GPS’s accountability review of four prisons, **21 of 37 deaths** now sit in a column the state simply labels “unknown.” ### This is not our characterization. It is a federal finding. In **October 2024**, the **United States Department of Justice** concluded an **eight-year federal civil rights investigation** of Georgia’s prisons — opened in 2016, expanded in 2021, and published **October 1, 2024**. It examined this exact question — and it did the arithmetic. - GDC reported **6 homicides** for the first five months of 2024. **GDC’s own incident reports categorized at least 18 deaths as homicides** over that same period. - **Two homicides from 2021 were still classified “unknown”** in GDC’s June 2024 data — three years later — and were therefore still excluded from GDC’s official homicide count. GBI autopsy records and EMS records made both plain: one a stabbing, the other an asphyxiation after a chokehold. - A death that GDC’s *own* Office of Professional Standards internally determined to be a homicide in **February 2022** was reported publicly as “undetermined” **for two years**. - In total, DOJ identified **seven deaths from 2022** logged as undetermined or natural until 2024 — although other official records had made clear much earlier that they were homicides. **GDC’s explanation for the “unknown” category is that it is waiting on death certificates. DOJ checked. It isn’t true.** The deaths GDC published as “unknown” included deaths GDC’s own incident reports already called homicides. *The information was in the building.* GDC’s homicide-reporting practices shield the State from public accountability for homicides in the prisons. U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, October 1, 2024 A death without a cause is a death without accountability. You cannot sue over it, legislate against it, or learn from it. **You cannot even mourn it properly.** A homicide and a heart attack look identical in a column that has stopped recording the difference. **Source:** “Investigation of the Georgia Department of Corrections,” U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, October 1, 2024, pp. 55–57 [https://www.justice.gov/d9/2024-09/findings_report_-_investigation_of_georgia_prisons.pdf](https://www.justice.gov/d9/2024-09/findings_report_-_investigation_of_georgia_prisons.pdf) ## So we go and get the record ourselves ### 1. Primary death records from agencies GDC does not control **GDC stopped publishing cause of death. It cannot stop the coroners from recording it.** When someone dies in a Georgia prison, that death does not exist only in GDC’s files. It generates records held by agencies that answer to different masters — **county coroners and medical examiners** who certify the death and determine its manner, the **Georgia Bureau of Investigation**, which conducts autopsies in custodial deaths, **death certificates**, and **autopsy reports**. **GPS requests these records directly. From counties. From the GBI. One death at a time.** These are primary official documents. A death certificate is not a rumor. A GBI autopsy report is not an allegation. They are **the State of Georgia’s own findings about how a person in the State of Georgia’s custody died** — and GDC has no authority over any of them. *The Justice Department used the same records to catch GDC. When federal investigators wanted to know whether GDC’s “unknown” deaths were really unknown, they went to GBI autopsy records and EMS records — and found homicides.* ### 2. Reports from inside Incarcerated Georgians and the families of the dead tell us what they witnessed — often months before any official document exists, and sometimes about deaths where no official document ever will. That report is not open intake and it is not published automatically. **An editor reviews and approves every single one** before it enters the count or the record. In many cases the person filing the report is a GPS founder acting on a direct account from inside. Source reports frequently **arrive first and are later confirmed** by a death certificate or autopsy report we obtain. These family- and witness-sourced reports are **moderated, not unverified**. Treating them as weaker would get the story backwards: they exist because the State of Georgia deliberately stopped keeping a record the public is entitled to. **A family’s account of how their son died, later corroborated by the GBI, is not weak evidence — it is the record the state should have published in the first place.** ## The federal law that should have prevented this The **Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013** requires every state receiving federal justice assistance funds to report to the U.S. Attorney General, quarterly, on the death of any person incarcerated in a state prison or any state or local contract facility. **Cause and manner of death are required elements.** Federal guidance is explicit that “unknown” is a *placeholder* — states are obligated to go back and update the record once a cause is determined. Non-compliance carries a penalty of up to **10% of a state’s federal justice assistance grant**. But DCRA requires reporting **to the Attorney General**. It does not require telling the public, and the federal data has never been published. **So a state can satisfy Washington and tell Georgians nothing.** That is the gap this page exists to fill. **Source:** Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013, Pub. L. 113-242 [https://www.congress.gov/113/plaws/publ242/PLAW-113publ242.pdf](https://www.congress.gov/113/plaws/publ242/PLAW-113publ242.pdf) ## Showing the work is the point We hold ourselves to “every number is checkable” because our credibility on this number is the work. But showing the work here does something more: **it is itself the finding.** GPS has to reconstruct the cause of death, one family and one coroner’s office at a time, because the agency responsible for these deaths stopped writing it down. *A count assembled from grief is what accountability looks like when the state abandons the ledger.* ## What we keep out of the hard number A small number of reports name a death but cannot yet identify the person — an unnamed account of a death at a named facility, with no confirmed identity or date. We hold these out of the published figure so we never count the same death twice when GDC later reports it under a real name. They are real leads, and they are part of why the count carries a “+” — but they do not inflate the number itself. **The floor is conservative on purpose.** We also do not name living incarcerated people. Ever. People who talk to us can still be moved, and moving someone into danger is a documented form of retaliation in Georgia prisons. ## One source of truth Every surface that shows this number — the homepage, the accountability pages, our data feeds, and the AI assistant — draws from a single canonical function and re-queries it live. There is exactly one place the number comes from, so there is never more than one answer to “how many have died.” Every cause of death in our record carries its source: GDC report, death certificate, autopsy report, coroner’s determination, or source testimony. **You can always see how we know.** Methodology maintained by the GPS editorial team. The full death record is searchable in the [GDC Deaths Database](/gdc-mortality-statistics/). Deaths by facility and by the tenure of the officials who ran them are published at [Who Runs Georgia’s Prisons](/intelligence/accountability/). For the institutional accounting — who built this system, who fills it, and who runs it — see [Who Is Responsible](/who-is-responsible/). If you have information about a death in Georgia custody, you can [submit a report](/submit-a-report/).