Brief generated May 17, 2026 from GPS Intelligence System data.

Advocate Intelligence Brief

For: Prison-reform advocates, affected families, allied organizations, GPS Advocate Network members Coverage period: Data current through May 17, 2026 Scope: 114 Georgia facilities, 52,753 incarcerated people, 3,168 publishable claims, 1,797 GPS-tracked deaths since 2020 (GPS Intelligence System totals)

What You Can Do This Month

If you read nothing else in this brief, do these five things before June 1:

1. Sign onto Vision 2027 and End the Warehouse. Share the campaign pages: Vision 2027 and End the Warehouse. Post them. Email them to your state legislator using the legislator directory.
2. If you have firsthand information about a Georgia facility, submit it. Use gps.press/submit-a-report. One report can corroborate dozens of pending claims.
3. If you have a story to tell, tell it. Tell My Story intake is open to incarcerated people, family members, formerly incarcerated people, and staff.
4. Sign up for the GPS Advocate Network. Roles range from records-request volunteer to legislative caller to TMS editor. See the role list below.
5. Pick one of the top-five facilities in this brief and adopt it. Track it. Build a family list. File one open-records request. Repeat.

The data underlying every recommendation in this brief is on the GPS Intelligence System.

Active Campaigns

Vision 2027: Post-Conviction Justice Reform

The campaign in one sentence: Georgia's parole board has converted a "7-year tariff" life sentence into a permanent denial machine, and Vision 2027 demands the post-conviction system Georgia statutes already promise.

The pattern is documented in firsthand testimony curated in Tell My Story:

• GeorgiaLifer, over 40 years served on a single-count murder life sentence with statutory parole eligibility at 7 years, has been "set off" 15–16 times since first eligibility, the last eight in one-year increments ("The Seven-Year Promise: Four Decades Behind Georgia's Broken Parole System," Georgia Prisoners' Speak — Tell My Story).
• NeverGiveUp, 69, incarcerated since 1980, has been denied parole seven times without ever appearing before the board — "I simply get a letter" ("Let Me Go or Just Execute Me," Georgia Prisoners' Speak — Tell My Story).
• Naive 00, 26 years served, one disciplinary report in that span, five parole denials, two without interview ("Insufficient Time Served," Georgia Prisoners' Speak — Tell My Story).
• Livingwaters, convicted in 1993 under a presumed-force standard the Georgia Supreme Court invalidated in Brewer v. State (1999) and made retroactive in Luke v. Battle (2002), still denied year after year on "nature and circumstances" ("B Natural, B Sharp, Never B Flat," Georgia Prisoners' Speak — Tell My Story).

What advocates should do: - Share the campaign page: https://gps.press/intelligence/issue/vision-2027/ - Read the full Vision 2027 deep-dive before talking to legislators — the campaign is built on Georgia statutory promises, not abstract reform language. - Send constituent letters through the legislator directory demanding Parole Board transparency: written denial rationales beyond the "totality / nature and circumstances" boilerplate, board appearances rather than "secret file reviews," and an end to retroactive application of victim-services guidelines to people sentenced under prior rules. - If your loved one has been denied with the boilerplate language, send GPS a copy of the denial letter through Submit a Report. We are building a denial-letter corpus.

End the Warehouse: Prison Transformation Plan

The campaign in one sentence: Georgia spends roughly $35,000 per incarcerated person per year — about $1.79 billion total in FY 2027 (HB 974, Senate Appropriations Committee Substitute) — to operate a system that has abandoned rehabilitation in everything but name.

The FY 2027 approved budget routes $5.52 million in additional technology to the Over Watch and Logistics (OWL) Unit and $377,168 for three security-threat-group regional coordinators, against $39,786 for additional programming at Metro Reentry Facility and a $150,000 FY 2026 peer-led programming pilot at Autry State Prison. The ratio — millions for surveillance, tens of thousands for programs — is the warehouse expressed as accounting (GPS budget analysis, derived from Governor's Budget Report and HB 974).

The lived warehouse, from Tell My Story:

"The security bubble was empty. There were no officers stationed in the dorms. We went for hours with no supervision… other inmates had to call their families and have them call the facility to send help. That's how we got help. We called our mothers." — Trigger Cat, Pulaski State Prison, "The Fire Alarm Kept Ringing and No One Came," Georgia Prisoners' Speak — Tell My Story

What advocates should do: - Share the campaign page: https://gps.press/intelligence/issue/end-the-warehouse/ - Pair the End the Warehouse share with the budget deep-dive at https://gps.press/intelligence/issue/budget-analysis/ — the budget math is the strongest single argument for transformation. - Demand programming line items when meeting with House and Senate Appropriations members. The FY 2028 cycle opens this fall. - Document programming denials. If your loved one has been denied access to education, vocational training, or treatment programs, submit through Tell My Story.

Facility-Level Priorities: Top 5 by Recent Claim Weight

These are the facilities advocates should be organizing around right now, based on GPS-tracked claim volume in the last 90 days, deaths in the last 180 days, and news traction.

1. Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison

GPS has received the heaviest cluster of recent inmate-witness accounts of any facility in the system at Georgia Diagnostic — covering shanks produced in shower areas, a stabbing involving a makeshift weapon, an assault using a mobility aid, biohazard cleanups performed by incarcerated workers given only latex gloves and a mop, 24-hour-on LED lighting in housing, medical-diet refusals for documented food allergies, a CERT member directing a slur at an incarcerated person, and a correctional officer using a racial slur in reference to a warden-level administrator (GPS-tracked inmate-witness accounts, GDCP, 2024–2026).

Several accounts describe officers who appeared unfamiliar with emergency radio procedures during in-progress assaults, with orderlies repeatedly prompting them to call it in. One account describes a staff member coaching another on how to "frame" the radio call to escalate official response (GPS-tracked inmate-witness accounts).

Facility page: https://gps.press/facility/georgia-diagnostic-and-classification-prison/

Advocate priorities: - Open-records requests for use-of-force logs, biohazard cleanup protocols, and PPE inventory. - Family wellness-check tree (see "Crisis-Moment Guidance" below). - Documentation of medical-diet refusals — these are actionable Eighth Amendment patterns.

2. Smith State Prison

A Tattnall County grand jury indicted a former Smith State Prison warden in a contraband operation in May 2026 (multiple outlets, including AJC, WTOC, The Georgia Virtue, May 13–14, 2026). Smith has also sat in a long trough of failing food-safety inspections — a 72 in February 2026, an 85 in June 2025 (GPS analysis of Georgia DPH inspection data, "Scores Without Sanitation"). Deaths in the last 180 days include Dwayne Eric Albritton (age 65, March 12, 2026) at Smith (GPS mortality archive).

Facility page: https://gps.press/facility/smith-state-prison/

Advocate priorities: - Track the warden indictment through the Tattnall County court system — public records. - Demand a forensic audit of contraband-related disciplinary reports filed against incarcerated people during the indicted period; many may be tainted. - Family-network outreach: if your loved one was disciplined for contraband at Smith during the relevant period, document it through Submit a Report.

3. Washington State Prison

The January 2026 Washington State Prison riot — in which five officers were covering 69 security posts when four men were killed — remains the system's clearest indictment of the staffing collapse (GPS staffing analysis, "Georgia's Staffing Crisis"). GDC named 12 incarcerated people charged in the disturbance in late April 2026 (GDC release reported by 13WMAZ, WGXA, April 28, 2026).

Advocate priorities: - Monitor the 12 prosecutions. Family-attestation accounts have reached GPS suggesting some charged individuals were not in the implicated dorms; corroborating documentation is needed. - Demand staffing data: post coverage logs, mandatory-overtime hours, and vacancy rates.

4. Valdosta State Prison

Recent GPS-derived accounts at Valdosta have triggered witness-protection protocols — GPS staff withheld witness identity information from public records, citing retaliation risk against residents who communicate with journalists (GPS internal derivation, 2026). Court-verified records include the death of Kyle Samuel Burke (April 19, 2026) and Robert Jordan Watkins (age 38, March 18, 2026) at Valdosta (GPS mortality archive).

Facility page: https://gps.press/facility/valdosta-state-prison/

Advocate priorities: - Retaliation documentation — see https://gps.press/intelligence/issue/retaliation/. - Family communication tree — if your loved one stops calling, escalate immediately (see family resources below).

5. Augusta State Medical Prison

Three deaths in the last 60 days at Augusta State Medical: Tristin Trimm (April 9), Ervin Cross (age 46, March 24), Lenward Brown (age 73, March 20) (GPS mortality archive). Augusta is the system's medical-prison endpoint — concentrating people whose conditions GDC has stopped managing at facility level.

Facility page: https://gps.press/facility/augusta-state-medical-prison/

Advocate priorities: - Medical-neglect documentation pipeline. See https://gps.press/intelligence/issue/medical-neglect/. - Family records: if your loved one is at Augusta State Medical, request medical records monthly. Don't wait.

Honorable mentions advocates should watch: Johnson State Prison (3 recent deaths, including a failed sanitation inspection history); Hays State Prison; Baldwin State Prison (2 deaths within 24 hours, March 21, 2026); Pulaski State Prison (January 2026 kitchen failure score 67, ongoing testimony from former residents). Pulaski's facility page: https://gps.press/facility/pulaski-state-prison/.

Family Resources

How to File a Georgia Open-Records Request

The Georgia Open Records Act (O.C.G.A. § 50-18-70 et seq.) gives any person — including family members of incarcerated people — the right to inspect non-exempt records.

Steps:

1. Identify the agency. For GDC records, send to the GDC Open Records office. For local sheriff/jail records, send to the relevant county.
2. Write the request in plain language. State that you are requesting records under the Georgia Open Records Act, O.C.G.A. § 50-18-70. Identify the specific records by date range, facility, and topic. Vague requests get denied; specific requests get answered.
3. Records GPS recommends families request:
4. Incident reports for any date your loved one was injured, hospitalized, or transferred unexpectedly.
5. Use-of-force logs for the housing unit and date.
6. Grievance log entries with grievance numbers.
7. Medical-care request slips (sick-call slips) submitted on dates around an incident.
8. Disciplinary report (DR) packets.
9. Statutory clock: Agencies have three business days to respond — either by producing records, citing a specific exemption, or providing a timeline for production.
10. Fees: Agencies may charge for search/copy time. Ask in advance for a fee estimate before authorizing the work.
11. If denied: The denial must cite a specific exemption. If it doesn't, escalate to the Georgia Attorney General's Open Government Mediation Program.

Send GPS your records. Any open-records response you receive can feed the GPS Intelligence System. Submit through gps.press/submit-a-report.

How to Escalate Medical Neglect

If your loved one is being denied medical care, follow this sequence — and document every step in writing.

1. Get the medical request slips into the record. Your loved one needs to submit written sick-call requests, by name and date. The Tell My Story account from Stony's friend at Georgia State Prison — six or seven sick-call requests submitted over three weeks for a broken hand, all ignored until a family member outside started calling — is the canonical pattern (GPS budget analysis citing TMS).
2. Call the facility. Ask for the warden's office, then the medical director. Document the date, time, and name of every person you speak with.
3. Put it in writing. Email the warden and copy the GDC central office. State the facts, the medical condition, the dates of requests, and the dates of denial. Keep a copy.
4. File a grievance through your loved one. Grievance documentation is the foundation of any subsequent civil rights claim — even when the grievance system itself functions as a trap (see https://gps.press/intelligence/issue/retaliation/).
5. Contact legal aid (see below).
6. Submit the case to GPS. Submit through Submit a Report with names, dates, and any documentation you have. Medical neglect is one of the most heavily documented topics in the GPS system — see https://gps.press/intelligence/issue/medical-neglect/.
7. If the situation is acute — your loved one is unable to access emergency care: call the warden's office, then the GDC Office of Professional Standards, then your state legislator's constituent-services line (directory). Constituent calls from legislators move faster than family calls.

Where to Find Legal Aid

GPS does not directly provide legal representation. The following resources are the standard referral pathways for families of incarcerated Georgians:

• Southern Center for Human Rights — civil rights litigation against Georgia correctional facilities.
• Georgia Legal Services Program — civil legal aid for low-income Georgians; limited prison docket but can refer.
• ACLU of Georgia — focused litigation on constitutional violations.
• Innocence Project / Georgia Innocence Project — wrongful conviction cases, particularly involving forensic evidence (see GPS reporting "Burned by the State: Junk Forensic Science and the Georgia Cases the Courts Won't Reopen," April 29, 2026).
• Private civil rights bar: for cases involving sexual abuse, fatal medical neglect, or deaths in custody, several Georgia plaintiffs' firms accept § 1983 cases on contingency. See the GPS legal settlements deep-dive at https://gps.press/intelligence/issue/legal-settlements/ for an overview of the case patterns most likely to attract counsel.

For complaints involving sexual abuse, note that a 2025 U.S. Supreme Court ruling expanded jury trial rights for prisoners blocked from filing grievances — a partial but real shift in the legal landscape for survivors (GPS reporting on sexual abuse, updated May 2026). Document everything, even if the grievance process is being obstructed.

GPS Advocate Network: Sign Up and Roles

The GPS Advocate Network is the volunteer corps that keeps the Intelligence System running. We are accepting new advocates now. Specific roles where we need help this quarter:

Records-Request Volunteer. Send open-records requests for specific facilities, parse responses, route findings into the GPS claim system. Time commitment: ~2 hours/week. No legal background required.

Family-Network Coordinator. Adopt one facility from the top-five list above. Build a contact list of families with loved ones in that facility. Run a monthly check-in call. Time commitment: 4–6 hours/month.

Tell My Story Editor. Help curate, light-edit, and prepare submitted narratives for publication. Author voice is preserved — this is not rewriting, it's framing and verifying. Requires basic editorial judgment and discretion.

Legislative Caller. During session (and now, ahead of FY 2028 budget), make calls to legislator offices supporting Vision 2027 and End the Warehouse. Scripts provided. Time commitment: 1 hour/week during session.

Mortality Archive Researcher. Help match GPS-tracked deaths to public obituaries, news coverage, and (where available) court records, to upgrade evidence weight from inmate-witness to court-verified. See https://gps.press/georgia-prison-deaths/.

Court Docket Watcher. Track federal and state cases involving GDC — terminated cases listed in this brief, plus active litigation. Notify GPS when motions, settlements, or contempt orders post.

To join: Submit your contact information through gps.press/submit-a-report with subject line "Advocate Network — [role]". A coordinator will reach out within five business days.

How to Submit a Report

URL: gps.press/submit-a-report

Who can submit: Anyone with firsthand information about a Georgia Department of Corrections facility. Incarcerated people via approved channels, family members, formerly incarcerated people, current and former staff, attorneys, journalists, advocates.

What to include: - Facility name and date(s). - What happened. Names where you have them. Specifics over generalities. - Whether the information can be public, must be confidential, or requires source protection. - Whether you have supporting documentation (records, photographs, letters, medical paperwork).

What GPS does with reports: 1. Intake review. GPS staff review every submission within five business days. 2. Source-class classification. Reports are tagged by source weight — derived/high, inmate-witness/moderate, family-attestation, court-verified, etc. This classification is preserved in every downstream citation. 3. Corroboration check. Submissions are cross-referenced against existing claims, deaths, news, and litigation. A single report can corroborate a pending claim and trigger its publication; a single report can also constitute a new claim that the system tracks until corroboration arrives. 4. Publication decision. Public-safe claims move to the Intelligence System (3,168 publishable claims as of May 17, 2026, GPS Intelligence System). Sensitive claims are held with source protection. Claims that name living incarcerated people without their consent are held unless the person is a public official, deceased, or already in court/news records. 5. Action routing. Reports feed campaign work, family resources, legal-aid referrals, and journalist tips.

Tell My Story (TMS)

URL: gps.press/tellmystory

Tell My Story is the firsthand-narrative arm of GPS. It is where the data becomes a person speaking.

Who can submit: Currently or formerly incarcerated people, family members, and staff with firsthand experience inside Georgia prisons. Submissions can be anonymous, pseudonymous, or by name — author choice.

What it is: Curated, lightly edited firsthand narratives. Author voice is preserved. GPS does not rewrite or substitute its own framing. Recent published pieces include: - "Surviving on Scraps: Ten Years of Prison Food in Georgia" by Stony (April 17, 2026). - "It Can Happen" by Dena Ingram (April 9, 2026) — two years of pretrial detention on charges later dropped. - "The Man Who Turned On the Heat" by Jacs (April 6, 2026) — heat-as-punishment at Telfair tier. - "We Are People, Not Statistics" by Bandit (March 2, 2026). - "Magazines Wrapped Around My Chest" by Mikemike (March 21, 2026) — 32 years of survival in general population.

What TMS does for advocates: Provides citable, named narratives that can be quoted in legislative testimony, media coverage, and legal pleadings with the same citation weight as a bylined news article. Cite as: post title + "Georgia Prisoners' Speak — Tell My Story."

Crisis-Moment Guidance: Lockdowns and Disturbances

When a Georgia facility goes into lockdown — whether a single-facility incident like the January 2026 Washington State Prison riot or a statewide event like the April 2026 simultaneous-disturbance lockdown across five facilities (GPS reporting on violence and safety) — families face a predictable communications blackout. Here is what to do.

Hour 0–6. - Do not assume silence means harm. Lockdowns routinely sever phone, email, and visitation for 24–72 hours. - Save the last call or message you received with a timestamp. - Check GDC's facility news page and any local news outlets covering the region. - Check gps.press/intelligence/ for breaking analysis.

Hour 6–24. - Call the facility's main line and ask for a wellness check by name and GDC ID. Document the date, time, and name of the person you speak with. - If you cannot get an answer, call the GDC Office of Professional Standards. - Contact your state legislator's constituent-services line (directory). State the facility, the GDC ID, and that you need confirmation of safety. Legislator calls move faster than family calls.

Hour 24–72. - File a written wellness-check request to the warden's office, copied to GDC central office. Keep a copy. - If you suspect injury or death and the agency will not confirm: contact the Georgia Bureau of Investigation if violence is involved; contact a civil rights attorney; contact a journalist covering the system. - Submit the timeline of the blackout to GPS through Submit a Report. Communication-blackout patterns are themselves evidence.

After the lockdown lifts. - Ask your loved one to write down everything they saw and submit it through Tell My Story or via family relay to Submit a Report. - Request the incident report through Open Records. - Watch for retaliatory transfers — punitive moves to distant facilities often follow disturbance investigations. See https://gps.press/intelligence/issue/retaliation/.

Settlements & Lawsuits: What GDC Has Paid For (and What It Hasn't)

The recent docket of terminated cases involving Georgia corrections and adjacent state actors is sobering for what it shows about how Georgia litigation closes — many cases recorded at $0 because they were dismissed, voluntarily withdrawn under filing-restriction orders, or settled on undisclosed terms. The full list of recent terminations:

Advocate framing: The recurring $0 termination figure is not evidence GDC was vindicated. It reflects how civil rights litigation against the agency dies — through filing restrictions imposed on prolific pro se litigants (Daker), through procedural dismissals, and through sealed settlements that don't reach the public docket. The deeper settlement record — the cases that have produced significant payouts for preventable deaths, destroyed evidence, and deliberate indifference — is summarized at https://gps.press/intelligence/issue/legal-settlements/, where federal judges have described GDC conduct as acting "above the law."

For families: If you are evaluating a potential civil rights claim, the settlements deep-dive identifies the case patterns most likely to draw counsel — preventable death following documented warnings, staff destruction of evidence, repeated court-order defiance.

Coalition Partners and How to Plug In

GPS is one node in a larger Georgia and national reform ecosystem. Direct partners and adjacent organizations include the Southern Center for Human Rights, the ACLU of Georgia, the Georgia Innocence Project, the Marshall Project (whose May 16, 2026 piece "Rats, Insects and Mold: How Bad Food Leaves Prisoners Hungry and Sick" complements GPS's Scores Without Sanitation analysis), the AJC investigative team that has documented 425+ GDC employee arrests since 2018, and a growing network of family-led organizations whose contact information GPS maintains for verified advocates.

To plug in: - If your organization wants to coordinate with GPS on a campaign, data share, or legal action, submit through Submit a Report with subject "Coalition Inquiry — [organization]". - If you want to amplify GPS analysis, the GPS Intelligence System is structured for citation. Every issue page, facility page, and Tell My Story narrative is citable. - Machine-readable facility data: for researchers and developers, https://gps.press/facilities-data/.

What You Are Up Against (and Why It Still Matters)

1,797 deaths since 2020. 333 in 2024. 301 in 2025. 97 in the first 4.5 months of 2026 (GPS mortality archive). A federal Department of Justice finding in October 2024 that GDC violates the Constitution as a pattern and practice. A staffing crisis at fifteen-year lows despite hundreds of millions in new appropriations. A former Smith State Prison warden indicted on contraband charges in May 2026. A correctional officer at Coffee Correctional charged with sexual assault that same week. A federal court that has held GDC in contempt for falsifying records. A parole board that has converted a "7-year tariff" into a 40-year sentence.

And against all of that: 3,168 publishable claims documented by GPS. A growing Tell My Story archive whose authors are doing the bravest work in Georgia. Families calling wellness checks at 2 a.m. and refusing to be silenced. An Advocate Network that grew last year and needs to grow again this one.

Call to Action

Before you close this brief, do three things:

1. Submit a report. If you have firsthand information — a wellness-check blackout, a denied medical request, a retaliatory transfer, a story your loved one has been trying to tell — send it through gps.press/submit-a-report today. The Intelligence System runs on submissions.
2. Share a campaign URL. Pick one — Vision 2027 or End the Warehouse — and post it to your network with one sentence of your own about why it matters.
3. Sign up for the Advocate Network. Pick a role. Pick a facility. Five business days to a coordinator response.

Georgia's prison system has not reformed itself in response to the federal government, the courts, the press, or the deaths. It will respond to organized, documented, sustained advocacy. That advocacy is you.

— Georgia Prisoners' Speak Intelligence Editorial