CALHOUN STATE PRISON

Classification Drift: A Medium Security Prison Running as Close Security

Calhoun State Prison carries an official designation of medium security — but GPS's analysis of GDC population data obtained through open records requests reveals that as of October 2025, 487 of the facility's 1,657 inmates were classified as close security, representing 29.4% of the population. By GDC's own standards, close security inmates are classified as escape risks with assault histories who require supervision at all times. Most medium security prisons in Georgia house zero close security inmates; a handful house between 1% and 3%. Calhoun's rate puts it in a category of four facilities — alongside Wilcox (29.7%), Dooly (28.6%), and Washington (27.7%) — that GPS has identified as having been quietly transformed into de facto close security prisons without the corresponding staffing, infrastructure, or oversight.

This classification mismatch is not a bureaucratic error. It is a documented systemic policy that violates GDC's own classification rules and contradicts explicit findings from the DOJ's 2024 investigation into Georgia's prison system. When men classified as requiring constant supervision are housed in facilities not resourced to provide it, violence becomes structurally inevitable. The death of Willie Andrew Willis Jr. — whose family says he was thrown from a balcony, left paralyzed, and airlifted nearly an hour after the incident — illustrates what that gap between classification and capacity costs in human terms. Calhoun's classification profile was not disclosed to the public; GPS obtained it through records analysis.

Deaths at Calhoun: Suppressed Information, Unresolved Cases

The death of Willie Andrew Willis Jr. remains one of the most documented cases of institutional opacity at Calhoun State Prison. Willis told his family he had been thrown from a balcony and was left unable to move. His family says nearly an hour passed before he was airlifted for treatment. He died, and his medical records list sepsis as the cause of death — a classification that does not address the mechanism of injury his family says he described. As of February 2026, the family had received no official explanation of what happened, who was responsible, or why emergency response was delayed. His mother, Revonda Young, has publicly stated: *"I'm looking for answers and justice about my son."

Willis's case reflects a pattern that the DOJ identified in its 2024 investigation: deaths clearly documented as homicides in internal GDC incident reports are routinely reclassified as "unknown" in official mortality data — sometimes for years. The DOJ found that Georgia reported only 6 homicides in its prisons in the first five months of 2024, while internal GDC records documented at least 18 during the same period. GPS tracks deaths in Georgia's prison system independently, using family accounts, public records, news reporting, and incarcerated sources — the GDC does not publicly release cause-of-death information. Many deaths in GPS's database remain classified as unknown or pending not because the cause is genuinely uncertain, but because GPS has not yet been able to independently verify it. The true homicide count across Georgia's system — and at facilities like Calhoun — is significantly higher than confirmed figures reflect.

On April 1, 2026, Calhoun was placed on precautionary lockdown as coordinated gang violence erupted across the Georgia prison system. GPS confirmed stabbings at five facilities statewide, life-flight dispatches to two, and a high-ranking Blood set leader stabbed in the neck during an inspection at Hays State Prison in front of the warden and staff. Calhoun's lockdown was listed as precautionary, not incident-driven — but the statewide nature of the violence, and Calhoun's classification profile, make it a facility GPS continues to monitor closely.

Staff Corruption and Contraband: A System That Prosecutes Nobody

Calhoun State Prison has been at the center of multiple documented contraband scandals — and at the center of a documented failure to prosecute them. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation, published by GPS, revealed that nearly two dozen smuggling cases involving 33 arrests between 2018 and 2021 were dismissed by Calhoun County District Attorney Joe Mulholland because the Georgia Department of Corrections failed to submit the seized drugs for testing at the state crime lab. In one case, a correctional officer arrived at the facility with 112 grams of methamphetamine — four times the threshold for a trafficking charge under Georgia law — hidden inside a Hot Pockets package. The case was dismissed. The drugs were never tested. No prosecution resulted.

Of the 23 documented cases, 11 were investigated by the GDC and 12 by the Calhoun County Sheriff's Department. Five prison employees were among those whose cases were ultimately dropped. This is not an outlier: a statewide AJC investigation found more than 425 GDC employees arrested since 2018 for on-the-job crimes, with at least 360 involving contraband. The department's own commissioner acknowledged the cycle publicly: "As fast as dirty officers are arrested, new ones take their places." At Calhoun specifically, the failure to test evidence transformed an enforcement posture into a public performance — arrests made, headlines generated, cases dismissed, contraband flow uninterrupted.

The contraband network at Calhoun extends beyond staff. In January 2026, a federal trial established that two Calhoun inmates — Joey Amour Jackson and Lance Riddle — operated a nationwide wire fraud scheme from inside the prison using contraband cell phones obtained through drones, staff corruption, and a black market. The scheme defrauded 119 identified victims across six states, stealing $464,920 in total. The men spoofed police department phone numbers, threatened women with arrest warrants, directed female victims to perform acts on camera in retail store bathrooms, and used the recordings to extort them. Every call was made on a contraband phone. The GDC installed its Managed Access System (MAS) at Calhoun around mid-2025 — after the scheme had already run its course.

Managed Access System: $50 Million Deployed After the Damage Was Done

Georgia has spent $50 million in capital costs installing Managed Access Systems across most of its 34 state prisons, with annual operating and maintenance costs exceeding $15 million. MAS intercepts every cellular signal within a prison perimeter and blocks any device not on an approved list. The GDC rolled out MAS at Calhoun around mid-2025. The Jackson and Riddle federal prosecution — with its 119 victims and $464,920 in losses — was already complete before MAS went live at the facility.

GPS's investigation into the MAS program concludes that blocking-first strategies have never successfully eliminated contraband phone networks in Georgia or elsewhere, because the supply chains — drones, staff corruption, black market networks — adapt faster than enforcement. At Calhoun, that conclusion is not theoretical: five years of aggressive contraband enforcement, including dozens of arrests, produced no prosecutions and no measurable reduction in contraband. MAS arrives at a facility where the infrastructure for contraband was already thoroughly embedded. GPS has documented that the rollout of phone-blocking technology has coincided with increases in reported violence at multiple Georgia facilities, as incarcerated people lose access to their primary means of communicating abuse, seeking help, and maintaining family contact.

Leadership History and Institutional Oversight

Calhoun State Prison's recent leadership history reflects the broader GDC pattern of internal promotion insulated from external accountability. Tarmarshe Smith was appointed Warden at Calhoun State Prison in September 2018, having previously served in multiple roles at Georgia State Prison including Canine Handler, CERT Sergeant, Security Threat Group Investigator, and Tactical Squad Commander. Smith held the Warden position at Calhoun until October 2020, when he was reassigned to Macon State Prison. In 2023, he was promoted to Assistant Director for the Southeast Region, and in October 2025 was named Southeast Regional Director — a position overseeing 16 state prison facilities.

Smith's career trajectory — from Calhoun during the period when contraband cases were being dismissed without prosecution, to regional leadership overseeing facilities including several of the most dangerous in Georgia — is consistent with what GPS and the DOJ have documented as a pattern of institutional advancement disconnected from outcomes. The DOJ's 2024 investigation found an "environment of fear and complacency" across GDC facilities, with many prisons old, poorly maintained, and operating with chronic understaffing. Calhoun's classification drift, its evidence-handling failures, and the federal crimes committed from inside its walls all occurred under GDC oversight structures that Smith and his successors were positioned within. No public accountability review of Calhoun's operations during the contraband prosecution failures has been released.

Conditions: Nutrition, Health, and the Physical Environment

Calhoun State Prison operates within a GDC system that GPS and family accounts have documented as providing systemically inadequate nutrition, deteriorating physical infrastructure, and chronically insufficient medical response. Families of Georgia prisoners across multiple facilities describe men losing 30 to 50 pounds during incarceration, with skin graying, teeth eroding, and immune systems failing. GPS has documented meals that routinely fall far below USDA-recommended caloric and nutritional minimums for adult men — breakfasts of grits, a biscuit, and two slices of bologna; weekend lunches consisting of a single peanut butter–corn syrup sandwich. These conditions are documented systemically across GDC facilities; Calhoun, housing 1,657 people, operates within the same supply and contract structure.

The medical response failure in the Willis case — where a man who was reportedly paralyzed from the waist down after a balcony incident waited nearly an hour for airlift — illustrates the stakes of inadequate medical infrastructure. The GDC-wide monthly demographics as of April 2026 show 1,261 inmates system-wide classified as having poorly controlled health conditions and 47 in active mental health crisis, against a backdrop of chronic understaffing. At a facility like Calhoun — housing nearly 30% close security inmates in a medium security structure — the gap between what the population requires and what the institution is resourced to provide is not a question of policy detail. It is a daily operational reality with documented lethal consequences.