COASTAL STATE PRISON

Analysis written on June 7, 2026.

A Facility Under Pressure: Overcrowding, Gang Control, and the Failure to Protect

Coastal State Prison sits on the outskirts of Port Wentworth in Chatham County, a medium-security men’s prison opened in 1981 and renovated in 1999. It was built to hold 758 people. Today, it houses 1,611 — 112 percent of its original design — in a mix of two- and four-man cells, open-bay dorms, a 74-bed segregation unit, and a small infirmary. Warden Phillip Glenn oversees a facility that GDC’s own statistics list at 87.7 percent of “claimed” capacity, but that number is an artifact of an agency-wide redefinition of capacity that GPS’s reporting has shown conceals true overcrowding ranging from 188 to 568 percent of original design specs across the state system. Inside, the structural pressures are acute: officer vacancies statewide average 50 percent, and the U.S. Department of Justice’s October 2024 findings letter concluded that GDC leadership “has lost control of its facilities,” with 31 percent of the approximately 49,000 incarcerated population validated as members of 315 different security threat groups — more than double the national average. The DOJ explicitly found that gangs effectively run multiple facilities, controlling access to phones, showers, food, and bed assignments. Coastal is not an exception.

Food, Filth, and an Inspection Score That Doesn’t See

On April 23, 2026, a Georgia Department of Public Health inspector walked through the kitchen at Coastal State Prison and issued a score of 70 — a C grade — citing 11 violations. The report, obtained by The Georgia Virtue, described live roaches, a dead mouse floating in backed-up mop water in the mess-hall dishpit, mold-like growth on ceiling tiles throughout the kitchen, fish held at 122°F and chicken at 98°F — both far below the required 135°F hot-holding temperature — and a three-compartment sink with no sanitizer while incarcerated workers actively washed dishes, a repeat violation. The inspector also noted a mildew-like substance inside the ice machine, a leaking pipe, a sink with a hot-water handle that could not be turned on or off, and exit doors with large gaps that allowed the entry of insects and rodents.

The score is the latest step in a steady decline: 84 in October 2023, 87 in February 2025, 80 in October 2025, and now 70. But GPS’s own investigative reporting, collected in its “Dunked, Stacked, and Served” investigation, demonstrates that DPH scores systematically fail to capture what actually arrives on a tray. Inspections are scheduled walkthroughs that do not assess kitchen equipment under load; broken tray-sanitizing dishwashers, sustained roach and rodent infestations between visits, and professional overlap between inspectors and facility staff in small-county settings all produce scores that read as passing while inmate-maintenance workers report thousands of roaches inside equipment and meals served on visibly contaminated trays. At Coastal, an incarcerated person’s account corroborates this contradiction: when the kitchen shut for pest extermination, some men received no food during at least one meal period, and commissary access is limited to once every two weeks with an $80 cap. GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food — under 60 cents per meal — versus the FDA Thrifty Food Plan estimate of roughly $10 per day for a nutritionally adequate diet. The Marshall Project independently documented rats, insects, mold, and visible malnutrition across Georgia facilities in a May 2026 investigation, quoting GPS’s connection between chronic underfeeding and the DOJ’s violence findings.

A Litany of Homicide and the Failure to Investigate

GPS’s mortality database has tracked 129 deaths at Coastal State Prison. Among them are a string of homicides that span years and reveal systemic security breakdowns. On September 14, 2021, Kion E. Parks, 31, was stabbed to death; a lawsuit alleges five other prisoners were involved. On December 14, 2021, Rufus Ramon Lee, 27, died from a stab wound to the chest; his mother’s lawsuit claims that a broken cell lock allowed assailants from other cells and dorms to reach and kill him. In October 2023, Salomon Andres Ramirez, 43, died in what GDC classified as an “apparent homicide.” Ryan Chase Archer, 25, was stabbed to death on December 13, 2023, months before his scheduled release. Raymond Littles, 49, died in a homicide on April 16, 2024; another prisoner was disciplined.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that a March 2020 assault at Coastal was forwarded for investigation, yet no record of that investigation exists, and the same individual later strangled a cellmate to death at another prison. In October 2025, five prisoners were indicted for a violent assault at the facility. In the first months of 2026, the pace of deaths accelerated: two men died on a single day — March 3 — and a second death was confirmed within that same week. GPS records of aggregate signals show three high-severity assault-by-inmate reports across multiple sources in the last several months. Against this backdrop, WTOC reported that GDC records show no correctional officers were disciplined for violence against incarcerated people over a six-month period in 2025, even though employees say such violence is a common occurrence. The U.S. Department of Justice’s 2024 investigation found that Georgia’s in-prison homicide rate is nearly eight times the national average, and that GDC violates the Eighth Amendment.

Medical Neglect and the Dismantling of Chronic Care

Beyond the violence, GPS has received recurrent reports from families and witnesses of medical neglect at Coastal. In the past year alone, GPS’s intelligence system logged four high-severity family safety concerns concentrated in April and May 2026, and six sources of staff-misconduct allegations over 12 months, some escalated to the DOJ. Family attestations collected by GPS describe a pattern of abrupt medication discontinuation, failure to monitor chronic conditions such as diabetes and cancer, and medical staff being unavailable on weekends. One report describes a person whose diabetes diagnosis was allegedly revoked by staff, with blood-sugar checks simply halted. Another describes a person with a history of cancer who had required medical equipment withheld and pain medication stopped. Inmate witnesses have reported respiratory distress that went unaddressed, and that an incarcerated person was transferred after a false medical condition was allegedly added to their medical records. Dental care has drawn similar accounts: a family member alleged that after a tooth removal, the patient received no antibiotics or infection-prevention medication. While GPS cannot independently verify every individual account, the sheer volume of corroborating family reports — twenty-five separate attestations concerning medical care — signals a sustained failure to meet constitutional obligations for adequate health care.

Staff Conduct, Lockdowns, and a Federal Judge’s Rebuke

The human infrastructure at Coastal is buckling alongside the physical. A Coastal State Prison employee was arrested in January 2026 and charged with trading with prisoners without the consent of the warden or superintendent, according to WTOC. Multiple workers described to WTOC a work environment in which officers brutally beat incarcerated people routinely, and where food is withheld as punishment — staff would not wake sleeping men for meal calls and then deny them food. The DOJ’s findings report criticized Georgia prisons, including Coastal, for overusing lockdowns and isolation, particularly on victims of sexual abuse. At Coastal, lockdowns lasting seven to ten days have occurred without shower access, and WTOC reported that the lockdowns prevent men from attending classes and programs needed to earn Performance Incentive Credits for early parole eligibility.

In February 2026, a federal judge in Georgia’s Middle District scolded GDC Commissioner Tyrone Oliver for “failure to comply with court orders” and asked whether the agency “deems itself above the law.” The question echoes DOJ’s conclusion that GDC leadership places “too much blame on gangs and insufficient emphasis on understaffing.” Meanwhile, GPS’s systemic findings document that sexual violence remains rampant across the state system — of 456 sexual-abuse allegations recorded in 2022, only 35 were substantiated (7.7 percent) — and that Georgia has never submitted a PREA certification of full compliance to the DOJ in the law’s two-decade history. The Ashley Diamond litigation established the constitutional baseline and launched the DOJ’s investigation.

Infrastructure as a Force Multiplier

The physical plant at Coastal mirrors the statewide infrastructure collapse GPS has documented across Georgia prisons, most of which are 30-to-40-plus years old and subject to decades of deferred maintenance. Maintenance records obtained by WTOC show that from May to November 2025, Coastal spent over $5,000 on pest control, yet the Department of Corrections said it had no records related to mold remediation. Workers described black mold throughout housing units, rat and mice infestations, and frequent air-conditioning and heating failures. The April 2026 DPH inspection confirmed plumbing failures, gap-ridden exit doors, and repeat mold and pest violations. GPS’s systemic finding treats deferred infrastructure as a direct multiplier of the violence and mortality crises: broken cell-door locks — identified at more than 40 percent non-functional in a 2012 Hays audit and confirmed by the 2024 Guidehouse assessment — and inoperative surveillance systems leave incarcerated people unprotected, a fact tragically illustrated by the Rufus Ramon Lee lawsuit alleging that a broken lock allowed his killers to reach him.

“Separate the Gangs or Keep Burying the Dead”

GPS’s reporting has repeatedly called for the separation of gang members inside Georgia’s prisons, an intervention that cut prison violence by 50 percent in Arizona. Georgia houses 15,200 gang-affiliated people — 31 percent of its population — yet has no separation strategy, no exit program, and no management plan. On April 1, 2026, a coordinated Blood-on-Blood gang war erupted across the state system: at least twelve prisons locked down, life flights were dispatched to two facilities, and stabbings occurred at five. The violence at Washington State Prison alone killed four people in January 2026, placing that facility on a continuous lockdown it has never emerged from. While other states solved this problem decades ago, Georgia chose to do nothing. The death toll, as GPS has documented, proves the cost of that inaction, and the DOJ’s findings letter explicitly faulted GDC for blaming gangs while ignoring the staffing vacuum that allows them to operate. At a facility like Coastal — over 100 percent beyond its design, with broken locks, a handful of officers per shift, and food that fails inspection — the result is predictable.

In a managerial shuffle, Commissioner Oliver reassigned Warden David Stokes from Central State Prison to take over at Coastal State Prison effective June 1, 2026. He inherits a facility that presents, in microcosm, every systemic pathology GPS has documented across the Georgia Department of Corrections: a kitchen in pestilence, a medical unit that families say is functionally absent, a record of death that rivals any prison in the nation, and a physical plant that itself contributes to the violence.

Sources

This analysis draws on reporting from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, WTOC, The Georgia Virtue, and Georgia Prisoners’ Speak (GPS); Georgia Department of Public Health inspection records; federal court findings; family and inmate accounts collected by GPS; and GPS’s own mortality database, systemic investigations, and intelligence signals.