HANCOCK STATE PRISON

Last updated September 21, 2026.(DS)

A Close-Security Prison Holding Twice What It Was Built For

Hancock State Prison in Sparta opened in 1992 as a close-security men's prison with an original design capacity of 500. It now carries a rated capacity of 1,191 and held 1,189 people as of the most recent GPS population snapshot — 99.8% of rated capacity, and more than double the population the facility was originally built to hold. The prison houses many of the state's highest-risk prisoners under Tier I and Tier II close-custody management, with multiple segregation and isolation units and an annex area alongside dormitory housing. Its population is exclusively male. Warden Joe Williams has led the facility since January 2025, working with four deputies: Paul Anthony Sanford, Rashedah Fayola Mitchell (Care and Treatment), Chequita Adams (Administration), and Jeremy Andrew Foston.

Hancock's physical plant is the subject of recurring accounts GPS has received from family members, who describe an annex housed in a metal building without insulation or ventilation and interior temperatures rising above 105°F. GPS has received accounts alleging that HVAC systems at the facility were not functioning, and that cooling was switched on for an inspection and shut off immediately afterward. These are family accounts, not verified findings, but they describe the same infrastructure decay GPS has documented systemwide: most GDC facilities are 30 to 40-plus years old, with deferred maintenance producing broken cell-door locks, inoperative surveillance and fire-alarm systems, mold and water failures, and pest infestations. The October 2024 DOJ findings, the Guidehouse 2024 assessment, and Commissioner Oliver's public "end of life" statements all corroborate that pattern. GPS treats infrastructure collapse as a force multiplier for the violence, classification, and mortality crises documented at the facility level.

Twenty-Seven Deaths, Seventeen of Them Homicides

GPS's mortality registry records 27 deaths at Hancock State Prison since January 1, 2020. Seventeen are classified as homicides. Seven remain unknown or pending, two are classified as natural or medical, and one falls into an "other" category. The most recent recorded death is Albert Chapa, 57, who died on July 30, 2026, with cause still pending. The registry is a floor, not a ceiling — GDC reports deaths roughly two months late, so the true count is higher.

The homicide count is not the product of one bad year. It runs the length of the tracking period. Jacorey Derrelle Pearson, 36, died on April 7, 2026, classified as a homicide; his death was turned over to the county coroner for transport to the GBI crime lab, and the GDC Office of Professional Standards opened an investigation. Jerrod Johnson, 27, died on February 18, 2026, also a homicide. Jaylin Bell, 32, died on February 6, 2026, following an altercation with his roommate, with the Office of Professional Standards investigating. Steven Monroe Wood, 54, died on January 25, 2026, after an altercation with another inmate; he was serving life with the possibility of parole for a murder conviction out of Cherokee County. Andre Rashad Weems, 36, died on September 9, 2025, classified as a homicide. Corey Jose July, 33, died on June 17, 2025, also a homicide.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has documented the earlier deaths in granular detail. Roland Lamont Phillips, 33, died on June 28, 2023, from multiple sharp-force injuries including 11 puncture wounds to the front torso and one to the neck; a murder warrant was served against his cellmate. Francisco Zaldivar Melgar-Saldivar, 26, died on August 12, 2023, from strangulation and blunt force injuries, and a claim filed against the state alleges he was not provided appropriate medical care after being attacked by another prisoner. Norman Samples, 59, died on December 27, 2022, from blunt force injuries to the head and torso. Terry Lee Bishop, 49, died on October 18, 2022, from blunt force trauma combined with acute toxicity of methamphetamine and cannabinoids; death data indicate he was beaten to death by another prisoner. Dwayne Zackery Jr., 22, died on February 12, 2021, from a stab wound to the chest with a homemade knife, which death data attribute to his cellmate. Rashad Bolton, 29, died on January 4, 2021, from a puncture wound to the chest with a sharp object; his parents filed a lawsuit claiming he was stabbed to death. Cesar Arnold Pastrana Morales, 33, died on March 13, 2020, from a stab wound to the chest, with an incident report showing five other inmates were involved.

The McKee Killing, the DOJ, and What the State Paid

The most heavily documented death at Hancock is that of Charles "Tristen" James McKee, 24, who died on May 23, 2022, after being stabbed 13 times in the back and head. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that McKee, who identified as LGBTQ, had repeatedly asked to be moved the day before his death, stating his life was in danger, and that staff did not act on those requests. A lawsuit alleges he was placed in a dorm with known gang members who were hostile to LGBTQ inmates. The U.S. Department of Justice investigation into his death found that McKee tried to escape gang members who were beating and stabbing him by jumping through stair railings to the floor below, but the gang members continued to stab him there; another prisoner who tried to stop the attack was seriously wounded.

A Hancock County jury subsequently convicted Cleveland Gary of McKee's murder. The AJC reported that Gary struck McKee six times in the head with a 17-inch homemade machete after a fight had already ended. The state of Georgia paid a $424,710 liability settlement tied to McKee's death, according to the GA DOAS Risk Management settlement ledger obtained through open records.

McKee's is not the only death that has cost the state money. The same ledger shows a $437,500 payout tied to Rashad Bolton's 2021 death, a $600,000 payout tied to Geberyesus Yemane Selassie's 2019 death, and smaller payouts for Freedie Barnes ($13,800, 2016), Michael Bolick ($2,000, 2015), and Rico Sterling ($250, 2016). Together those entries total at least $1,478,260 in liability settlements tied to Hancock since 2015 — the state's own acknowledgment of liability in multiple cases, and a figure that says nothing about the human cost.

Gang Violence, the January 2025 Dorm Killings, and the Locked Gate

The gang-related violence at Hancock is not confined to individual killings. On January 30, 2025, two prisoners were found dead in the same dorm about 15 to 20 feet apart following what the AJC described as gang-related violence. William Holeman, 34, and Prince Porter, 38, were the victims. Porter had a single puncture wound in his upper back; Holeman had no visible marks on his body. A third prisoner was hospitalized as a result of the same incident, with no information available on his condition the following day. The coroner leaned toward homicide in at least one of the cases.

That was not an isolated event either. In September 2024, seven prisoners were disciplined for attacking an inmate in a gang-related assault at Hancock, according to records obtained by the AJC. Travon Walthour, 29, was killed at Hancock on October 13, 2024, with four other prisoners involved in his death according to GDC incident report data. And in June 2025, Vershaun Smith chased Corey July across the prison yard, cornered him at a locked gate, and stabbed him multiple times — a killing prosecutors said was captured on surveillance video. A Hancock County jury convicted Smith of malice murder in August 2026, and Judge Alison T. Burleson sentenced him to life in prison without parole. July, 33, was a McDonough native serving a Floyd County sentence with roughly twenty months remaining.

GPS records show nine sources contributing assault-by-inmate allegations at Hancock across seven months of 2026, with severity ratings of critical and high, and one external complaint filed to the U.S. Department of Justice. Inmate accounts collected by GPS describe mass-violence incidents in the facility's housing units and annex, including multiple stabbings and an air-ambulance response. GPS has also received accounts of a tactical squad deployment to the facility in 2026, described as a deterrent response to repeated roof-access incidents, and separate accounts of use of force by the Interdiction Response Team involving furniture and doors, with a prisoner transported elsewhere afterward. Those accounts are aggregate and have not been independently corroborated by GPS.

A Staffing Collapse Measured in Vacancies

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Hancock State Prison has one of the GDC's highest correctional officer vacancy rates, with 73.5% of positions vacant as of October 2024 — leaving only 49 officers on staff for over 1,100 prisoners. A separate AJC report put the figure at more than 70% vacant as of October 2024. Those numbers place Hancock among the worst-staffed facilities in a system where officer vacancies have run between 49.3% and 60% systemwide for multiple years, against a national standard of no more than 10%.

GPS's systemic findings place that crisis in context. The October 2024 DOJ findings letter concluded that "the leadership of the Georgia Department of Corrections has lost control of its facilities" and faulted GDC for placing "too much blame on gangs and insufficient emphasis on understaffing." Roughly 31% of the system's approximately 49,000 incarcerated people are validated members of 315 different security threat groups — more than double the national average. DOJ and the Guidehouse 2024 consultant assessment independently concluded that gangs effectively run multiple facilities, controlling access to phones, showers, food, and bed assignments. Consultants found staffing vacancies at 20 of Georgia's 34 prisons had reached "emergency levels," making it impossible to keep up with even basic protocols, and that cell locks at many prisons are broken — allowing prisoners to roam and gang members to intimidate others. Gov. Brian Kemp proposed allocating an additional $600 million over 18 months to address staffing, emergency repairs, and infrastructure, citing those findings.

GPS records four staffing-shortage signals at Hancock across three months of 2026, rated critical, moderate, and low. The hiring pipeline cannot close the gap systemwide: acceptance rates run under 15%, 82.7% of new hires leave in their first year, and Georgia ranks last of 50 states for correctional-officer pay.

Contraband, Corruption, and the Limits of Inspection

The staffing crisis has created openings for corruption. In January 2019, Hancock State Prison officer Jasmine Nicole Hall was caught with water bottles containing compartments filled with methamphetamine, marijuana, ecstasy, and hydrocodone; phone evidence revealed an ongoing drug distribution scheme across eight prisons totaling over $5,000 in transactions, according to the AJC. Hall's case is one data point in a pattern the AJC has documented: short-staffing, safety problems, and corruption inside Georgia's prisons have allowed prisoners to operate large criminal enterprises from their cells, with 28 major drug-trafficking cases filed between 2015 and 2024. Federal prosecutors separately announced charges against dozens of people for conspiring to distribute cocaine, methamphetamine, oxycodone, and marijuana from inside Georgia prisons, including inmates at Wilcox, Telfair, and Macon state prisons, Georgia Diagnostic and Correctional Prison, and the privately operated Wheeler and Jenkins correctional facilities.

Against that backdrop, the Georgia Department of Public Health's food-safety inspection scores for Hancock present a striking contrast. The facility received a score of 100 (Grade A) on December 18, 2025, in two separate routine inspections, and another 100 on May 27, 2025, alongside a second inspection that day scoring 96 (Grade A) with one violation cited for food-contact surfaces. It scored 100 on December 31, 2024, in two inspections, and 100 on June 25, 2024, alongside a 93 (Grade A) with two violations cited for proper eating, tasting, drinking, or tobacco use, and personal cleanliness. Two inspections on October 13, 2023 both scored 100, and a further pair on June 25, 2026 both scored 100.

Those scores are, on their face, excellent. But GPS has documented a systemic pattern of food-service sanitation failure across GDC kitchens that DPH inspection scores systematically fail to capture: tray-sanitizing dishwashers broken for sustained periods, sustained roach and rodent infestation in kitchen and serving areas, and meals served on visibly contaminated trays. The pattern is hidden from DPH scores, GPS has found, because inspections are scheduled walkthroughs that do not assess equipment under load, and because GPS has documented professional overlap between inspectors and facility staff in small-county settings. High DPH scores at GDC facilities coexist with sustained witness reports of equipment failure and food contamination — the contradiction at the center of GPS's investigation "Dunked, Stacked, and Served." The food budget sharpens it: GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food as of 2024 and has proposed $1.60 per day in FY27 — under 60 cents per meal — against the FDA Thrifty Food Plan estimate of roughly $10 per day for an adult man's nutritionally adequate diet. The Marshall Project independently corroborated the pattern in May 2026, reporting rats in kitchens, insects in food, moldy trays, and visible malnutrition across Georgia facilities.

Hancock in the Wider System

Hancock does not exist in isolation. The DOJ's October 2024 findings letter concluded that sexual assault is "rampant" in Georgia prisons and that GDC does not reasonably protect incarcerated people, including LGBTI individuals, from sexual harm. Of 456 sexual-abuse allegations recorded in 2022, only 35 were substantiated — 7.7%. GDC's own consultants reviewed 388 PREA investigation files in May 2022 and found that not one met the law's standards. Georgia has never submitted a PREA certification of full compliance to the U.S. Department of Justice in the law's two-decade history. The McKee case sits squarely inside that pattern: a young man who identified as LGBTQ, allegedly housed with gang members hostile to LGBTQ inmates, who asked to be moved the day before he was killed.

The statewide numbers are worse than any single facility's. Prison homicides in Georgia rose from 8 to 9 annually in 2017-2018 to 100 in 2024, with 333 total deaths in GDC custody that year — the deadliest year in state history. The DOJ found Georgia's in-prison homicide rate is nearly eight times the national average. GPS has independently tracked 1,896 deaths in GDC custody since 2020.

The gang violence that has repeatedly killed at Hancock is part of a broader wave. At Washington State Prison, a gang-war riot on January 11, 2026 killed three people at the scene — Teddy Jackson, 27; Ahmod Hatcher, 23; and Jimmy Trammell, 42, who was days from release — while a fourth, Silas Westbrook, 42, died of his injuries on January 17 after hospital release. Dajhmere Hall, 30, was found dead at Washington State Prison on January 9, two days before the riot, part of a five-death week across the two facilities. Twelve inmates were subsequently charged with felony murder, aggravated assault, and gang participation in connection with the disturbance. GPS's open-records production showed that only six officers were on duty at Washington State Prison when the January 11 riot began, and the facility has remained on continuous lockdown since, never reopening. None of that happened at Hancock — but it is the same phenomenon: gang-controlled facilities, catastrophic understaffing, and a death toll that keeps climbing. At Hancock, the pattern is documented in the facility's own mortality records, in the AJC's reporting, in the DOJ's investigation of McKee's death, and in the state's own settlement ledger.

Sources

This analysis draws on reporting from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 41NBC, and The Marshall Project; federal court filings and the U.S. Department of Justice's investigation into Georgia prisons; Georgia Department of Public Health food-safety inspection records; the GA DOAS Risk Management settlement ledger obtained through open records; GDC incident report data and public statements; GPS's own mortality registry, aggregate intelligence records, and systemic findings; and inmate and family accounts collected by GPS staff. Facility leadership information is drawn from GPS's personnel database, and mortality figures from GPS-tracked death records beginning January 1, 2020.