# PULASKI STATE PRISON > Pulaski State Prison, a women's facility in Hawkinsville, Georgia, has operated under documented conditions of gang-controlled violence, medical neglect, staff sexual misconduct, retaliatory lockdowns, and a dysfunctional grievance system — conditions confirmed by a 2022–2023 DOJ investigation that identified constitutional violations. The facility's new warden, Wendy Jackson, appointed in mid-2024, has been on the job less than a year, and GPS has received multiple reports of escalating retaliation against women who speak to outside advocates. At least 22 women died under a single physician's care at the facility, and a federal jury in April 2026 returned a $307.6 million verdict against Corizon Health's corporate successor for medical neglect connected to the broader medical framework in which Pulaski operated. **Published**: 2026-04-26 **Source**: https://gps.press/intelligence/facility/pulaski-state-prison/ **Author**: Georgia Prisoners' Speak --- ## Facility Overview and Documented Crisis History Pulaski State Prison is one of Georgia's four women's prisons, located in Hawkinsville in Pulaski County. The facility has been the subject of sustained investigative reporting, DOJ scrutiny, federal litigation, and firsthand accounts from incarcerated women and their families documenting what GPS has characterized as a sustained, systemic failure to provide safe and constitutionally adequate conditions of confinement. The facility's recent history includes a 2022–2023 U.S. Department of Justice investigation that identified constitutional violations at the prison. The DOJ findings — released publicly in October 2024 — documented gang-controlled environments with extortion and sexual assaults, drug overdose deaths, and broader failures of protection and medical care. Georgia's Department of Corrections publicly disputed the findings, with GDC spokesperson Joan Heath stating the state was 'exceeding' constitutional standards, and Governor Brian Kemp issuing a supportive statement — a posture observers noted mirrored Georgia's initial response to Alabama's equally scathing 2019 DOJ prison investigation. Prior to the DOJ investigation, a 2022 Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation documented gang members using violence to extort inmates and families at Pulaski. One mother, Pamela Dixon, paid over $10,000 in extortion demands to gang members who threatened to disfigure her daughter's face unless $300 was sent via Cash App by 8 p.m. that night. Dixon has since become an advocate and, as of April 2025, was still receiving calls from other mothers describing similar conditions — though more recently, those calls concerned the warden herself. ## Medical Neglect, Deaths Under Physician Care, and the Corizon Verdict GPS has documented that at least 22 women died at Pulaski State Prison under the care of a single physician who had a documented history of malpractice deaths in another state prior to being hired by the facility. Despite that history, the physician was hired and subsequently received a raise after implementing cost-cutting measures that involved denying medical care to incarcerated women. Previous medical leadership at the facility was terminated for application fraud, despite having overseen at least 9 deaths characterized by GPS sources as questionable. On April 2, 2026, a federal jury returned a verdict of $307.6 million against the corporate successor to Corizon Health — the private medical contractor that provided healthcare in Georgia women's prisons — for medical neglect. The case centered on the neglect of a patient requiring colostomy care, and the verdict represents one of the largest jury awards in the history of prison medical litigation in the United States. The verdict is directly relevant to Pulaski's documented pattern of denied and delayed care. GPS has also documented a specific death at a state women's correctional facility on January 10, 2025, with an official cause listed as acute respiratory failure/possible drug overdose — though a source indicated the death may have occurred at a different facility than officially recorded. The deceased's records were subsequently removed from the GDC offender database, and a family-posted article about the death is no longer accessible online. GPS separately documented an overdose death at a women's facility in which staff did not call an ambulance for approximately 30 minutes while the woman lay on the floor — and in which the medical response delay was allegedly subsequently covered up. The GDC does not publicly release cause-of-death information; GPS tracks and classifies deaths through independent reporting, news accounts, family statements, and public records. ## Staff Sexual Misconduct and Abuse of Authority In May 2024, Alonzo L. McMillian, the Deputy Warden for Administration at Pulaski State Prison, was arrested on charges of engaging in sexual contact with a person in GDC custody and violating his oath as an officer. Arrest warrants obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution stated that McMillian had a 'sexual relationship' with a prisoner and specifically engaged in improper sexual contact with her on February 24 and 25, 2024. McMillian, 44, was arrested at the Hawkinsville facility and booked into the Pulaski County jail on May 2, before being released the next day on a $10,000 bond. GDC confirmed his termination effective May 2, 2024. The arrest of a deputy warden — the second-highest ranking official at the facility — reflects a pattern of supervisory-level misconduct that GPS has documented across Georgia's women's prison system. The existence of sexual contact between senior administrators and incarcerated women at Pulaski raises questions not only about individual misconduct but about the supervision and accountability structures that allowed it to go undetected or unreported. GPS has also received reports that staff members at the facility stole items from recovered inmate packages, distributed them to other inmates as bribes for information, and failed to return stolen property to families despite the existence of purchase receipts. The facility's grievance system allegedly failed to process complaints, with grievances reportedly discarded by counselors before reaching leadership — a structural failure that would prevent accountability for these and other forms of staff misconduct. ## Retaliatory Conditions, Lockdowns, and Suppression of Advocacy GPS has received multiple firsthand accounts describing a pattern of retaliation against women at Pulaski who contact outside advocates or file complaints. One incarcerated woman reported being held in lockdown with water access cut off for the first three days of confinement, followed by 11 days without showers or clean clothes and only one permitted phone call. She reported filing complaints with regional administration, the state commissioner, the ombudsman, and inmate affairs — and reported fear of retaliation for doing so. GPS has identified these conditions as potential Eighth Amendment violations. A separate account describes an incarcerated woman being confronted and verbally berated by a warden during a facility inspection, then placed in a filthy unused bathtub area before being transferred to extended lockdown lasting more than five days, with restrictions on phone access, showers, and commissary. The incident followed a prior assault on the woman and a denied safe housing request — a sequence GPS characterizes as retaliation against a vulnerable person who had already sought protection. A formerly incarcerated person who was at Pulaski from 2023 through July 2025 described dorms operating for hours with no officer supervision, a security bubble that was routinely empty, and a system where medical emergencies required inmates to call their families — who then had to call the facility — to summon help. She described fights lasting more than thirty minutes, blood and urine left on floors, and collective punishment imposed on entire dorms after fights — with commissary restrictions falling hardest on inmates who had nothing to do with the incident. She also described block movement — the mechanism by which inmates reach medical, dental, and mental health appointments — failing 90% of the time, with women missing critical healthcare appointments as a result. ## New Warden, Unresolved Crisis, and the Parole Question In approximately mid-2024, Wendy Jackson was appointed warden of Pulaski State Prison. As of February 2026, Jackson was less than ten months into leading the facility. GPS reporting characterizes Jackson as having limited experience for an assignment of this scale and complexity — a facility with a documented DOJ finding of constitutional violations, at least 22 deaths under a single physician, ongoing gang activity, and an active federal litigation environment. Families reported that conditions under Jackson's leadership were mirroring the facility's historical crisis patterns rather than departing from them. GPS also notes a separate governance transfer that occurred following the death of an incarcerated person under a superintendent's watch at a state facility: official records attributed the death to a different facility, the incarcerated population reported systematic phone searches to suppress communication about conditions, and the superintendent was subsequently transferred to another facility position shortly after the death. This pattern — of administrative shuffling following deaths, combined with record manipulation and communication suppression — is consistent with what GPS has documented at Pulaski. Pulaski is also the current residence of Janice Buttrum, a 63-year-old woman who has been incarcerated since 1981 for a crime committed at age 17. Buttrum has been housed in the Honor Dorm at Pulaski, with her last disciplinary infraction in 1999. Despite five parole applications, the State Board of Pardons and Paroles has denied each one with near-identical form letters and has provided no documents showing how it distinguishes between juvenile and adult offenders — as the U.S. Supreme Court requires. On March 17, 2026, U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg denied the board's motion to dismiss Buttrum's lawsuit, finding that her attorneys had plausibly alleged Georgia's parole process for juvenile lifers may be so hollow as to violate the Eighth Amendment. ## Litigation, Settlements, and Institutional Accountability The $307.6 million federal jury verdict against Corizon Health's corporate successor, returned on April 2, 2026, is the most significant financial accountability measure connected to the medical care framework under which Pulaski operated. The case involved the medical neglect of a colostomy patient and proceeded to verdict rather than settlement — a signal that juries are willing to impose substantial punitive accountability for prison medical neglect. GPS notes that Georgia's broader prison system has paid out nearly $20 million in settlements since 2018 for deaths and injuries across GDC facilities, including cases involving improper medical care, failure to protect prisoners from violent attacks, and failure to monitor prisoners who died by suicide. The documented settlement record, combined with the DOJ's constitutional findings and GPS's independent mortality tracking, establishes a pattern of institutional failure that has generated significant legal and financial consequences without producing systemic reform. Attorney Darl H. Champion, who represented the family of Agnes Bohannon — a prisoner who died after days of untreated illness, settled for $1.5 million — has argued that the problems of violence, understaffing, and poor medical care are structurally interconnected and cannot be fixed in isolation. GPS will continue to monitor Pulaski State Prison for deaths, conditions reports, litigation developments, and administrative changes. Individuals with information about conditions at Pulaski are encouraged to contact GPS through secure channels. The GDC does not publicly release cause-of-death data; all mortality classifications in GPS records reflect independent investigation by GPS researchers, not GDC reporting.