PULASKI STATE PRISON

Analysis written on July 19, 2026.

Pulaski State Prison in Hawkinsville, Georgia, opened in 1994 and houses nearly 1,200 adult women in a facility originally designed for 500. As of mid-2026, Warden Wendy Jackson oversees a complex that comprises multiple double-bunked dormitory buildings and segregated housing for disciplinary and protective custody. The institution is neither Georgia’s largest nor oldest women’s prison, but it has become one of the most scrutinized: a U.S. Department of Justice investigation found that constitutional violations—including rampant sexual assault and failure to protect incarcerated people—pervaded Pulaski’s operations, a conclusion anchored in conditions GPS has independently documented over years of investigation.

A Legacy of Lethal Medical Neglect: The Nazaire Years

The most lethal chapter in Pulaski’s history unfolded under the watch of Dr. Yvon Nazaire, a contract physician who served the prison and Emanuel Women’s Facility from 2005 to 2015. GPS reporting has established that at least 22 women died under his care during that decade, a toll that prompted investigative coverage by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and later by Georgia Prisoners’ Speak (GPS). Before practicing in Georgia, Nazaire had a record of malpractice deaths in New York; Georgia hired him despite that history and, GPS found, gave him a raise for cost-cutting—cutting achieved in part by denying prisoners medical care. Bonnie Rocheleau, held at Pulaski, developed pneumonia and died after failing to receive adequate treatment; the state later paid a $925,000 liability settlement tied to her 2015 death. Mollianne Fischer, also at Pulaski, was left in a vegetative state after what the AJC reported as a failure to provide adequate medical care.

The facility’s death ledger does not stop with Nazaire. GPS’s mortality database records 29 deaths at Pulaski since 2020, a period in which the DOJ found that Georgia prisons systemwide exhibit “deliberate indifference to the serious medical needs of prisoners.” In July 2026 alone, Kristi Perkins and Monika Bradley died within a week of one another; the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the GDC’s Office of Professional Standards opened inquiries, though officials reported no signs of foul play. The GDC noted an air-conditioning malfunction on July 9—resolved the same day—but stated there was no indication the deaths were heat-related. The deaths echo a deeper pattern: five state liability settlements linked to Pulaski, including $300,000 for Kimery Finger (2015) and $85,000 for Makayah Howard (2024), underscore that medical failures here are not isolated incidents but recurring events that have cost Georgia taxpayers over $1.3 million in payouts.

Violence, Gang Control, and the Collapse of Staff Supervision

The DOJ’s October 2024 findings specifically cited Pulaski State Prison as a site where incarcerated women were sexually assaulted at knifepoint and where the department failed to protect them from harm. The federal investigation documented that gangs effectively run multiple Georgia facilities, controlling access to phones, showers, food, and bed assignments—a reality GPS has corroborated through direct investigation. At Pulaski, family members reported paying gang extortion demands exceeding $10,000 to protect loved ones from threats of disfigurement. An incarcerated woman was stabbed in an assault that went unnoticed by staff until an outside caller reported it; she had previously reported being assaulted by ten people hours earlier, stomped, hit, and kicked. In July 2023, eleven prisoners destroyed building property using broomsticks, a crowbar, shanks, and locks; nine security personnel responded, deploying chemical spray to regain control.

The failure of supervision is not a mystery. GPS has documented that officer vacancies across the Georgia system have run between 49% and 60% for years, well beyond the national standard of 10%. At Telfair State Prison, former sergeant Tyler Ryals told GPS he was the sole security officer for an entire compound housing 1,250 maximum-security prisoners—a stark illustration repeated in countless variations at women’s prisons like Pulaski, where inmate accounts collected by GPS describe housing units left unsupervised for hours, broken cell-door locks, and dormitories in which violence escalates without intervention.

Staff Misconduct, Retaliation, and a Broken Grievance System

In May 2024, Deputy Warden Alonzo L. McMillian was arrested at the Hawkinsville facility and charged with having a sexual relationship with a prisoner, including improper sexual contact on February 24 and 25. He was terminated the same day, along with another GDC employee, in what the AJC characterized as potential evidence of a broader systemic problem. GPS’s own reporting has documented that sexual violence in Georgia prisons is pervasive; the DOJ found that GDC does not reasonably protect LGBTI prisoners, and that of 456 sexual-abuse allegations recorded systemwide in 2022, only 7.7% were substantiated. Not a single PREA investigation file reviewed by GDC’s own consultants in 2022 met the law’s standards.

Beyond sexual misconduct, families and incarcerated women have sent GPS a cascade of reports describing retaliation, intimidation, and a non-functional grievance process since Wendy Jackson assumed the wardenship in April 2025. Multiple witnesses recount extended lockdowns lasting more than five days, during which water to cells was cut off for days, shower access was denied entirely, commissary and phone calls were suspended, and personal property—including locks securing purchased items—was confiscated with the stated intent that it would not be returned. Inmate accounts describe a warden’s verbal confrontation with a prisoner during an inspection, staff using intermediaries to discourage direct complaints to leadership, and an incarcerated person being locked down immediately after contacting facility administration. GPS’s systemic finding is that retaliation for speaking out is a structural feature of Georgia’s prison system—a pattern that appeared to intensify in the first ten months of Jackson’s tenure at Pulaski.

Food Safety Failing Scores and Unsanitary Kitchens

A January 2026 routine inspection of Pulaski’s kitchen by the Georgia Department of Public Health yielded a score of 67—an F—with citations for inadequate handwashing, sewage backups, a nonfunctional hand sink, and food waste exposed to pests. That failing score came in the midst of a deteriorating inspection record: a 78 (C) in September 2025, a 73 (C) in August 2025, and a 67 just months earlier. Although a follow-up in February 2026 corrected some immediate violations and produced a score of 96, GPS has documented through its broader investigation that high DPH scores often coexist with sustained sanitation failures. Broken tray-sanitizing dishwashers, roach infestations in kitchen equipment, and meals served on contaminated trays recur across Georgia prisons—conditions that scheduled walkthroughs with known inspectors in small counties systematically fail to capture. The state spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food, about 60 cents per meal, a fraction of the FDA’s Thrifty Food Plan estimate for a nutritionally adequate diet. At Pulaski, where hundreds of women rely on institutional meals, the combination of underfunding and unreliable kitchen infrastructure compounds the health risks already flowing from medical neglect.

Federal Findings and State Settlements

The DOJ’s civil rights investigation, launched in 2021 following the Ashley Diamond litigation, concluded that the Georgia Department of Corrections had lost control of its facilities and violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. The October 2024 findings letter explicitly documented sexual assaults at knifepoint at Pulaski, failures to protect incarcerated people from violence, and deliberate indifference to serious medical needs. GPS has independently tracked 1,849 deaths in GDC custody since 2020, a runaway mortality that prompted the federal intervention. The state’s liability payouts tied to Pulaski—$925,000 for Rocheleau, $300,000 for Finger, $85,000 for Howard, $30,000 for Quinn, and $15,900 for Coleman—constitute an official acknowledgment that conditions inside the prison have caused serious harm. They are not the end of the story. Warden Jackson inherited a facility scarred by lethal neglect and a federal finding of unconstitutionality, and the reports that reached GPS in the months that followed—of intimidation, unsafe conditions, and retaliation—suggest that the crisis, far from abating, continued to unfold.

Sources

This analysis draws on federal court settlements from the Georgia Department of Administrative Services risk-management ledger; reporting by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 41NBC News, and WGXA; the U.S. Department of Justice’s October 2024 findings; Georgia Department of Public Health kitchen-inspection records; GPS’s own mortality database and staff observations; GPS’s systemic editorial findings; and firsthand narratives, family accounts, and inmate witness reports collected and reviewed by GPS staff.