SMITH STATE PRISON

Facility Profile

Smith State Prison is a close-security facility located in Glennville, Tattnall County, Georgia, operated by the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC). As of October 2025, GDC population data showed Smith holding 1,125 total inmates — 5 at minimum security, 118 at medium, and 1,002 at close security — making it one of the state's primary maximum-security institutions. The facility also houses a satellite unit: Long Unit (Close Security Unit at Smith SP), which held an additional 231 people (63 minimum, 168 medium) as of the same period.

Smith has a documented history of operating under severe staffing shortages. A former incarcerated person who spent approximately seven years at Smith and Hayes State Prisons between the 1990s and 2009 described Smith as a place that 'bred violence,' noting it was understaffed even in the early 1990s. The GDC's own consultants acknowledged in a December 2024 report that staffing vacancies have reached crisis levels systemwide — a condition that has only worsened since Smith's early decades of operation. The Southeast Regional Office, which oversees Smith and 15 other facilities, is located in Reidsville in neighboring Tattnall County. Tarmarshe Smith was appointed Southeast Regional Director effective October 1, 2025, having previously served as Deputy Warden of Security at Smith SP beginning in 2016.

Gang Violence, Lockdowns, and Security Failures

Smith State Prison has been a recurring flashpoint for gang-related violence requiring coordinated emergency responses. On approximately April 2, 2026, a gang-related altercation at Smith resulted in two inmates being airlifted via Life Flight to local hospitals with injuries described by the GDC as 'non-life-threatening.' The altercation was contained to one dorm. One inmate subsequently returned to the facility. The incident was serious enough to trigger a statewide lockdown of all GDC facilities 'out of an abundance of caution, until further notice,' according to GDC statements reported by WTOC and WGXA.

Just days later, on approximately April 3, 2026, GDC confirmed that fights at Smith, Wilcox, Hays, and Valdosta State Prisons had collectively resulted in five inmates being sent to the hospital. Smith was again named as one of the sites generating injuries in this second wave of statewide gang violence. These incidents followed a January 2026 'gang-affiliated disturbance' at Washington State Prison — a separate facility — that killed four inmates and injured over a dozen, underscoring a systemwide pattern of coordinated gang activity that the GDC has repeatedly characterized as 'gang-related' while releasing minimal further detail.

The facility also figured in a 2023 federal indictment described in AJC reporting as part of a 'multimillion-dollar contraband scheme at Smith State Prison,' with indictments using the phrase 'whack a mole' to describe the GDC's inability to stop the cycle of staff corruption. The AJC's broader investigation found more than 425 GDC employees arrested since 2018 for on-the-job crimes, the majority involving contraband smuggling — a dynamic that at Smith specifically enabled criminal enterprises operating from inside the facility.

Murder of Aramark Worker Aureon Grace: Security Breach and Lawsuit

In June 2024, Aureon Shavea Grace, a 24-year-old Aramark food service employee and Statesboro High School graduate, was shot and killed inside Smith State Prison's kitchen by incarcerated person Jaydrekus Hart. Hart, who was serving a 20-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter out of Carroll County with a maximum release date of June 2043, subsequently died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Grace had been employed at Smith for less than five months at the time of her death. She left behind two children, ages 5 and 2, who are now being raised by her mother, Deshonda Hagins.

In July 2025, Hagins filed a lawsuit in Fulton County State Court against the Georgia Department of Corrections. The complaint alleges that prison staff received repeated warnings from inmates — delivered directly to multiple GDC officials, including during official investigations — that a gun was present inside the facility for more than a year before the shooting. According to the lawsuit, 'No lockdown was initiated. No extensive search was conducted. No protective measures were put in place.' The GDC declined to comment on the pending litigation. The lawsuit seeks a jury trial and an unspecified amount in damages.

Following Grace's death, the GDC accused Grace of having helped Hart bring the gun into the facility, a claim her family disputes through the ongoing litigation. Authorities reported discovering a suicide note that appeared to have been left by Hart and described a 'personal relationship' between Grace and Hart. The case illustrates the catastrophic consequences of known security threats going unaddressed — a pattern that GPS has documented across multiple GDC facilities.

Conditions, Food Safety, and Nutrition

Smith State Prison is embedded within a GDC system that GPS and outside investigators have documented as experiencing a profound nutritional and sanitation crisis. Families of people incarcerated across the system — including at facilities like Smith — have described loved ones losing 30 to 50 pounds, reporting food trays that arrive cold and nearly empty, and describing ingredients contaminated by black mold and pests. One mother told GPS in October 2025: 'They're being slow-starved to death.' While specific food safety inspection scores for Smith have not been independently reported, GPS's broader investigation found that Georgia prison kitchen infrastructure has decayed for over three decades even as populations have grown.

Smith's population includes a significant concentration of close-security inmates — 1,002 out of 1,125 total as of October 2025 — a demographic that typically faces the most restrictive conditions, including limited movement, restricted programming, and reduced access to services. Systemwide GDC data as of April 2026 shows 1,261 inmates system-wide with 'poorly controlled health conditions,' 47 in mental health crisis, and 6 with terminal illness — populations that GPS has documented as receiving consistently inadequate care across GDC facilities. The $434 million in new GDC funding approved by the Georgia Legislature for the current fiscal year, with an additional approximately $200 million approved for FY2026, was characterized by lawmakers themselves as only 'a start.'

Mortality Trends and Institutional Accountability

GPS independently tracks mortality across all GDC facilities. The GDC does not publicly release cause-of-death information, and GPS's classifications are based on independent investigation, news reports, family accounts, and public records. Across the entire GDC system, GPS has recorded 1,778 deaths since 2020. The annual figures reflect both the scale of the crisis and the limits of what GPS has been able to independently confirm: 293 deaths in 2020, 257 in 2021, 254 in 2022, 262 in 2023, 333 in 2024, and 301 in 2025. As of April 26, 2026, GPS has recorded 78 deaths in 2026 alone — including 27 confirmed homicides. The large number of deaths classified as 'unknown/pending' in each year reflects GPS's ongoing investigative capacity, not GDC transparency. The true homicide count across all years is believed to be significantly higher than confirmed figures.

Smith State Prison specifically has been documented as a site of recurring deadly gang violence, staff-enabled contraband, and — as the Grace case illustrates — fatal institutional failures to act on known threats. The GDC's posture of suppressing information has been well-documented: the department fought a DOJ subpoena for records for six months in 2022, requiring a federal judge's order to compel disclosure. AJC editorial board reporting in December 2023 concluded that the GDC 'operates as though there's nothing to see here' even as deaths reached record levels. Smith's history — including its role in the landmark 2010 Georgia prison work strike, in which Smith was one of four facilities where all prisoners remained in their cells — reflects decades of unresolved grievances about violence, exploitation, and the absence of accountability.

Historical Context: The 2010 Prison Strike and Decades of Neglect

Smith State Prison was one of four facilities at the center of the December 2010 Georgia prison work strike — described at the time as the largest prison work strike in U.S. history. On December 9, 2010, prisoners at Smith, Hays, Macon, and Telfair State Prisons refused to leave their cells to report to work, effectively shutting down operations. The coordinated, nonviolent action was organized via text messages and drew support from the NAACP and civil rights advocates. Strikers' demands included fair wages, protection from officer abuse, affordable medical care, and basic educational services — the same systemic failures that GPS continues to document sixteen years later.

A formerly incarcerated person who spent approximately seven years at Smith between the 1990s and 2009 described the prison in a 2025 GPS account as a place that 'bred violence' and was deeply understaffed even then, recounting sexual exploitation and a culture in which surviving meant learning to 'mind your business, keep your head down.' That the same conditions — chronic understaffing, gang dominance, sexual violence, and institutional indifference — persist and have intensified into 2026 reflects not a failure to identify the problem, but a sustained institutional choice not to solve it.