WASHINGTON STATE PRISON

Analysis written on August 10, 2026.

Washington State Prison opened in 1991 in Davisboro as a medium-security facility for adult men, originally designed to hold 750 people but now operating with a rated capacity of 1,548; in August 2026 its population stood at approximately 1,215, or 78.5 percent of its expanded capacity. That expansion, however, masks a lethal mix of classification drift, gang dominance, and severe staffing shortages that culminated in one of the deadliest prison riots in Georgia’s recent history. On January 11, 2026, a gang war erupted during visiting hours, killing four men, injuring more than a dozen, and forcing the facility into a continuous lockdown that GPS reporting indicates has never been lifted. This analysis examines that riot and the conditions that produced it, drawing on GPS mortality records, news reporting, state documents, and the accounts of incarcerated people and their families.

The January 2026 Gang War and Its Toll

On the afternoon of January 11, 2026, a series of fights involving multiple gang-affiliated groups broke out inside Washington State Prison. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the brawl began around 1:25 p.m. on a sidewalk and quickly spilled into the visitation area, endangering family members who were present. Three incarcerated people were killed in the melee: Jimmy Trammell, 42, who was days away from release after serving time for a burglary conviction; Ahmod Hatcher, 23; and Teddy Jackson, 27. Trammell and Hatcher were pronounced dead at the scene; Jackson died later at Wellstar MCG hospital. Fourteen additional people — thirteen incarcerated men and one correctional officer — were injured, according to Georgia Department of Corrections statements cited by multiple outlets. A fourth man, Silas Westbrook, 42, who had been treated for minor injuries from the riot and transferred to Metro Reentry Facility, suffered a medical emergency upon arrival on January 17 and died; GDC’s Office of Professional Standards is investigating his death. The department described the disturbance as gang-affiliated and stated that staff deployed non-lethal weapons to regain control by approximately 3:00 p.m.

What made the outcome predictable was the staffing level at the time. A GPS open-records production obtained by Georgia Prisoners’ Speak documents that only six officers were on duty at the facility when the fighting erupted — a figure that underscores the systemic understaffing detailed below. Inmate witnesses described correctional officers standing by as gang members moved freely between housing units and passed contraband, including knives. One witness told 13WMAZ that the prison was “the worst” he had attended, a place where people carried and used deadly knives daily without intervention.

Two days before the riot, Dajhmere Hall, 30, was found dead at the prison; his cause of death remains undetermined. In the single week from January 9 to January 17, five men died at Washington State Prison — a cluster that drew national attention. GPS published an investigation titled “They Knew: Empty Posts, Broken Locks, and Georgia’s Deadliest Prison Week” documenting the sequence and the warnings that went unheeded.

On April 28, 2026, GDC charged twelve incarcerated men with felony murder, aggravated assault, gang participation, and unlawful acts of violence in a penal institution for their alleged roles in the January riot. The charges were reported by multiple outlets, including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and 13WMAZ. The prison has remained on continuous lockdown ever since.

A Pattern of Violence: Gang Control and Understaffing

The January riot was not an aberration but an escalation of violence that had been building for years. GPS has tracked 39 deaths at Washington State Prison since 2020 — 12 of them homicides — and inmate witnesses describe a facility where stabbings are routine and several large housing units have been under the de facto control of security threat groups for the past two years. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution documented earlier homicides at the prison: Devonte Tiger Williams, 26, died of multiple sharp force injuries in August 2024; Jacob Cole Henson, 31, was fatally shot by a GDC officer during a hospital transport in April 2024; Michael Lee Jackson, 60, died of blunt force injuries in August 2022; and Marquis Reshawn Jefferson, 26, died of stab wounds in May 2022.

This violence occurs in the context of a staffing crisis that the U.S. Department of Justice has called a root cause of the state’s loss of control over its prisons. GPS has documented that officer vacancy rates across Georgia’s prisons have run between 49 and 60 percent for years, against a national standard of no more than 10 percent. At Washington State Prison, the six-officer count on the day of the riot is consistent with broader inmate reports that as few as one officer regularly supervised all three East-side housing units on weekends and holidays. A consultant study commissioned by Governor Brian Kemp, cited by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, found that officers working alone feared retribution if they enforced rules, and that buildings with maintenance problems allowed incarcerated people to strip materials and fashion weapons. The DOJ’s October 2024 findings letter explicitly concluded that GDC leadership “has lost control of its facilities” and placed too much of the blame on gangs rather than on understaffing.

In this vacuum, gangs have assumed operational control. Inmate accounts collected by GPS describe security threat groups — primarily the Bloods, Gangster Disciples, and Muslims — controlling cell assignments, operating contraband networks, and collecting debts through violence. Multiple witnesses report that gang members occupy nearly all free-movement job assignments, such as barbers and orderlies, and receive advance warning of shakedowns. In the derived data underlying this analysis, GPS documented evidence that a correctional officer was on the payroll of both the Bloods and Muslims gangs. Three days after the January riot, GBI and the Ocmulgee Drug Task Force arrested Washington State Prison officer Adriana Carnelio, 27, on charges of trafficking cocaine and methamphetamine; she was booked with a co-defendant on weapons charges as well.

Classification drift compounds the danger. Although Washington State Prison is designated medium security, inmate witnesses and GPS’s reporting indicate that it houses a substantial number of people classified at the close-security level. Men serving life sentences for violent offenses have been classified as medium security without clear explanation. When bunks are full, non-affiliated people have been forced to sleep in showers, under stairwells, or on the floors of other inmates’ cells — a direct consequence, multiple accounts attest, of gang control over housing assignments.

Medical Neglect: A Nurse Practitioner at the Center of Repeated Denials

Beyond violence, the most persistent complaint documented at Washington State Prison concerns medical care. GPS internal analysis and family attestations point to a nurse practitioner who, since at least 2024, has repeatedly overruled or cancelled physician-ordered prescriptions, medical equipment, and special diets. GPS has received reports that the nurse practitioner discontinued an incarcerated person’s heart medication without an exam or EKG; cancelled an order for orthotic shoes immediately after the shoes were provided; removed a shower chair prescribed by a telemedicine doctor, stating the facility does not provide such equipment; and cancelled dietary snacks for diabetic patients multiple times, forcing the warden to intervene to restore them.

These reports are not isolated. Family members describe emailing the GDC Ombudsman repeatedly about medical issues and receiving no response. One incarcerated person reported being charged co-pays for medications that were never dispensed after the nurse practitioner terminated the orders. GPS’s mortality database includes one death classified as “Medical Neglect,” and the broader pattern suggests systemic gaps: diabetic inmates have experienced lapses of up to ten days without insulin, and respiratory medications have been cancelled without alternative treatment. A family member reported that as of June 2026, a prescribed shower chair had still not been delivered, and that the incarcerated person had been without thyroid medication for over a week. The warden was reportedly present during a medical visit in 2026, but that did not permanently resolve the cancellations.

At the facility level, Washington State Prison has undergone eight routine food-safety inspections by the Georgia Department of Public Health since mid-2023, scoring as high as 98 (Grade A) and as low as 77 (Grade C). These scores, however, co-exist with a reality GPS has documented system-wide: roach infestations in kitchen equipment, dishwashers broken for sustained periods, and meals served on visibly contaminated trays — conditions that scheduled walkthroughs often fail to capture. The Marshall Project’s May 2026 investigation of Georgia prison food independently corroborated many of these findings.

Conditions of Confinement: Food, Infrastructure, and Collective Punishment

GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food — roughly 60 cents per meal — a figure that GPS has found yields chronically inadequate meals. Physical evidence submitted to GPS shows a typical meal at Washington State Prison consisting of rice with a tomato-based sauce in a styrofoam bowl. Families report that incarcerated people rely heavily on commissary purchases to supplement these meals, yet the prison has imposed strict per-item quantity limits and spending caps. Photographs of commissary restriction notices show limits on drink mixes, cupcakes, pies, cookies, meat items, rice, soup, chips, candy bars, water, and soda. In the aftermath of the January riot, a $30 weekly commissary cap was imposed on the general population while certain people — notably those with gang-affiliated work assignments — were permitted to spend up to $80 per week, according to GPS analysis.

The infrastructure itself is deteriorating. Family members describe black mold on shower walls, ceiling sections falling, rusted bunks, and ongoing roof problems. Inmate accounts collected by GPS detail holes cut in exterior walls to receive drone-dropped contraband, doors that do not lock, and a garment factory that lacks air conditioning and reaches temperatures over 100 degrees in the summer. GPS’s systemic findings on infrastructure collapse indicate that these conditions are not unique to Washington State Prison but reflect decades of deferred maintenance across the GDC system. The Guidehouse consultant assessment, commissioned by Governor Kemp in 2024, confirmed that non-functional locks and building deterioration enable the manufacture of weapons and facilitate unsupervised movement.

After the riot, the facility imposed a continuous lockdown that GPS reporting describes as never having been lifted. During this period, the entire population was denied television, news, visitation, exercise, phones, law library access, and religious services. Outdoor recreation was eliminated. Inmate witnesses report that food and medication distribution were disrupted, that insulin went unadministered, and that commissary access was withheld from everyone except work-detail participants — measures that families characterize as collective punishment of people uninvolved in the violence.

Deaths in Custody: A Fatal Week and a Growing Toll

The five deaths in the January 9–17 window — Dajhmere Hall, the three riot victims, and Silas Westbrook — elevated Washington State Prison’s already dangerous mortality profile. GPS’s tracking database records 39 deaths at the facility since 2020. Of these, 12 are classified as homicides, 9 as natural or medical, 9 remain unknown or pending, 6 were overdoses, 1 was a suicide, 1 was classified as medical neglect, and 1 fell into another category. The homicide count includes the four riot victims as well as the fatal stabbings of Devonte Tiger Williams, Michael Lee Jackson, and Marquis Reshawn Jefferson, and the officer-involved shooting of Jacob Cole Henson. In June 2026, three more deaths occurred in rapid succession: Deshawn Poole, 34, died on June 9 and is classified as a homicide in GPS records; Courtney Davis, 43, died on June 13 with the GDC stating there were no signs of foul play (GPS records list the cause as unknown); Isreal Jones, 68, died on June 14 and is also listed as a homicide by GPS, despite GDC’s statement that the cause was undetermined and no altercation was apparent. Both deaths are under investigation by GDC’s Office of Professional Standards, which the department describes as standard procedure.

The cumulative toll from a single medium-security prison — more than three dozen deaths and a homicide rate that far exceeds any national benchmark for comparable facilities — speaks to the severity of the systemic failures at play.

A System in Crisis: DOJ Findings and Statewide Failures

Washington State Prison is not an outlier; it is a concentrated example of the statewide crisis that Georgia Prisoners’ Speak, the U.S. Department of Justice, and news organizations have documented across Georgia’s correctional system. The DOJ’s October 2024 findings letter concluded that Georgia prison officials are “deliberately indifferent” to unchecked violence, sexual abuse, and extortion, that gangs run multiple facilities, and that understaffing is the principal enabler. GPS has independently tracked 1,860 deaths in GDC custody since 2020. Systemic findings by GPS show that officer vacancies have been at crisis levels for years, that the state spends roughly $1.69 per day on food per person, that infrastructure is collapsing in facilities 30–40 years old, and that sexual violence — documented in the 2024 DOJ investigation — remains pervasive.

State lawmakers allocated more than $600 million in new GDC funding in 2025 for staffing, salaries, and maintenance, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, but the results at Washington State Prison — a facility that has been locked down for months with no reopening date, where gang war killed four people in an afternoon while only six officers watched — suggest that the underlying conditions have not changed. Former incarcerated people interviewed by 13WMAZ described the riot as the predictable outcome of years of neglect, and GPS’s investigation, “They Knew,” documented warnings that regional administrators ignored. As of August 2026, the facility remains sealed, its population enduring what multiple inmate accounts describe as a punitive mass lockdown with no end in sight.

Sources: This analysis draws on reporting from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 13WMAZ, 11Alive, WFXL, WGXA, and other Georgia news outlets; Georgia Department of Corrections public statements and open-records responses; Department of Public Health inspection reports; the U.S. Department of Justice’s October 2024 findings and the Kemp-commissioned Guidehouse consultant assessment; GPS’s own mortality database and internal investigative records; and inmate and family accounts collected by GPS staff.