GDC Budget: Where the Money Goes

Brief written June 7, 2026 from GPS Intelligence System data.

A System in Emergency Mode

The Georgia Department of Corrections now commands a budget of roughly $1.8 billion per year—a figure that has jumped 44% since FY 2022. In FY 2025, actual state general fund expenditures on corrections reached $1.824 billion, and the amended FY 2026 budget sits at $1.799 billion, largely state-funded after federal and other funds collapsed from over $100 million in FY 2024 to just under $17 million. It is the largest corrections spending infusion in Georgia’s history: between January and May 2025, the General Assembly approved approximately $634 million in new corrections money, split between a $434 million mid-year emergency infusion and $200 million in the FY 2026 budget, which itself came in $75 million above the governor’s recommendation.

Yet the system those billions support is in “emergency mode,” according to the Guidehouse consultants hired by Governor Kemp. The U.S. Department of Justice’s October 2024 investigation of 17 Georgia prisons concluded that conditions constitute “among the most severe violations” of civil rights the department has ever documented, finding that the state is deliberately indifferent to a level of violence that has made its facilities almost eight times as deadly as the national average. The DOJ reported 142 homicides in Georgia prisons between 2018 and 2023; in 2024 alone, GDC officially recorded 66 homicides, while GPS’s independent tracking identified at least 100. Deaths from all causes have set records in consecutive years, and the prison death rate surged 47% between 2019 and 2024.

What makes this spending surge particularly revealing is that almost every outcome metric worsened precisely as the money flowed.

The Staffing Crisis: Paying More for Fewer Officers

Staffing is the engine of every other prison failure, and Georgia’s staffing collapse is among the worst in the nation. Systemwide, correctional officer vacancy rates sit above 50%, and at eight facilities they exceed 70%. At Valdosta State Prison, 80% of CO positions were vacant as of April 2024. The raw numbers are stark: GDC employed 6,383 correctional officers in 2014; by 2024, that number had fallen to 2,776—a 56% decline—while the prison population remained roughly flat at around 49,000.

The state has responded with successive rounds of emergency pay increases, allocating nearly $43 million in FY 2025 alone for CO pay bumps, and an additional $23 million in FY 2026. Commissioner Oliver has testified about $3,000 salary increases and 4% incremental raises. But vacancy rates remain above 50% at most facilities, and the effective hiring rate is abysmal: in a recent six-month period, GDC could only hire 118 officers out of 800 applicants—an acceptance rate below 15%. Once hired, 82.7% of new officers leave within their first year. The result is a net churn that Commissioner Oliver himself acknowledged makes staffing targets “just not possible.” Starting salaries of $40,000–$43,000 still trail comparable law enforcement positions, and rural locations compound the recruitment problem.

The consequences of these vacancies are lethal. DOJ investigators found officers routinely responsible for monitoring hundreds of incarcerated people with no backup; at one facility, a single officer was responsible for tracking 400 beds. Response times to violent incidents are dangerously slow. On overnight shifts, if two officers must transport a sick prisoner to a hospital, only one or two COs may remain to cover an entire facility. The Safe Inside initiative, a federally funded study of 12 state prison systems released in February 2026, identified understaffing and high turnover as the primary drivers of the 54% increase in assaults on incarcerated people and the 77% increase in assaults on staff between 2019 and 2024, although researchers noted that inadequate state data prevented proving direct causation. The same report found state prisons became nearly 50% deadlier over five years. The Senate Study Committee independently confirmed that high vacancy rates directly correlate with increased violence. Meanwhile, national prison overtime spending exceeded $2 billion in 2024, an 80% increase from five years earlier, as states pour money into mandatory overtime instead of solving the structural vacancy problem.

Surveillance Over Rehabilitation: The Technology-Programming Divide

If the staffing crisis reveals a system unable to hire its way out of failure, the budget’s technology allocations reveal a system choosing surveillance over the programs that demonstrably reduce violence and recidivism. GPS’s investigation of the GDC Overwatch & Logistic (OWL) Unit found that Georgia has built a centralized, statewide surveillance infrastructure without any public announcement, press conference, or dedicated website. The program has been assembled incrementally across overlapping appropriations, vendor relationships, and federal grants in a way that obscures its total cost, but the visible numbers are enormous: - $35 million for managed access cell phone interdiction systems deployed across all 35 operational state prisons - $84.7 million for thermal cameras, CCTV, and perimeter security statewide - $7.2 million for body cameras and tasers - $1.95 million for a “Data Intelligence Advanced Integration” system whose vendor and capabilities are entirely opaque - $4.1 million for digital forensics - $2.5 million for officer tablets - $913,000 for off-site mail screening Total identifiable technology and surveillance spending exceeds $150 million across multiple fiscal years, with the OWL unit integrating GroundAware radar (capable of tracking humans, vehicles, and drones across a 15 km radius), AeroDefense drone detection, the Fusus real-time crime center platform acquired by Axon, Viken Detection X-ray equipment, and a GDC-OWL WiFi network whose funding source and vendor remain undocumented.

Contrast this with the state’s investment in education, vocational training, and rehabilitation—the programs that the criminological evidence shows are among the most cost-effective violence-reduction interventions available. In FY 2025, Georgia allocated $172,000 statewide for vocational education contracts—roughly $3.44 per incarcerated person per year. The FY 2026 budget included $805,000 for vocational and technical education programs. Across the AFY 2026 and FY 2027 budget years, total new rehabilitation and education investment totaled approximately $2.6 million, including a $150,000 pilot program at Autry State Prison for peer-led programming and small increases to offender reentry services and a high school diploma program. Education is not a standalone budget program; it is buried inside the “State Prisons” appropriation with no dedicated line item. There is no dedicated rehabilitation budget line of any kind.

The consequences of this disinvestment are measurable. Vocational program completers in Georgia recidivate at 13.6%, roughly half the state’s already-underreported general rate. RAND Corporation research found that prison education reduces recidivism by 43% and returns $4 to $5 for every dollar invested, while vocational training produces a 205% return on investment. At a moment when 44 other states are expanding prison college programs under the restored federal Pell Grant eligibility, Georgia is moving in the opposite direction. Georgia State University shut down its prison education program in March 2024—a program that cost $180,000 per year and served 60 students—and a 1995 administrative regulation from the Zell Miller era specifically strips incarcerated students from accessing Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship, which provides $1 billion annually for education statewide. The state’s new DREAMS Scholarship received $325 million in AFY 2026; GDC education received about $2 million, a ratio of 162:1.

The DOJ found that educational and vocational programming had been “slashed rather than expanded,” and conditions in most facilities were so chaotic and violent that meaningful programming participation was “effectively impossible.” The department noted that understaffing affects programs because prisons “do not have enough staff to prevent or even respond to the most blatant gang activities, let alone provide programs.” Only three of the 82 remedial measures in the DOJ report address programming, and none mandate education, vocational training, or GED programs. GPS’s own mission analysis found that no one holds GDC accountable for its statutory rehabilitation mandate.

Healthcare and the Aging Prison Population: A Growing Fiscal Overhang

Healthcare is the fastest-growing component of GDC spending, rising from $325.6 million in FY 2024 actual expenditures to $389.9 million in FY 2025, with the FY 2027 budget reaching $432.2 million—a 33% increase in three years. The amended FY 2026 health budget alone added $38.9 million for the physical health contract, including $15 million specifically for “outside-the-wire” care, $10.9 million for per diem increases, and $12.9 million for opening additional beds. FY 2027 adds another $47.9 million for the physical health contract and $12.1 million for the mental health contract to increase staffing ratios. Pharmacy and dental contracts have also seen repeated emergency infusions.

This cost spiral is driven substantially by an aging incarcerated population. Georgia’s parole system has collapsed: lifer parole approvals fell from 70% of eligible cases in 1993 to 4.5% in FY 2024, when only 93 of 2,046 life-sentence cases were granted release. Overall parole releases declined 42% from FY 2019 to FY 2024, from 9,455 to 5,443. The average time served for a life-sentenced person convicted of a serious violent felony now stands at 29.2 years, triple what it was in 1973. Meanwhile, elderly prisoners cost three to nine times as much to incarcerate as younger ones, with national estimates ranging from $60,000 to $70,000 per year. Recidivism data makes the fiscal case clearly: nationwide, three-year rearrest rates for people over 60 are just 13.4%, compared to 67.6% for those under 21, and among people 55 and older who served time for violent crimes, fewer than 2% return to prison for new offenses. A geriatric release mechanism exists in Georgia law—the Parole Board can release any prisoner over 62, including those serving life without parole—but the board has chosen not to use it at scale.

At the same time, the DOJ found that GDC’s actual delivery of medical care is “abhorrent,” “life-threatening,” and “unconstitutional.” Prisoners routinely face severe delays or outright denial of care; manageable conditions turn into life-threatening crises. One prisoner waited six months for treatment of severe abdominal pain before requiring emergency surgery to remove portions of intestine. Mental health services are grossly inadequate, crisis intervention is often limited to brief cell-side checks, and suicide prevention protocols are deficient. The department characterized GDC as “deliberately indifferent” to these conditions. And yet, as the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute noted, no fiscal proposals specifically address incarcerated Georgians’ ongoing health access challenges, and healthcare co-pays maintain unaffordable barriers.

The Extraction Economy: How the Budget Profits from Incarcerated People and Their Families

A significant but underappreciated component of the corrections fiscal architecture is the revenue the state extracts directly from incarcerated people and their families. In FY 2019, Georgia received $8,062,200 in commission kickbacks from prison phone provider Securus Technologies—the third-highest total in the nation—at a commission rate of 59.6% of gross revenue, well above the national average of roughly 43%. The contract includes a minimum monthly guarantee of $325,000 paid to GDC. Securus charges Georgia families $0.06 per minute for in-state calls under current FCC caps, but the provider’s parent company carries $1.3 billion in debt and has effectively defaulted, with debt trading at 8 cents on the dollar. In addition to phone commissions, fees collected from incarcerated individuals for medical co-pays, commissary markups, and other charges total more than $10 million annually for each of the last three years. GDC publishes no accounting of how it allocates its $8-plus million in annual commission revenue.

GPS’s investigation into prison communications documented that while six states and New York City have eliminated phone charges entirely, Georgia has taken no legislative action to provide free calls or reduce rates. In June 2025, the Republican-majority FCC postponed the 2024 rules that would have capped prison phone rates at $0.06 per minute and banned site commission kickbacks nationwide—a move that 14 Republican attorneys general, including Georgia’s Chris Carr, had sued to block, explicitly fighting to preserve their states’ commission revenue streams. Attorney General Carr has also been a national leader advocating for federal authorization to jam cell phone signals inside prisons, heading coalitions of 23 to 31 state AGs.

These revenue streams create perverse budgetary incentives: the more people incarcerated and the longer they stay, the more phone minutes are consumed, the more commissary is purchased, and the more fees are collected. The population has crept back up from 43,788 in January 2021 to 49,828 by January 2025, while Georgia’s Truth in Sentencing laws require 65–100% of sentences to be served. As GBPI analyst Ray Khalfani observed, “Georgia’s accelerated pace of prison spending is in tandem with its accelerated pace of growth in criminal legal system policies that place more Georgians under carceral control and debt.”

The Spending-Violence Paradox: $700 Million More, Every Outcome Worse

Between FY 2022 and FY 2026, Georgia added roughly $700 million to its corrections budget. During that same period: - Prison homicides went from 8 annually to at least 100 - Assaults on inmates rose 54%, assaults on staff rose 77% - Gangs expanded to 31% of the incarcerated population, with 15,000 validated security threat group members, and consultants found gangs “effectively running the facilities” - 29 of 34 state prisons degraded to needing critical infrastructure upgrades - The DOJ found that GDC “inaccurately reports these deaths both internally and externally, and in a manner that underreports the extent of violence and homicide,” that GDC officials “repeatedly falsified documents and made false statements,” that federal Judge Marc Treadwell had “long passed the point where it can assume that even sworn statements from the defendants are truthful,” and that conditions violate the Eighth Amendment - The DOJ concluded that people “leave prison worse than when they came in”

What accounts for this paradox? The answer lies in what the $600 million did not fund. The spending is overwhelmingly operational—staffing pay bumps, infrastructure repairs, technology, private prison beds—rather than structural. Governor Kemp’s package does not fund population reduction measures, parole reform, geriatric release, evidence-based gang management, sexual safety and PREA compliance, incarcerated people’s direct needs, or independent oversight. Guidehouse recommended expanded retention incentives including child and family care benefits and bonuses, structural gang management reforms, meaningful population reduction strategies, and parole reform; Kemp funded none of them. The Senate Study Committee shot down proposals for an oversight body on December 13, 2024. Two years after the DOJ investigation was announced, Georgia still has no prison ombudsman, no independent inspector general for corrections, and no public reporting requirement on spending or outcomes. The 49-day deadline the DOJ gave Georgia to respond to its findings or face a federal lawsuit passed without action.

The Southern Center for Human Rights summarized the flaw: “Pouring more money into a system without implementing solutions that prioritize decarceration is merely putting a Band-Aid on the problem.”

Evidence-Based Alternatives That Georgia Ignores

Georgia has a recent, successful model for what decarceration without increased crime looks like. Governor Nathan Deal’s justice reinvestment initiative (2012–2015) reduced the prison population by 6%, generated $264 million in averted incarceration costs, reinvested $57 million into accountability courts and treatment programs, reduced the Black share of the prison population from 62% to 53%, and accomplished all of it without increasing crime rates. But Deal’s reform momentum stalled, and by 2024, the Black share of the prison population had crept back up to 58%.

Nationally, the evidence that decarceration can be achieved safely is overwhelming. The U.S. reduced its prison population by 25% between 2009 and 2021 while crime continued to fall. New York halved its prison population between 1999 and 2023 while violent crime fell 28%, closing more than 12 prisons. New Jersey cut its prison population by 26% while violent crime fell 30% and property crime fell 31%. California reduced its prison population by 23% and saw violent crime fall 21%. During the COVID-19 pandemic, prison admissions fell 40% and total population dropped 15%—a natural experiment that demonstrated the feasibility of rapid population reduction. The Brennan Center for Justice analyzed 40 years of data and concluded that increased incarceration has had a negligible effect on crime since 2000, and youth confinement fell 75% from 2000 to 2022 with no correlation to violent crime.

Inside the walls, evidence-based programming models achieve dramatically better outcomes than Georgia’s underinvested status quo. The Restoring Promise randomized control trial in South Carolina showed a 73% reduction in violence write-ups and an 83% reduction in restrictive housing stays. California’s GRIP program has a 0.5% recidivism rate among its 421 released graduates, compared to a 41.9% general rate. The Bard Prison Initiative achieves under 4% recidivism. Thinking for a Change produces a 23% recidivism rate versus 36% in control groups. Every dollar invested in prison education returns $4 to $5 in savings. Georgia’s own vocational completers demonstrate a 13.6% recidivism rate—the programs work when they exist.

The Policy Choice Not to Change

The 2026 election cycle underscores the political dimension of this budget. GPS’s candidate tracker found that among more than 30 statewide candidates, only three have detailed prison reform positions. The four leading Republican gubernatorial candidates have collectively offered zero positions on prison conditions, parole reform, GDC oversight, or the DOJ investigation despite $700 million in spending with worsening outcomes. Only one gubernatorial candidate, Jake Olinger (R), has committed to appointing Parole Board members who will increase grant rates, and only one attorney general candidate, Tanya Miller (D), has addressed the DOJ consent decree negotiations that will bind the state for years. Meanwhile, the Board of Pardons and Paroles—whose members the governor appoints—continues to operate as the system’s pressure valve at historically constricted levels, releasing just 5,443 people in FY 2024 from a system of roughly 49,000.

The budget, in short, is not a neutral accounting document. It is a record of the state’s actual priorities. Georgia chose to spend over $150 million on surveillance technology while spending $172,000 on vocational education. It chose to add 263 private prison beds at Coffee and Wheeler correctional institutions at a cost of $4.2 million while letting Georgia State University’s $180,000 prison education program close. It funds food at $0.53 per meal per incarcerated person—less than the cost of a single commissary item—while paying private prison operators $9.00 per prisoner per day and pouring over $35 million into technologies that block cell phone signals.

The Human Cost

Behind every line item, there are people. GPS’s Tell My Story project and independent reporting capture the lived reality:

A prisoner who goes by Mikemike wrote: “I’ve had to sleep with a knife in my hand. I have to use the bathroom with a weapon because I witnessed an associate get murdered while sitting on the toilet. I’ve had to sleep with magazines wrapped around my chest to keep from getting stabbed.”

Bandit described conditions: “I have been threatened, had weapons pulled on me, had someone five feet away from me stabbed, been fed rancid and moldy food, had roaches and rats everywhere… We live in conditions that would be illegal for animals at a shelter.”

An anonymous prisoner recounted watching a man stabbed through the chest and bleeding to death over 30 minutes while officers’ only response was to lock down the dorm.

NeverGiveUp, 69 years old with prostate cancer: “I am a man who has no purpose to his existence on this earth. Let me go or just execute me.”

Wynter, who finished his entire case plan within two years, summed up the rehabilitation void: “I’ve worked many jobs including law library, education, vocation. I have graduated two different faith and character programs. Nothing helps to reduce my time. I’ve become a better person, but no one in the GDC cares.”

At least 95% of all state prisoners will eventually be released—roughly 12,000 people walk out of Georgia’s prisons every year. What they walk out with is a $25 prepaid Visa card, whatever was in their trust account, a change of clothes, and a bus ticket. No housing referral, no job placement, no ID, no transitional support. The budget that allocates $35 million for managed access and $84.7 million for cameras and perimeter security allocates nothing for what happens at the gate.

President Nelson Mandela’s observation, cited in GPS’s research library of over 5,000 data points across more than 80 collections, remains the appropriate closing frame: “No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.”

Sources

This analysis draws on the Governor’s Budget Reports for Amended FY 2026 and FY 2027, HB 974 (FY 2027), and other Georgia budget documents; reporting from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia Public Broadcasting, and the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute; the U.S. Department of Justice’s October 2024 CRIPA findings; federal court findings, including Judge Treadwell’s April 2024 contempt order; the Safe Inside initiative report and RAND Corporation research; the Brennan Center’s 2026 prison reform report; the Guidehouse/CGL/Moss Group assessment; GPS’s own investigative reporting on the OWL surveillance architecture, prison communications, staffing, parole, and corrections spending trends; GPS’s Tell My Story project; and mortality records independently tracked by Georgia Prisoners’ Speak.