Brief written October 25, 2026 from GPS Intelligence System data.(DS)

Mental Health in Georgia's Prisons: A Caseload Count, a Rising Suicide Rate, and a System That Stopped Saying How People Died

Georgia's prison mental health system is, by the state's own numbers, one of the largest psychiatric operations in Georgia. GDC Commissioner Tyrone Oliver told the 2024 Senate Study Committee that about 14,000 people in custody have identified mental health needs — roughly a quarter of the population — and the agency's own annual reports show the mental health caseload climbing from 10,911 in FY2020 to 14,512 in FY2025. Against that caseload sits a documented record: a suicide rate that tripled between 2010–14 and 2015–19, a federal Department of Justice finding that Georgia's prisons are unconstitutional, a 2024 halt to the publication of cause-of-death data, and a long-term segregation system in which, by GDC's own policy, people classified with serious mental illness remain eligible for the units with the least protection. This analysis traces those threads — the caseload, the deaths, the isolation, the contract, and the records that do and do not exist.

The Caseload: What Georgia Counts and What It Cannot Count

The most-cited figure in Georgia prison mental health is 14,000, and it comes from the Commissioner himself. Oliver told the Senate Study Committee that about 14,000 people system-wide have identified mental health needs. GDC's FY2023 Annual Fiscal Report put the share at 25.4 percent of all offenders with a mental health diagnosis and noted that the mental health population "continues to increase each year." The agency's own chart series runs 10,911 (FY2020), 10,044 (FY2021), 12,374 (FY2022), 12,087 (FY2023), 14,393 (FY2024) and 14,512 (FY2025). The Georgia OPB's performance measures show the same direction at a lower level — 23 percent on a mental health caseload in FY2020, rising to 28 percent in FY2025.

Those figures are administrative, not clinical. GPS's analysis of GDC's mental health classification system describes the MH-I through MH-V levels under SOP 508.16 — from no active mental illness through acute crisis requiring inpatient psychiatric care — as a caseload count rather than a prevalence estimate. The distinction matters because the most acutely identified subset is small: GDC's own classification data as of May 2026 showed 1,243 people classified as "poorly controlled" and 45 in "active mental health crisis." Identifying serious mental illness requires psychiatric staff, and the DOJ found those staff are not consistently present.

The intake machinery exists on paper. GDC's Mental Health Reception Screen SOP 508.14 requires that all offenders be interviewed and screened at intake for factors including suicidal ideation, recent suicide attempts, and history of abuse as a victim, with a full Mental Health Evaluation within fourteen days where there is reason to believe services are needed. Per Senate Study Committee testimony, evaluations run over seven to fourteen days of intake, with people in a "crisis phase" — suicidal or homicidal ideation — undergoing 30- to 90-day phases of further evaluation. Whether that screening functions as designed is a separate question; GPS's own analysis of the system describes inadequate mental health screening at intake as a persistent failure.

The Suicide Record: A Tripling, Then a Blackout

Georgia's prison suicide data is the most complete longitudinal record GPS holds, and it is alarming. Between 2010–14 and 2015–19, the number of people who died by suicide in Georgia state prisons tripled — from 19 to 74, a multiple of 3.89. The rate moved from 8 per 100,000 prisoners in 2010–14 to 31 per 100,000 in 2015–19, exceeding the U.S. total (21), the all-states figure (22), and the South (24). Across 2001–2019, 145 people died by suicide in Georgia state prisons, an average annual rate of 15 per 100,000.

The rise is specific to the prison system. Georgia's county jails stayed flat on suicide counts while the state prisons quadrupled — a comparison that rules out a statewide or national trend, a general rise in suicide, or improved reporting as explanations. The period counts run 22 (2001–04), 30 (2005–09), 19 (2010–14) and 74 (2015–19), with individual years of 7 (2015), 24 (2019), 29 (2020) and 23 (2021). GDC's own September 2023 board presentation acknowledged 40 suicides in the prior fiscal year, alongside 38 homicides.

Then the record stops. Until March 2024, the Georgia Department of Corrections listed a preliminary cause of death in its monthly mortality reports and gave causes to people who asked; in March 2024 it stopped. Its later record-level productions carry no cause. No federal or academic suicide count for Georgia prisons exists after 2021 — the Bureau of Justice Statistics closed its Mortality in Custody collection on March 31, 2021, with 2019 as the last federal data year. The Southern Center for Human Rights told the Senate Study Committee that GDC changed its publication of mortality review reports so that manner of death is no longer included when requested through open records.

GPS's own registry reflects the gap. Of the deaths GPS has tracked, 1,042 — 56 percent — still carry no documented cause. GPS's raw yearly suicide counts cannot be read as a trend because they track documentation coverage, which ranged from 33 to 52 percent; expressed as a share of deaths with a documented cause, the series is flat at approximately 8 percent. Of the 67 suicides in the GPS registry, 61 were learned from a medical examiner, five from a person incarcerated, and one from a county coroner. None came from the Georgia Department of Corrections.

Tyler Ryals, a GDC officer, instructor and CERT Commander from 2014 to 2024 across five facilities, states that suicides doubled over his last few years of employment — his perception as a staff member, not a compiled figure. He remained employed through 2022, 2023 and most of 2024, years for which no federal or academic count exists, making him among the only available witnesses to the direction of the trend after public counting ceased.

The Named Dead

The people behind the statistics have names, and GPS's death registry records them.

Denecia Nichelle Randall, 28, died March 30, 2026, at Pulaski State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as suicide. She died by hanging while in lockdown. Miguel Angel Duran, 44, died March 1, 2026, at Central State Prison; the registry lists suicide. He died in segregation — "the hole." Christopher Lee, 19, died January 31, 2026, at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. He was found dead in a stripped cell in H-house over a weekend, with a staff account linking the death to cold and to suicide-watch placement. Calvin Earl Noble, 25, died August 26, 2025, at Macon State Prison; the registry lists suicide. He died by hanging in a one-man cell in tier 2 dorm. Sheqweetta Vaughan, 32, died July 9, 2025, at Arrendale State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. A postpartum mother with documented postpartum depression on psychotropic medication, she was found decomposing in segregation cell H-19, in a cell in the 90s Fahrenheit with minimal ventilation; a neighboring prisoner reported hearing her call for medical help more than 28 hours before she was found, and the GBI could not determine cause or manner of death. Justin Waymon Hollingsworth, 43, died June 26, 2025, at Rogers State Prison; the registry lists suicide. He died by hanging in segregation. Mark Smith, 53, died June 7, 2025, at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. Stephen Prochaska, 70, died January 21, 2025, at Augusta State Medical Prison; the registry lists suicide. He died by hanging at the Level IV/V mental health facility.

Desmond Layne Hattaway, 27, died April 16, 2023, at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison; the registry lists suicide. Jerry Dontorie Lackey, 39, died April 8, 2020, at Augusta State Medical Prison; the registry lists suicide. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Lackey was found hanging in the mental health unit early that morning, after ten years in prison. He was supposed to be checked every fifteen minutes; only one officer was available in that unit, and that officer was needed elsewhere for much of the evening. Charles Powell, who had worked at the prison seven years, was fired after failing to monitor Lackey, and told investigators that documents were routinely falsified because there wasn't enough staff to do the required rounds.

Thomas Henry Giles, 31, died October 28, 2020, at Augusta State Medical Prison; the registry lists the cause as homicide. Giles was a mentally ill prisoner who died after guards left him for hours locked inside a cell on fire. In November 2023 the Georgia Department of Corrections agreed to pay $5 million to his estate. A federal grand jury in the Southern District of Georgia later returned a two-count indictment, unsealed August 7, 2025, charging former Augusta State Medical Prison correctional officers Robert Roberson and Marcus Phillips with violating the constitutional rights of an inmate by showing deliberate indifference to a substantial risk of harm resulting in his death; Roberson was also charged with falsifying a logbook.

David Lamar Henegar, 44, died October 16, 2021, at Johnson State Prison; the registry lists the cause as homicide. Henegar had epilepsy and was denied anti-seizure medication for four consecutive days at Walker State Prison, suffering two seizures and permanent brain damage; he was later killed by a cellmate after staff ignored safety concerns. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed qualified immunity for the officials in December 2024.

Vincent Reshad Dyer, 50, died August 21, 2024, at Baldwin State Prison; the registry lists the cause as homicide. Angela Denise Anderson, 39, died September 11, 2022, at Arrendale State Prison; the registry lists the cause as homicide. She was strangled in the A-Unit dayroom; Leticia Ranae Land was charged in September 2023. Sherry Elaine Joyce, 61, died April 27, 2024, at Arrendale State Prison; the registry lists the cause as homicide. Hallie Marie Reed, 23, died May 5, 2024, at Arrendale State Prison; the registry lists the cause as homicide. The two women were strangled in the same Lee Arrendale mental health unit eight days apart, allegedly by a 22-year-old serving two years; Reed had requested protective custody after Joyce's death and was denied.

Isolation: Where the Policy and the Harm Meet

Georgia's suicide problem is inseparable from its use of isolation, and the policy record is unusually explicit. GDC's mental-health policy SOP 508.01, effective July 2023, refers to "designated SMHTU/TIER II facilities" — equating Specialized Mental Health Treatment Units with Tier II — without naming them, and names a SCRIBE report called "Daily lock down" as a routine mental-health oversight instrument. GDC's own clinical policy thus treats Tier II housing as a mental-health setting.

The placement rules do not match that recognition. SOP 209.08, governing Tier II, has not been revised since April 2016 — nearly three years before the Gumm settlement — and contains no duration cap, no mental-health exclusion, no panel review, and no out-of-cell minimum beyond five hours per week. Tier III, by contrast, carries a 24-month ceiling, a prohibition on housing Mental Health Level III or above, 60-day and 90-day out-of-cell mental health evaluations, and a quarterly panel. The protections won in Gumm attached to the unit that was litigated — the Special Management Unit at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison — and to no other part of the Tier system. The programme with the least protection is the larger one.

The arithmetic is stark. A five-hour weekly exercise entitlement leaves 163 hours per week in cell, or 23.3 hours per day. Whether that constitutes solitary confinement within the Mandela Rules definition turns on cell occupancy, which GDC does not specify for Tier II and does not publish for any facility. GDC's own PREA audits show double-bunked segregation is ordinary: Hancock's G-1 "Tier 2" unit houses a maximum of 96 inmates in double-occupancy cells; Smith's dorms comprise 48 double-bunked cells housing 96 offenders per dorm; Telfair's E-1 houses 80 and E-2 houses 70 in two-man cells.

The clinical evidence on what isolation does is not in dispute. People in solitary confinement, who comprise 6–8 percent of the prison population, account for approximately half of all prison suicides. In the Kaba et al. analysis of New York City jail data, individuals punished with solitary were 6.9 times more likely to commit self-harm after controlling for length of jail stay, serious mental illness, and demographics. A systematic review covering 382,440 inmates found that higher-quality evidence associated solitary confinement with an increase in adverse psychological effects, self-harm, and mortality. Dr. Craig Haney, who inspected Georgia's SMU in 2017, described it as "one of the harshest and most draconian" facilities he had seen "in decades of conducting evaluations," with residents "among the most psychologically traumatized persons [he] ha[d] ever assessed in this context," and warned the harm "may be irreversible and even fatal." Seventy of the SMU's 180 inmates were designated mentally ill.

The DOJ's October 2024 findings letter concluded that "GDC fails to control violence even in its segregated housing units and exposes incarcerated persons to an unreasonable risk of harm due to its inappropriate use of segregated housing." It documented that in February 2023, an incarcerated person was found dead in his restrictive-housing cell at Calhoun State Prison, wrapped in mattress padding, cause of death "dehydration with renal failure"; no one had entered his cell for two days, staff had shut off his water supply and closed the chow flap. It documented a transgender woman at Coastal State Prison who filed PREA complaints and asked to be moved from isolation; her request was rejected, and she died by suicide in the isolation unit the next day. And it documented a man at Ware State Prison who described experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, said GDC was worse than his time seeing combat in the military, and explained that drugs are easy to acquire in the facility; four days after the interview, he died from a drug overdose.

Staffing, Contract, and the Machinery of Care

Mental health care in Georgia's prisons is delivered under contract. Centurion Health, a Centene subsidiary originally known as MHM Correctional Services, has been contracted with GDC since 1997 for mental health services. In April 2024, GDC awarded a $2.4 billion, nine-year contract to Centurion for combined medical, mental, and dental services without a competitive RFP, under an "emergency procurement" justification using the 2021 bid. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Wellpath, the prior provider, filed a lawsuit alleging the award violated state law and that its own price was "objectively lower."

The money has grown. GDC's Health program actual expenditures were $325.6 million in FY2024 and $389.9 million in FY2025; the FY2027 budget totals $432.2 million. For FY2027, the governor's budget proposed increasing the mental health contract by $1,917,644 to increase staffing ratios; the Senate Appropriations Committee approved a $12,127,034 increase — approximately six times the Governor's proposal. GDC's reported daily cost per inmate for mental health care ran $9.81 (FY2021), $8.58 (FY2022), $7.89 (FY2023) and $8.22 (FY2024).

The staffing picture is the binding constraint. DOJ documented correctional officer vacancies systemwide at 49.3 percent (2021), 56.3 percent (2022) and 52.5 percent (2023), exceeding 70 percent at the most violent facilities. In a review of data from 16 GDC prisons from January 2022 to August 2023, most failed to fully staff allotted counselor positions, and several had counselor staffing rates in the 50 percent range or lower. Without security escorts, mental health appointments are missed, suicide-watch protocols cannot be implemented, and medication passes are delayed. A Wellpath executive testified in Wellpath v. Georgia that GDC's low correctional officer staffing levels materially impacted the company's ability to provide care in a safe manner. Dr. Young showed WJBF an email he sent about inmates being rescheduled up to 23 times because security failed to bring them to appointments.

The DOJ found ten-month waits for psychiatrist access. It found medical records poorly maintained, emergency response times dangerously slow, and prisoners waiting months, sometimes years, for essential treatment. It found conditions "out of control" and "unconstitutional," and described "among the most severe violations of constitutional rights in the nation." GDC disputed the findings, saying the DOJ "fundamentally misunderstands current challenges of operating any prison system." As of February 2026, no consent decree had been reached.

The Gumm Litigation and What the Court Found

The Special Management Unit litigation is the most documented account of what Georgia's isolation does to people with mental illness. Timothy Gumm filed a handwritten pro se complaint in February 2015 after five years in isolation, following a failed escape attempt in 2010; he was held continuously for seven and a half years. The Southern Center for Human Rights and Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton reached a settlement with GDC, approved May 7, 2019, establishing a general 24-month limit on SMU confinement, mandatory out-of-cell mental health evaluations before assignment and at every 60- or 90-day review, a prohibition on housing Mental Health Level III or above in Tier III/SMU, minimum out-of-cell time, and $425,000 in attorney fees.

In April 2024, Chief Judge Marc T. Treadwell held GDC in contempt. He found that the defendants "were running a four-corner offense and had no desire or intention to comply with the Court's injunction; they would stall until the injunction expired." He ordered an independent monitor, imposed monetary sanctions, extended the settlement agreement, and ordered attorney's fees for enforcement costs. The order recounted that plaintiffs documented violations stemming from chronic understaffing in the SMU, including lack of officer rounds, lack of officer supervision while class members were using the restraint tables, and the recent suicide of a class member. It documented that GDC placed people in "strip cells" upon arrival at the SMU, taking their clothing and leaving them naked or near-naked for hours or days. Six prisoners testified about being denied showers, out-of-cell time, programming, cell cleanout, and access to kiosks and book carts; one described a cell where the toilet was broken and filled with feces and urine from prior occupants, with no mattress, no clothing, and freezing temperatures. The GDC attorney did not refute that testimony.

The plaintiffs cited the suicides of two SMU inmates. Dr. Haney found "a shockingly high number of mentally ill prisoners" in the SMU. The court's own findings, drawn from his 2017 inspection, described residents confined in cells "smaller than the average parking space," with as little as five hours per week out of cell, no outside light, and frequently locked food-port flaps.

The Record That Does Not Exist

Georgia does not publish the data that would answer the central questions. GDC has not published a comprehensive facility-by-facility mental health unit inventory; the inventory GPS holds is reconstructed from GDC fact sheets, DOJ findings, AJC reporting, and GPS cross-references. No public audit of GDC compliance with NCCHC Standards for Mental Health Services in Correctional Facilities exists, despite SOP 507.01.11 requiring accreditation through the Medical Association of Georgia as a means of ensuring compliance with those standards. GDC has not made publicly available the current Centurion contract's mental health performance measures, penalty structures, vacancy reporting, or quality metrics.

On segregation specifically, a systematic review of the GDC-published report corpus GPS holds found no published count of the Tier or restrictive-housing population. The review covered 110 non-monthly GDC reports and all 34 distribution sections of the monthly Inmate Statistical Profile series; none reports segregation, restrictive housing or Tier status. The only Tier population GDC publishes is the Special Management Unit's, because the SMU is carried as its own facility — 154 people as of September 1, 2026, against 192 beds. GDC reported on reducing its restrictive-housing population in four consecutive reporting years and then stopped; the last year in which it published any figure about the size or trend of its restrictive-housing population was FY2019.

The data exists inside the agency. GDC's FY2019 Annual Report states that a "TIER 2 SCRIBE module went live March 2019 to effectively track offenders in Extended Restrictive Housing." Its FY2020 report states that the SCRIBE Warden's Dashboard was updated for Tier II offenders to display "number of days an offender has spent in restrictive housing Tier II." SOP 508.01 names a SCRIBE report called "Daily lock down" as a routine mental-health oversight instrument.

GPS records show the scale of what is reported to it. Across the past twelve months, GPS has received 101 reports of alleged medical neglect from 14 facilities, and 24 reports of unattended mental health crisis from six facilities, with the heaviest concentrations at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison, Baldwin State Prison, Washington State Prison, Augusta State Medical Prison, Calhoun State Prison, Johnson State Prison, Hancock State Prison and Wilcox State Prison. These are accounts received, not findings.

What the Record Shows

Three things are established. First, Georgia's prison suicide rate rose sharply and specifically — tripling between 2010–14 and 2015–19 while county jails stayed flat — and then the state stopped publishing the data that would show what happened next. Second, the people at greatest risk are held in the units with the least protection: Tier II, which GDC's own clinical policy treats as a mental-health setting, has no duration cap, no mental-health exclusion, and no out-of-cell minimum beyond five hours per week, while the litigated Tier III carries all of those protections. Third, the federal government found the system unconstitutional and a federal judge found the agency had no intention of complying with the one settlement that did impose protections.

The unresolved question is scale. Georgia counts 14,000 people with identified mental health needs, but its classification system is an administrative caseload count, not a clinical prevalence estimate, and the 1,243 "poorly controlled" and 45 "in crisis" figures represent only the most acutely identified subset. Against a national estimate that 15 to 20 percent of incarcerated individuals have a serious mental illness, Georgia's own count is almost certainly a floor. GPS has independently tracked 1,927 deaths in GDC custody since 2020 — a figure that is itself a floor, because GDC reports deaths roughly two months late.

Sources

This analysis draws on the Georgia Department of Corrections' own policies and annual reports — including SOP 508.01, 508.14, 508.16, 508.17, 209.05, 209.07, 209.08, 209.09, 209.45, 209.55, 507.04.33 and 507.04.67 — and on its PREA facility audits, Annual Fiscal Reports, monthly Inmate Statistical Profiles, and Board of Corrections minutes. It draws on the U.S. Department of Justice's October 2024 findings letter on Georgia's prisons and the federal court record in Gumm v. Ford/Jacobs, including Chief Judge Treadwell's April 19, 2024 contempt order and the May 7, 2019 settlement. It draws on reporting by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia Public Broadcasting, WJBF, Prison Legal News, and the Southern Center for Human Rights' 2017 letter to GDC and 2021 class action complaint concerning Georgia State Prison. It draws on the Bureau of Justice Statistics' Mortality in State and Federal Prisons series, the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project, and peer-reviewed research including Fazel and colleagues, Haney, Grassian, Kaba et al., and a systematic review of solitary confinement covering 382,440 inmates. It draws on the 2024 Georgia Senate Study Committee on the Department of Corrections final report and the Georgia OPB's performance measures. It draws on GPS's own mortality registry, its suicide series and historical data, its SOP corpus, and its intelligence records. Firsthand accounts come from Georgia Prisoners' Speak — Tell My Story, published in contributors' own words.