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

Legislative Intelligence Brief: Georgia Department of Corrections

Fiscal exposure, liability, and legislative levers for the 2027 General Assembly

Prepared by Georgia Prisoners' Speak (GPS) for legislators, committee staff, and analysts. Every figure below traces to GDC's own records, state appropriations acts, federal findings, court records, or GPS's tracked datasets. Source weight is noted inline.

Bottom Line for Committee Staff

Georgia is paying more for a corrections system that produces worse outcomes, and the costs that do not appear in the appropriations act are rising.

• The budget peaked and the outcomes did not move. GDC's total appropriation reached an all-time high of $1,913,888,054 in FY2025, then settled at $1,799,204,979 in the amended FY2026 budget and $1,787,672,791 for FY2027 under HB 974 (Senate Appropriations Committee substitute). About $700 million in new corrections spending between FY2022 and FY2026 went almost entirely to custody: locks, cameras, beds, and contractors (GPS, End the Warehouse).
• Deaths remain at historic highs. GPS has tracked at least 1,919 deaths in GDC custody since January 1, 2020 (GPS-tracked mortality data). That figure is a floor, because GDC reports cause of death about two months late. GPS recorded at least 333 deaths in 2024, the highest year in its tracking window.
• The federal government has already made the constitutional finding. In October 2024 the U.S. Department of Justice found that Georgia engages in a "pattern or practice" of Eighth Amendment violations. It found conditions "among the most severe violations of constitutional rights in the nation" and concluded that GDC leadership "has lost control of its facilities" (DOJ CRIPA findings, 93-page report).
• Georgia has no independent oversight body. It has no ombudsman, no inspector general, and no external monitor. Roughly twenty other states and the District of Columbia have one (GPS, Oversight & Investigations).
• The post-conviction system is, in the words of Georgia's Chief Justice, "broken." It also requires "legislative action to fix it" (Sanders v. State, Chief Justice Nels Peterson, concurring, March 2026).

The recommendations in this brief are scoped to bill-language entry points that committee staff can draft against. Several are zero- or low-cost. Some enforce statutes Georgia already has on the books.

1. Fiscal Exposure: Where the Money Goes

1.1 The top line

(GPS, GDC Budget: Where the Money Goes)

The FY2024-to-FY2025 increase was about $387 million, or 25.4 percent. It is the largest year-over-year jump in the visible window.

Staff should be aware that a widely circulated claim of "$634 million in new corrections appropriations" cannot be reconciled with line-item data. Total line-item changes across amended FY2026 and approved FY2027 come to about $154 million combined ($87.1 million plus $67.0 million).

1.2 The burden is almost entirely on the state treasury

FY2025 actuals included:

• $1,823,730,648 in State General Funds
• $3,309,597 in federal funds
• $86,847,809 in other funds

Federal and other funds have fallen from $103,675,170 in FY2024 to a budgeted $16,769,671 for FY2026 and FY2027. Nearly every dollar of correctional failure is now a General Fund dollar.

1.3 The internal reallocation

Between FY2025 actual and FY2027 approved:

The Governor's FY2027 proposal included $4,227,620 to add 160 beds at Coffee Correctional Facility and 103 beds at Wheeler Correctional Facility. The Senate Appropriations Committee rejected the expansion. Its stated rationale was: "Space is not compatible with single cell needs of prison population."

Staff can quote that line. It is the Senate's own acknowledgment that private-bed capacity does not meet GDC's classification needs.

1.4 Contracts that warrant appropriations oversight

• Medical. Since July 1, 2024, Centurion of Georgia, LLC has provided all medical, mental health, and dental services under a $2.4 billion, nine-year contract. It is one of the largest state prison healthcare contracts in the country (GPS, Medical Neglect).
• Communications. The Securus contract returned $8,062,200.60 to the department in FY2019 at a 59.6 percent commission rate (GPS, Family Communication). That commission is paid by families.
• Direct-selection procurement. GPS has reported on a two-page direct-selection note behind an $85,585,244 prison purchase (GPS, "Direct Selection: The Two-Page Note Behind Georgia's $85,585,244 Prison Purchase"). Committees with procurement jurisdiction should request the full justification file.
• Food. By GDC's own appropriations arithmetic, Georgia funds prison food at roughly 54 cents a meal. That is about 15 percent of the American Correctional Association benchmark. Written policy also provides only two meals a day on weekends (GPS, Prison Nutrition in Georgia).

1.5 The staffing money has not bought staff

The DOJ put systemwide correctional officer vacancy at about 50 percent, with rates above 70 percent at ten of the largest facilities. State numbers show a systemwide vacancy rate of 60 percent in April 2023, with more than 2,800 vacant officer positions. State-hired consultants found vacancy at "emergency levels" at 20 of 34 state prisons (GPS, Staffing Crisis).

GDC Commissioner Tyrone Oliver has acknowledged the problem. He told lawmakers: "We don't have a problem with recruiting. We have a problem with the retention piece" (as reported by GPB).

On-record testimony from former GDC assistant warden Russell Zirkle helps explain why the state's averages understate the problem. Zirkle says fully staffed transitional centers are blended into system averages, which hides 70–80 percent vacancy rates at major prisons. He has named Telfair, Hancock, Smith, and Valdosta state prisons among them.

Former GDC officer Tyler Ryals has given corroborating testimony about staffing coverups. Zirkle has said of Ryals's account: "Everything he says is completely true."

A GPS open-records production documents that six officers were on duty when the riot began at Washington State Prison (GPS open-records production).

2. Settlement and Verdict Exposure

2.1 What the state ledger shows

Georgia does not publish a running account of what its prisons cost when they injure or kill people. The closest equivalent is the Department of Administrative Services Risk Management settlement ledger, which GPS obtained through open records.

GPS has catalogued more than 260 liability payouts tied to GDC incidents from 2008 to 2025. They range from $1 to a $4 million wrongful-death settlement (GPS, Legal Settlements & Lawsuits). Many entries fall into three categories:

• deaths in custody that end in seven-figure settlements
• medical neglect ending in amputation
• a parallel record of court orders the department has been found to defy

The ledger is specific about money and vague about everything else. Each entry names a claimant, year, incident date, and payout, with little narrative.

Recommended staff request: Appropriations staff should ask DOAS Risk Management for an annual GDC-specific liability total, broken out by incident type. That would be the first itemized bill for correctional harm the General Assembly has received.

2.2 Recently closed federal dockets in GPS's tracking set

GPS's court tracking includes the following recently terminated federal matters with GDC officials as parties. For each, no settlement or verdict dollar amount is recorded in the docket data:

• Humphreys v. Oliver (N.D. Ga., 1:25-cv-07012), terminated January 15, 2026: $0 recorded
• Humphreys v. Oliver (N.D. Ga., 1:25-cv-06100), terminated December 10, 2025: $0 recorded
• Daker v. Oliver (filing restriction) (N.D. Ga., 1:25-cv-03191), terminated March 30, 2026: $0 recorded
• Grant v. Ward (M.D. Ga., 5:22-cv-00396), terminated August 28, 2025: $0 recorded
• Ballard v. Davis (M.D. Ga., 5:25-cv-00046), terminated September 26, 2025: $0 recorded
• Chambers v. Benton (S.D. Ga., 4:21-cv-00002), terminated September 2, 2025: $0 recorded
• United States v. Mariarlene Brown (M.D. Ga., 7:24-cr-00021), terminated October 31, 2025

A $0 docket entry does not mean no state cost. Defense costs, Attorney General staff time, and settlements paid through the Risk Management ledger do not appear in docket data.

3. Pending Litigation and Projected Future Liability

The following live matters and findings point to continued or expanding exposure.

DOJ pattern-or-practice findings (October 2024). The 93-page letter found:

• deliberate indifference to violence
• gang control of facilities
• failure to protect people from sexual harm
• deliberate indifference to serious medical needs

DOJ documented prisoners dressing their own wounds and relatives calling facilities to report emergencies inside. At Ware, a stabbing victim waited half an hour while other prisoners beat on a window for help (DOJ CRIPA findings). The findings also concluded that GDC "inaccurately reports these deaths both internally and externally, and in a manner that underreports the extent of violence and homicide." Those findings stand as a federal record that plaintiffs can cite in every conditions case.

Federal contempt and spoliation. A federal judge held GDC in contempt in 2024. A 2026 spoliation sanction followed for destroyed evidence (GPS, Oversight & Investigations). Spoliation findings raise the state's litigation risk because they can shift evidentiary presumptions against the state.

Parole system challenge. In October 2026, a federal judge questioned Georgia's parole system and allowed a woman's lawsuit to proceed (Atlanta Journal-Constitution).

First Amendment communications litigation. A federal judge told GDC that its email-contact restriction violated the First Amendment. By that judge's own account, the department took more than a year to comply (GPS, Family Communication).

Valdosta State Prison: emerging exposure. In an October 1, 2026 letter to GDC, the Southern Center for Human Rights reported that 25 people died at Valdosta State Prison between January 1, 2025, and August 13, 2026, and that at least 14 of them were aged 40 or below (SCHR letter, as reported in news coverage). The letter also states that 2024 auditors found no evidence that people at Valdosta were decontaminated after chemical-agent exposure. News coverage notes that GDC incident reports for most of those deaths are heavily redacted.

Valdosta is also the single highest-volume facility in GPS's claim intake over the past 90 days. Some of those accounts allege that staff let incarcerated orderlies control food distribution and locked cell-door flaps to block access to food and medication. These are anonymous inmate-witness accounts reported through news attribution, at moderate weight.

Wilcox State Prison: Legionnaires' investigation. The Legionnaires' disease investigation at Wilcox has entered its third year (news report).

Tuberculosis at Pulaski State Prison. An incarcerated woman died of tuberculosis complications after a transfer between Georgia prisons (WGXA; WSB-TV). GPS reported that families had been warning for ten days before the death (GPS, "A Woman Died of Tuberculosis at Pulaski State Prison. Families Had Been Warning for Ten Days."). A communicable-disease death after an inter-facility transfer is the kind of event that produces both litigation and public-health liability.

Staff criminal cases.

• On May 13, 2026, a Tattnall County grand jury indicted former Smith State Prison Warden Brian Adams on racketeering, bribery, false statements, evidence tampering, and oath-violation charges. The indictment alleges bribes from a prison gang to allow contraband (Attorney General press release; CBS Atlanta). The charges are pending.
• Court-verified booking records show that Zacarra Esquire Oliver, an accounting technician on GDC's August 2026 Central State Prison roster, was charged on October 15, 2026. The charges are felony sexual contact with a person in custody (O.C.G.A. § 16-6-5.1(b)(3)) and trading with inmates (O.C.G.A. § 42-5-16). She has been charged, not convicted.

Cases like these routinely generate parallel civil claims.

4. Mortality Trend and the Tracking Gap

4.1 The numbers

All counts below are floors. GDC reports cause of death about two months late, so the live count is always an undercount.

(GPS-tracked mortality data; full archive at the GPS mortality archive)

For longer context, GDC's own count of releases by death was 150 in calendar year 2015 and 332 in 2024. That is roughly one death every day of the year (GPS, Deaths in Custody).

The 2026 year-to-date figure should not be read as a decline. It is lagged, partial-year data.

4.2 The tracking gap

There are four structural reasons the public does not have an accurate count from the state:

1. GDC stopped publishing cause of death in March 2024. Since then, legislators cannot learn from state publications how many people GDC says were killed, died by suicide, or died of overdose.
2. DOJ found GDC's death reporting inaccurate "in a manner that underreports the extent of violence and homicide."
3. Georgia publishes no official prison-homicide count.
4. Death certification depends on county coroners. In most counties with GDC facilities, the official who certifies why a prisoner died is an elected coroner. Records quality varies county by county.

Most of the gap is closed by obtaining death-investigation records directly. At Ware State Prison, coroner and GBI crime-lab records GPS obtained through an open-records request covered 84 deaths since 2020 in 231 death-investigation reports. They document at least 19 homicides at Ware since 2020, along with twelve suicides and eight fatal overdoses.

In eleven of those homicides, the state's own investigation names a suspected attacker. In none could GPS find a public record that anyone was charged, indicted, or tried (GPS, "At Least Nineteen: The Murders the State Didn't Prosecute"). Ware was designed for about 500 people and holds about 1,447.

4.3 Named deaths in the evidence

Five deaths in GPS's registry anchor the violence and accountability record discussed in this brief:

• Christopher Eli Gresham died September 30, 2021, at Ware State Prison, age 39. GPS's registry lists the cause as homicide. Coroner and crime-lab records describe him as stabbed by at least three other prisoners.
• Squaier Lamar Jiles died September 16, 2024, at Ware State Prison, age 35. GPS's registry lists the cause as homicide. The autopsy records that he bled to death from sharp-force injuries.
• Corey Jose July died June 17, 2025, at Hancock State Prison. GPS's registry lists his age as 33 and the cause as homicide. According to the prosecutor, surveillance footage showed him chased across the yard and cornered at a locked gate. A Hancock County jury convicted his attacker of malice murder on August 12, 2026.
• Marcus Walker died January 10, 2026, at Wilcox State Prison, age 20. GPS's registry lists the cause as homicide; state death records describe manual strangulation in a shared cell. Wilcox is classified medium-security, yet GDC's own count places 694 of its 1,824 men at Close security.
• Maurice Antonio Brown died September 3, 2026, at Wilcox State Prison. GPS's registry lists the cause as homicide; the GBI Crime Lab has not yet published a final cause. GDC's public statement called the event an "altercation." Three separate accounts sent to GPS from inside the facility place the attack shortly after a tactical squad left the dorm around noon.

4.4 The current pattern

GPS's registry records deaths at Macon State Prison on October 21, 22, and 23, 2026:

• Juld Gerald Carter
• Veasna Johnathan Bun
• one person not yet identified

GDC has said it is investigating a Macon State Prison death as a homicide (41NBC). Anonymous accounts from inside describe three killings within two days. Those accounts are low-weight until corroborated, and causes for each death remain pending in GPS's records.

Earlier in 2026, four men were killed in a single gang disturbance at Washington State Prison on January 11, 2026. The facility was running at roughly 72 percent officer vacancy at the time (GPS, "The Only Family Left").

Gang violence has repeatedly forced statewide lockdowns, including on May 21, 2026, after violence at Dooly and other prisons, and on September 17, 2026, after a fight at Telfair (WGXA; 13WMAZ).

4.5 Homicide trend

Georgia's prisons recorded 142 homicides from 2018 to 2023, a 95.8 percent increase over the period (GPS, Violence & Safety).

5. Sanitation and Conditions: DPH Inspection Data

5.1 What the scores show

County health department sanitarians inspect GDC kitchens and score them out of 100. GPS's review of the Department of Public Health record found scores ranging from 64 to 100:

• Perfect scores:
• Whitworth Women's Facility (100, August 2026)
• Baldwin State Prison (100, June and December 2025, and August 2026)
• Riverbend (100)
• Central State Prison (100, June and November 2025)
• Hancock State Prison (100 on four separate dates)
• Failing scores (below 70) since 2022:
• Johnson State Prison: 64, December 11, 2023. This is the lowest documented DPH food-safety score for a GDC facility.
• Pulaski State Prison: 67, January 29, 2026
• Smith State Prison: 68, May 27, 2022. It had risen only to 72 by February 16, 2026.

(GPS, Scores Without Sanitation)

5.2 What the failing inspections found

• Johnson (December 2023):
• Bulk food bags (oil, flour, rice bran) gnawed through, with rat droppings and urine
• Cold-holding foods above 41°F, discarded during the inspection
• Five ovens, a tilting skillet, a kettle, a griddle, a freezer, and the ice machine all broken
• Holes in floors, walls, and ceilings
• A rat and roach problem described as ongoing "with little to no change"
• Pulaski (January 2026):
• The only handwashing sink nonfunctional, with plumbing ripped from the wall
• Sewage backing up through floor drains, a repeat violation
• Hot-holding violations, marked as repeats
• Smith (February 2026):
• Repeat roach activity in the bakery and tray station
• Broken sinks and a broken dishwasher faucet
• Clogged drains
• Mildew on walls, floors, and ceiling, also a repeat
• Rodent activity noted in every inspection from 2022 through 2025

5.3 Policy significance

A DPH inspection is a single announced walkthrough. It does not measure what reaches the tray or what happens between visits. The wide spread between facilities shows that adequate food safety is achievable inside GDC. That makes the failures a question of management and resource allocation, not inherent impossibility. It is a response failure, not a discovery failure.

Family-attestation accounts received by GPS describe moldy, spoiled food and maggots at Pulaski. These are low-weight claims, but they are consistent with the facility's documented DPH record.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution separately reported in October 2026 that men are living "amid darkness, raw sewage" at a South Georgia prison.

5.4 Broader conditions record

GDC's physical-plant failures extend beyond kitchens:

• GPS has reported that state inspectors keep finding fire exits locked (GPS, "Bolted In").
• GPS has reported that the state keeps buying cell locks while prisons keep using padlocks (GPS, "Georgia Keeps Buying Cell Locks. Its Prisons Keep Using Padlocks.").

Both are procurement and life-safety questions within appropriations oversight. See also Facility Conditions.

6. Vision 2027: The Post-Conviction Reform Package

Vision 2027 is GPS's legislative framework for the 2027 General Assembly. It rests almost entirely on the state's own paper trail.

6.1 The four load-bearing walls

1. The four-year habeas deadline.

• O.C.G.A. § 9-14-42(c), enacted in 2004, imposes a four-year deadline on felony habeas petitions. It has no actual-innocence exception and no equitable tolling.
• GPS's research found no committee report, no documented floor debate, no impact study, and no stated reason for the four-year figure.
• For 37 years before 2004, Georgia had no habeas statute of limitations at all.
• 70 percent of Georgia's 60 known exonerees needed longer than four years to clear their names.

GPS's fifty-state comparison shows how far outside the norm Georgia is:

2. Judicially closed remedies. Georgia Supreme Court decisions have:

• eliminated the out-of-time appeal
• nullified the statutory remedy for void convictions
• narrowed the "miscarriage of justice" exception

The Tell My Story account "The Giant I Still Have to Face" describes repeated O.C.G.A. § 17-9-4 motions denied as an "improper vehicle" (Georgia Prisoners' Speak — Tell My Story).

3. Parole collapse.

• The overall parole grant rate fell from roughly 70 percent in 1993 to a record-low 28 percent in FY2024.
• For the 2,046 lifers considered in FY2024, the grant rate was 4.5 percent; 93 were released.
• Life-sentenced serious violent felons who were paroled served under nine years on average in 1973. By FY2024 the average was 29.2 years.

4. No conviction-review infrastructure. Only three of Georgia's 159 counties have any mechanism for reviewing a questionable conviction.

6.2 The judicial invitation

Chief Justice Nels Peterson, concurring in Sanders v. State in March 2026, wrote that the system is "a mess." He added: "In short, the system is broken. We did a lot of the breaking. But it will require legislative action to fix it."

Staff can quote this directly in a memo. It is the strongest available signal that the judiciary will not resolve these issues on its own.

6.3 District lift

Every legislative district has constituents with family members serving long sentences under these rules. The Tell My Story account "How Much Time Is Enough?" describes a son arrested at 16 who received repeated parole set-offs over the reason "not done sufficient time." He was tentatively granted parole in December 2024 and then went to work as a welder in a Transitional Center (Georgia Prisoners' Speak — Tell My Story). Earned-release reform reaches families in rural and metro districts alike.

7. The Wrongful-Conviction Landscape

7.1 Forensic science

GPS has documented Georgia convictions that rested on forensic methods the FBI later disowned. It has also documented that affected defendants were never notified and then faced closed courthouse doors under the four-year deadline (GPS, "Nobody Told Them: Georgia Convicted People on Science the FBI Disowned, Then Shut the Courthouse Door").

Disavowed science combined with a fixed limitations period and no innocence exception means relief can be foreclosed before the defendant ever learns the science was bad.

7.2 The GBI Crime Lab

The GBI Crime Lab is central to Georgia's death investigations. Autopsies and toxicology for prison deaths at Ware and Wilcox run through it, and the cause of death for Maurice Antonio Brown remains pending there.

GPS does not yet have public data on GBI lab error rates, case-review audits, or notification practices for cases affected by discredited methods. Recommended staff request: ask the GBI for any internal review or notification program covering disavowed forensic disciplines, and the number of Georgia convictions flagged under it.

7.3 Defense quality

In October 2026, a legislative study revealed what the Atlanta Journal-Constitution described as Georgia's "bad lawyering" ("'Beyond sad': Georgia's bad lawyering revealed in legislative study"). The General Assembly's own study record supports post-conviction reform on ineffective-assistance grounds.

7.4 Parole file integrity

GPS has also examined how parole guideline files are built before the five board members vote, and the single compliance unit that checks them (GPS, "Who Builds the File Five Members Vote On?"). Errors in those files compound the effect of the low grant rates described in Section 6.

8. End the Warehouse: Rehabilitation Strategy and Return on Investment

8.1 The diagnosis, in the state's own records

• Growth driven by policy. Georgia's prison population grew from 7,966 in 1965 to 50,107 in 2024. The Board of Pardons and Paroles calculated a 470 percent increase between 1973 and 2004 alone.
• Current population. GPS's October 2026 snapshot counts 51,871 people in GDC custody:
• 34,283 in state prisons
• 8,216 in private prisons
• 3,789 in county prisons
• 2,722 in transitional centers
• 1,440 in probation RSATs
• 1,421 in probation detention

Another 3,164 people are backlogged in county jails awaiting transfer. That backlog is a cost shifted onto county budgets in every district. - Long-standing warnings. The state's own commissioners and a 1976 advisory committee warned of the consequences of warehousing nearly fifty years ago (GPS, End the Warehouse).

8.2 Idleness drives violence

• Economist Ilyana Kuziemko studied Georgia's 1998 reform requiring certain prisoners to serve at least 90 percent of their sentences. Affected prisoners accumulated significantly more disciplinary infractions and completed fewer programs than a comparable group that kept the parole incentive. Removing the incentive to earn release produced measurable disorder.
• WTOC obtained records showing that lockdowns repeatedly prevented class attendance during a six-month period in 2025 at Coastal State Prison.
• Tell My Story accounts from McRae Women's Facility describe minimum-security women held with "no programs," no counselors, and nothing to earn release toward ("Not Their Mistakes"; "Her Charges Don't Define Her," Georgia Prisoners' Speak — Tell My Story). The writer of "Not Their Mistakes" reports her daughter was in school and programs at Whitworth before her transfer.

8.3 The alternative and return on investment

GPS's framework is built on normalization: life inside should resemble life outside as closely as security allows, because the purpose is to return people intact. GPS's series concludes that the model has "working examples in Scandinavia and now on American soil" and "a price lower than what Georgia already spends to fail" (GPS, "Reopen the Doors — Normalization").

On comparable-state ROI: this corpus does not contain a per-state cost-benefit table. GPS does not yet have published comparable-state return-on-investment figures it can cite here, and committee staff should not attribute a specific savings figure to GPS. The fiscal argument GPS can support from Georgia's own numbers is this:

• Rehabilitation spending is a small fraction of the budget. Food, education, vocational training, and reentry programming remain at fractions of a percent of the total, while about $700 million in recent new spending went to custody hardware and contractors (GPS, GDC Budget; End the Warehouse).
• The return Georgia is currently receiving on that spending is measured in the mortality and settlement figures above.

8.4 Gang separation: a zero-cost lever already in statute

O.C.G.A. § 42-5-52, with language tracing to 1897, provides that "the department shall provide for the classification and separation of inmates." GPS's flagship solution pieces document that GDC is not complying in practice (GPS, "On the Books Since 1897: The Separation Law Georgia Refuses to Enforce"; "Separate the Gangs. It Costs Nothing. Georgia Keeps Choosing the Bodies.").

• Close-security men in medium prisons. In November 2025, GPS reported that close to 30 percent of the men at four medium-security prisons carried Close security status. Most medium prisons hold almost none. GDC's September 2026 open-records production shows the Close share went up at three of the four.
• Triple-celling. All four house three men in cells built for one. Commissioner Oliver has told state senators that single cells reduce violence (GPS, "Three to a Cell").
• Violence that travels. Statewide lockdowns after violence at a single prison show that the same gangs are housed on both sides of every fence.
• Staff entanglement. A Tell My Story account from Dooly describes a warden's apparent coordination with gang members after a prisoner spoke up in 2022 ("I'll Take Care of It," Georgia Prisoners' Speak — Tell My Story). This is an unverified firsthand account, offered as context for why separation must be audited externally.

9. Systemic Accountability Gaps Relevant to Drafting

Sexual abuse.

• Georgia's prisons have passed 273 consecutive PREA audits across 139 facilities without a single "not met" standard.
• Over the same period, GDC substantiated 543 of 15,542 sexual abuse allegations filed from 2014 to 2024, a 3.5 percent rate.
• DOJ's file review found zero of 388 investigation files met legal standards (GPS, Sexual Abuse).

Solitary confinement.

• GDC has published no Tier segregation population count since FY2019.
• Tier II policy sets no maximum duration.
• Court-won protections reach only the Special Management Unit at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison (GPS, Solitary Confinement).

Staff misconduct.

• At least 428 GDC employees were arrested for on-the-job crimes between January 2018 and September 2023, about 360 involving contraband (GPS, Staff Misconduct).
• Across 599 GDC contraband reports from July 2010 to July 2026, GDC's own text names 374 of its own staff, officers, and contract staff (GPS, The Staff Supply Chain).
• Reported staff arrests fell from 46 in 2019 to zero in 2022. GPS also found that GDC silently replaced its cumulative tally series in August 2019. This is a data-integrity question staff can raise directly.

Mental health.

• About 14,000 people in GDC custody have identified mental health needs, roughly a quarter of the population.
• The suicide rate tripled before GDC stopped publishing causes of death (GPS, Mental Health).

Family notification.

• A Board of Corrections rule in force since December 4, 1984 provides that the warden shall notify family after severe injury.
• GPS has documented how narrowly that duty operates in practice. During the September 2026 Telfair lockdown, GDC's own press page carried no account of the incident (GPS, "The Warden Shall Notify").

Oversight history. A 2007 state audit found GDC could not locate the medical files of 86 dead prisoners.

10. Policy Recommendations with Bill-Language Entry Points

The recommendations below are drafted as entry points for Legislative Counsel. Statutory citations are those in the corpus. Where a new section is needed, the target title is identified without inventing a code section.

10.1 Post-conviction and sentencing (Vision 2027)

1. Amend O.C.G.A. § 9-14-42(c) to:
2. add an actual-innocence exception
3. add statutory and equitable tolling, modeled on AEDPA and Holland v. Florida
4. add a newly discovered evidence trigger that expressly covers forensic methods later disavowed by federal agencies
5. Restore a statutory vehicle to challenge void convictions and sentences. This would respond directly to the remedies narrowed by the Georgia Supreme Court and to Chief Justice Peterson's call for legislative action.
6. Authorize and fund conviction integrity units beyond the three counties that have any review mechanism today, with a state-level option for smaller circuits.
7. Forensic notification mandate. Require the GBI and district attorneys to identify and notify defendants whose convictions relied on disavowed forensic methods, with a tolling provision attached.
8. Parole transparency. Require the State Board of Pardons and Paroles to publish annual grant rates by offense class and lifer status, average time served, and guideline-file correction rates.

10.2 Oversight and data (Title 42)

1. Create an independent corrections ombudsman or inspector general with:
2. unannounced access to facilities
3. access to records and incident reports
4. mandatory reporting to the General Assembly

Roughly twenty states and D.C. offer models. 7. Mandatory mortality reporting. Require GDC to publish every death within a fixed number of days, with manner and cause of death, reversing the March 2024 cessation. Require GDC to reconcile its counts annually against county coroner and medical examiner certifications. 8. Homicide accountability report. Require an annual report to the Judiciary committees on every in-custody death classified as homicide, and whether a referral, charge, or indictment followed. This would make the Ware pattern (named suspects, no public charges) visible statewide. 9. Segregation census. Require quarterly publication of Tier I, II, and III populations and length of stay. Set a statutory maximum for Tier II administrative segregation.

10.3 Safety and classification

1. Enforce O.C.G.A. § 42-5-52. Add reporting language requiring GDC to certify each quarter, by facility, the share of Close-security people housed in medium-security prisons and the number of triple-celled units. Require a corrective plan wherever the share exceeds a set threshold.
2. Staffing transparency. Require facility-level officer vacancy reporting, not blended system averages, as a condition of staffing appropriations. This responds directly to Zirkle's testimony that averages mask 70–80 percent vacancy at major prisons.

10.4 Conditions, food, and health

1. Unannounced DPH inspections. Amend the inspection framework for correctional kitchens to require at least one unannounced inspection a year. Require mandatory reinspection timelines and public corrective-action plans after any score below 70.
2. Food floor. Set a minimum per-meal funding floor tied to a recognized benchmark, and end two-meal weekend service by statute.
3. Communicable-disease transfer protocol. Require screening and documented clearance before inter-facility transfer of anyone with suspected TB or other communicable disease. Require notification to the receiving facility's medical staff and to designated family.
4. Centurion contract performance reporting. Require quarterly public reporting on contract performance measures, including deaths, as a condition of Health program appropriations.

10.5 Families and communication

1. Cap or eliminate the communications commission. Reduce the share of phone revenue returned to the state from Securus contracts, so families are not funding the department.
2. Codify family notification. Elevate the 1984 Board rule into statute with defined timelines and an independent complaint channel.

10.6 Earned release (End the Warehouse)

1. Earned-time credit. Restore incentives for program completion, citing Kuziemko's Georgia-specific findings. Pair it with appropriations for education and vocational programming, and require reporting on lockdown-related class cancellations.

10.7 Procurement

1. Direct-selection justification standards. Require public posting of the justification file for any GDC direct-selection procurement above a set threshold, prompted by the $85,585,244 purchase.

11. District-Relevant Facility List (by Region)

Each facility page includes GPS-tracked claims, deaths, and data. Machine-readable data for all facilities is available at the GPS facilities data endpoint.

South Georgia

Middle Georgia

North Georgia and Metro Atlanta

West Georgia

To identify which facilities sit in a given district, staff can use Find your legislator.

12. Next Steps for Legislators and Staff

Schedule a briefing. GPS will brief members and committee staff on the mortality registry, the Ware homicide records, the DPH inspection dataset, and the Vision 2027 drafting framework. Committees with jurisdiction over Corrections, Judiciary, Appropriations, and Health should request a session ahead of the 2027 session.

Request specific data. GPS can provide district-filtered extracts on request, including:

• facility-level death counts (at least 1,919 systemwide since 2020, always a floor)
• the DOAS settlement catalog of more than 260 payouts
• DPH score histories
• GDC's September 2026 Close-security production by facility

GPS can also help staff draft open-records requests to GDC, DOAS Risk Management, and the GBI for the items flagged in Sections 2, 7, and 10.

Sponsor a bill. The highest-leverage entry points are:

• amending O.C.G.A. § 9-14-42(c) to add an actual-innocence exception and tolling
• creating an independent corrections ombudsman
• mandating cause-of-death publication
• a reporting mandate enforcing O.C.G.A. § 42-5-52

GPS will provide supporting documentation for any of these.

Hear from constituents. Families in every district are reporting what they see. Direct constituents to Submit a report or Tell My Story.

The full GPS Legislative brief and companion materials are at gps.press/intelligence/legislative and the Intelligence System home.