Peoples, Delvin Rasaunn

Tenure Summary

Delvin Rasaunn Peoples began his Georgia Department of Corrections career as a correctional officer at Lee State Prison in 2006 and again in 2015, before becoming a lieutenant in 2016–2017. He entered facility leadership in 2018 as Correctional Assistant Superintendent at McEver Probation Detention Center and served as Correctional Superintendent at Calhoun State Prison in 2019. The bulk of Peoples’s time at Calhoun, however, was as Deputy Warden from 2020 through mid-2024. He transferred to Macon State Prison as Special Assistant to the Warden in September 2024, was promoted to Deputy Warden in 2025, and was appointed Warden in January 2026. According to GPS records, 45 deaths are attributed to his leadership tenures at these facilities — 19 at Calhoun State Prison and 26 at Macon State Prison. Peoples is named as a defendant in one pending federal lawsuit.

What happened on their watch

Calhoun State Prison – Deputy Warden (2020–2024)
During Peoples’s years as Deputy Warden at Calhoun, GPS records attribute 19 deaths to the facility. The sample of recorded deaths includes homicides, undetermined causes, and at least one death for which a Justice Department investigation catalogued serious procedural failures. Daquavious Lackey, 21, was stabbed to death by his cellmate in May 2022; the DOJ found that staff failed to follow classification and housing-assignment procedures, placing Lackey’s assailant back in general population, which led to the fatal assault, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In May 2024, Kenneth Piper, 37, and Gonzalo Colmenero, 54, died in inmate-on-inmate assaults that the AJC reported as homicides. Broader DOJ findings covering 2018–2023 documented that an incarcerated person at Calhoun died of dehydration with renal failure after staff shut off his water and did not deliver meals for two days, and that systemic understaffing contributed to violence and delayed emergency responses. During Peoples’s Calhoun tenure, two correctional officers were arrested in 2020 in a contraband smuggling case — the so-called “Hot Pockets” case — but nearly two dozen drug cases tied to the prison were later dismissed because the GDC failed to submit evidence to the state crime lab, the AJC reported. These dismissals occurred while Peoples was still assigned to Calhoun.

Macon State Prison – Deputy Warden and Warden (2025–present)
GPS records attribute 26 deaths to Macon State Prison during Peoples’s tenure there. The deaths listed in the sample span from January 2025 through April 2026 and include multiple homicides, suicides, and deaths documented as “undetermined.” Among the homicides: Jonathan Mitchell died in January 2025 after a cellmate allegedly beat him with fists, knees, and feet; Sanchez Jackson was stabbed to death in June 2025, with an investigator telling his sister the death may have been gang-related; Marquis Young, Luke Way, Xavier Adams, and Pierre Scott were all killed in inmate-on-inmate assaults in the segregation unit or general population in 2025. Suicides included Calvin Noble, 25, who hanged himself in a one-man cell in August 2025, and David Gill, who died from a drug overdose in January 2025. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Macon State Prison is critically understaffed — a coroner noted only five to eight officers were staffing the entire facility when responding to deaths, and about two-thirds of correctional officer positions were vacant as of October 2024. A U.S. Department of Justice investigation released in October 2024, cited by the AJC, found that Georgia prisons fail to provide constitutionally required safety and that the state systematically underreports homicides. At Macon, the DOJ report documented an incident in which four gang members ran past an officer and fatally stabbed a prisoner, and a grievance about gang violence was rejected as untimely with no follow-up. In January 2025, the Southern Center for Human Rights sued Macon State Prison over overcrowding and inadequate bedding and hygiene, alleging 96 men shared a single toilet. Separately, in March 2025, a lawsuit, Jacobs v. Georgia Department of Corrections, was filed in federal court against the department, naming Peoples among the defendants; the case remains pending.

Litigation

• Jacobs v. Georgia Department of Corrections, No. 4:25-cv-00111 (GAMD), filed March 26, 2025. Status: pending. Delvin Rasaunn Peoples is named as a defendant.

Sources

• GPS records — personnel positions, death totals, decedent names, and lawsuit docket information.
• Atlanta Journal-Constitution — coverage of homicides at Calhoun and Macon State Prisons, DOJ investigation findings, staffing shortages, dismissed contraband cases, and the “Hot Pockets” case.
• WALB — reporting on the DOJ investigation, allegations of delayed medical response, and family accounts of deaths at Calhoun State Prison.
• 13WMAZ — coverage of inmate drug trafficking operations from Macon State Prison.
• Solitary Watch — historical allegations about conditions at Macon State Prison.
• CourtListener — docket for Jacobs v. Georgia Department of Corrections.

Synthesized by GPS Intelligence System on Jun 7, 2026 from positions, attributed deaths, lawsuits, intel reports, and news mentions in the public corpus. The supporting data tables follow below.