Swinford, Jonathan D

Tenure Summary

Jonathan D. Swinford appears in Georgia Department of Corrections salary records beginning in 2015 as a corrections officer, then as a CSM correctional lieutenant (2016–2018), correctional officer 2 (2019–2021), and CSM correctional unit manager (2022–2023). A personnel record dated November 22, 2023 places him as Deputy Warden at Hays State Prison — the facility where he is also listed as deputy warden in 2024 and 2025 and on a further record dated August 27, 2026.

Seventeen deaths are attributed to his leadership tenure, every one of them at Hays State Prison, per the profile's attribution count. Two federal lawsuits filed in the Northern District of Georgia list Swinford as a defendant: one pending, one terminated. No news report in the dataset names him directly; the reporting that reaches his facilities comes from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and from facility event entries.

What happened on their watch

Non-facility leadership and staff roles, 2015–2023. Swinford held no facility-assigned leadership post in these years: corrections officer (2015), CSM correctional lieutenant (2016–2018), correctional officer 2 (2019–2021), CSM correctional unit manager (2022–2023). The incident and report lists in this profile cover only his facility-leadership tenure and do not address these periods.

Hays State Prison — Deputy Warden, November 22, 2023 through at least August 27, 2026. All 17 deaths attributed to Swinford's leadership occurred at Hays. The individual death entries — a most-recent sample, not the full count — run from March 2, 2024 to March 23, 2026 and range in age from 30 to 82. Named in that sample: Jeremy Edward Price, 36, who an event entry says died March 2, 2024 from stab wounds to the neck and chest; Freddie Lee Talley, 31, recorded as killed May 6, 2024 by a stab wound to the chest, with officers recovering seven weapons between 9 and 22 inches long and three inmates receiving disciplinary reports but not charged; Lawrence L. Williams, 30, and Thomas Johnson, 82 (both October 24, 2024); Joey Griffin, 54 (December 26, 2024); Ralph Carter, 39 (March 5, 2025); Tommy Joe Strickland, 60 (June 4, 2025); Raymont Savion Farley, 36 (June 15, 2025); James Cannon, 48 (October 25, 2025); Barcel Roylee Ward, 39 (November 28, 2025); Melvin Gay Johnson, 35 (January 27, 2026); and Corey Anwar Dubose, 47 (March 23, 2026). Tammy Price told the AJC in January 2025 she still did not know what happened to her son; the same AJC piece reports her allegation that GDC omits manner-of-death information from mortality reports, obscuring its inability to protect prisoners. A March 31, 2025 AJC report alleges a former Hays guard smuggled methamphetamine and other contraband to inmates for more than a month; a facility event entry dated February 10, 2025 records a federal sentencing announcement in that case.

Overlapping his tenure at Hays: a January 7, 2025 announcement attributed to Gov. Kemp of a $600 million prison spending surge including four 126-bed "hardened" modules, the first under construction at Hays; an October 19, 2025 entry recording a $24 million hardened 126-bed unit at Hays; facility-history entries dated October 18, 2025 describing three homicides within one month in late 2012–early 2013, an officer stabbed 22 times, and 42 percent of locks non-functional or easily defeated; and October 5, 2025 entries on systemic malnutrition and food-service failures across Georgia prisons, naming Rogers State Prison as a focal point and a superintendent, Ms. Gunner. A July 12, 2025 entry concerns a riot and punitive lockdown response at Ware State Prison; the record does not link Swinford to that facility.

Litigation

• Mckenzie v. Oliver, No. 4:26-cv-00108 (N.D. Ga.), filed April 28, 2026 — pending; Swinford listed as a defendant.
• Daker v. Oliver (Filing Restriction Per 59 Order), No. 1:25-cv-03191 (N.D. Ga.), filed June 6, 2025, terminated March 30, 2026 — no outcome amount recorded; Swinford listed as a defendant.

Both captions name Oliver as lead defendant; Swinford appears among the defendants per the docket records.

Sources

• Atlanta Journal-Constitution — "Georgia prison officials block access to death info as homicides spike" (Jan. 21, 2025); "Prison homicides soar as Georgia legislators focus on fixes" (Mar. 31, 2025) — both dated during his Hays deputy wardenship.
• CourtListener dockets — Mckenzie v. Oliver (4:26-cv-00108); Daker v. Oliver (1:25-cv-03191).
• Georgia Department of Corrections personnel and salary records, 2015–2025.
• Hays State Prison facility event entries — death entries (Price, Talley, and the 2024–2026 sample), the $600 million and $24 million hardened-unit announcements, the former-guard sentencing entry, the 2012–2013 facility history entries, and the October 2025 malnutrition report entries.

Synthesized by GPS Intelligence System on Sep 23, 2026 from positions, attributed deaths, lawsuits, intel reports, and news mentions in the public corpus. The supporting data tables follow below.