Inmate Welfare Fund and commissary money: GDC's $88,944 estimate, and the commissary contract it released
We asked the Georgia Department of Corrections for the money flowing into and out of the Inmate Welfare Fund and similar accounts (commissary, package, phone and fee revenue, and how it was spent) for fiscal years 2020 to 2024, and for its contracts with commissary vendors.
GDC estimated that retrieving the financial records would take three to six months of a full-time employee's time, about $88,944 for retrieval alone, before any review. We dropped those items and asked only for the commissary contracts. GDC released the statewide commissary contract (fiscal 2015, with attachments), Amendment 14 (Renewal 10), and a commissary master product list.
Status: Items 4 (commissary contracts) released March 26, 2025. Items 1 to 3 (fund income and spending) not pursued because of GDC's estimate.
Documents as released (3)
| Document | Received | File |
|---|---|---|
| Commissary contract 46700-019-GDC0000624, Amendment 14 (Renewal 10) File name as released: 46700-019-GDC0000624_-_Amendment_14_Renewal_10_-_executed.pdf. | July 18, 2026 | PDF, 2 p., 226 KB |
| Commissary Master Product List (updated March 25, 2025) File name as released: MPL_11_15_24.pdf. | July 18, 2026 | PDF, 12 p., 295 KB |
| Statewide commissary contract, fiscal 2015, with attachments File name as released: Statewide_Commissary_Contract_Fy15_with_Attachments.pdf. | July 18, 2026 | PDF, 87 p., 5.2 MB |
What we asked for
Sent through: GDC Open Records (GovQA portal)
What happened
| March 21, 2025 | Request filed through GDC's Open Records Center; GDC acknowledged it the same day. |
| March 26, 2025 | GDC estimated that retrieving the fund records would take three to six months of one person's full-time work at $37.06 an hour: about $88,944 for retrieval alone, not counting review. |
| March 26, 2025 | We dropped items 1 to 3 because of the cost and asked GDC to go ahead with item 4, the commissary contracts. |
| March 26, 2025 | GDC released the item 4 records through the portal. |
Cost
$0.00: No fee for the contracts. GDC estimated about $88,944 (retrieval only, at $37.06 an hour) for the financial records we dropped.
Machine-readable
- JSON: https://gps.press/records/r019866-032125/?format=json
- Markdown: https://gps.press/records/r019866-032125.md
- REST API: https://gps.press/wp-json/gps-public-records/v1/requests/R019866-032125