Budget & Spending

The Shape of the Money: A Surge, a Peak, and a Decline

Georgia Department of Corrections spending climbed from $1.53 billion in fiscal 2024 actual expenditures to $1.91 billion in fiscal 2025 — a 25.4 percent single-year increase and the highest total in the visible four-year window (Georgia Department of Corrections: Budget & Spending Trends FY2022-FY2027; GDC Budget Baseline FY2025–FY2027). The total then fell: $1.71 billion in the fiscal 2026 original budget, $1.80 billion amended, and approximately $1.79 billion in the fiscal 2027 appropriation approved under HB 974 (GDC Budget Baseline FY2025–FY2027). State general funds carried nearly all of it — $1,823,730,648 of the fiscal 2025 actual — while federal and other funds fell from $103,675,170 in fiscal 2024 to roughly $16.8 million in the fiscal 2026 and 2027 budgets, shifting almost the entire burden onto state taxpayers (Georgia Department of Corrections Budget FY2026-FY2027).

Two figures in wide circulation are routinely attached to the wrong year. The "$1.8 billion" figure that recurs across GPS reporting is the fiscal 2026 amended total, not fiscal 2025, which was higher; the agency's total appropriation peaked in fiscal 2025 and then declined by approximately $126 million to the fiscal 2027 approved level (GDC Budget Baseline FY2025–FY2027). Separately, the $1.48 billion fiscal 2025 figure that appears in several GPS collections is the originally proposed appropriation, not what the agency actually spent.

The headline "44 percent increase" claim rests on a baseline that has moved. GPS has at different points described fiscal 2022 corrections spending as $1.12 billion, $1.25 billion and $1.1 billion (Georgia's $600 Million Prison Spending Infusion; Fiscal Impact of Post-Conviction Reform in Georgia; Legal Settlements & Lawsuits Against the Georgia Department of Corrections). The Governor's Budget Report actuals for fiscal 2022 show $1,209,327,285 in state general funds plus $79,408,989 in other funds and $7,918,092 in federal funds. The percentage depends on which baseline is used, and GPS has used more than one.

The "$634 million largest corrections funding increase in history" claim cannot be reconciled with the line items either. The canonical total of line-item changes across the amended fiscal 2026 and approved fiscal 2027 budgets is $154,100,035 — $87,137,031 plus $66,963,004. GPS's baseline series flags the $634 million figure as requiring re-sourcing; the largest year-over-year jump in the window is the fiscal 2024 to fiscal 2025 increase of roughly $387 million (GDC Budget Baseline FY2025–FY2027).

Health Care Is the Growth Engine

Health is the one program that grew through every budget cycle. It stood at $188,966,904 in fiscal 2014 — 15.81 percent of the agency's budget — and rose through $260,284,197 in fiscal 2023, $325,613,120 in fiscal 2024 (21.3 percent), $389,939,841 in fiscal 2025 (20.4 percent), $417,255,739 in the amended fiscal 2026 budget (23.2 percent) and $432,247,728 in fiscal 2027 (24.3 percent) (Georgia Department of Corrections Budget FY2026-FY2027; Health care in Georgia's prisons). That is a 33 percent increase in three years on a program that now consumes nearly a quarter of all prison spending.

The increases arrive almost entirely as contract line items. Fiscal 2025 added $71,900,000 for physical health and pharmacy services; the amended fiscal 2025 budget added $66,000,000 to expand contracts covering mental, dental, physical and pharmacy care; fiscal 2026 added $31,000,000 more. In the amended fiscal 2026 budget the physical health contract alone rose by $38,869,898, including $15,000,000 for outside-the-wire care, $12,923,790 to open additional beds and $10,946,108 in per diem. The Governor proposed a further $47,880,895 for physical health in fiscal 2027; the Senate Appropriations Committee cut it to $32,637,565. Mental health moved the other way — the Governor proposed $1,917,644, the committee approved $12,127,034, roughly six times the request (Georgia Department of Corrections: Budget & Spending Trends FY2022-FY2027; FY2027 GDC Approved Budget — HB 974).

The provider side concentrates that money. Centurion of Georgia has held a $2.40 billion, nine-year contract for all medical, mental health and dental services since July 1, 2024 — awarded without a competitive request for proposals, under an emergency procurement justification reusing the 2021 bid. Wellpath, the prior contractor, sued, alleging its price was "objectively lower" and that state law's competitive process was bypassed (Health care in Georgia's prisons; Augusta State Medical Prison: the public record). Centurion had already taken a $536,500,000 behavioral and dental contract in 2019.

The spending has not resolved the access problem the contracts were meant to address. The Justice Department documented waits of up to 10 months for a psychiatrist in Georgia prisons, and the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute noted that no fiscal proposal specifically addressed incarcerated Georgians' ongoing health access challenges (Prison Healthcare & Mental Health Crisis in Georgia; Georgia's $600 Million Prison Spending Infusion). One GPS dataset lists the fiscal 2027 health program at $432,247,728 and another at $427,216,930 — a roughly $5 million discrepancy between the program table and the HB 974 line-item analysis that has not been reconciled.

The Reallocation: State Prisons Shrink, Private Beds Grow

Between fiscal 2025 actual spending and the fiscal 2027 approved budget, the composition of the agency changed. State Prisons — by far the largest program — fell from $1,117,374,600 to $929,889,321, a reduction of $187,485,279 or 16.78 percent. Over the same period Private Prisons grew from $152,648,138 to $173,541,185 (+$20,893,047, +13.69 percent), Health grew by $37,277,089 (+9.56 percent), Offender Management grew by $8,076,203 (+15.98 percent) and Departmental Administration was cut by $9,131,486 (−18.44 percent) (GDC Budget Baseline FY2025–FY2027). Food and Farm Operations also fell, by $486,881.

The private-bed expansion was deliberate and priced. The Governor's fiscal 2027 budget proposed $4,227,620 to add 160 beds at Coffee Correctional Institution and 103 beds at Wheeler Correctional Institution; the Senate Appropriations Committee rejected the addition, citing incompatibility with single-cell needs (FY2027 GDC Approved Budget — HB 974). The fiscal 2026 budget had already raised per-diem funding by facility: Coffee by $3,033,827, Wheeler by $3,208,871, Jenkins by $3,654,586 and Riverbend by $3,750,000 (The Model State — ALEC and the Georgia General Assembly).

Georgia already pays for a substantial private footprint. Four private prisons house roughly 7,800 people — about 15 percent of the population — for roughly $140 million annually paid to CoreCivic and GEO Group. A 2018 Department of Audits and Accounts review found that, controlling for sex, facility size and risk classification, state prisons ran about $44.56 per person per day against $49.07 in private prisons: private operation cost approximately 10 percent more, not less (The Model State — ALEC and the Georgia General Assembly).

Capital purchases carry their own questions. Georgia bought the McRae facility from CoreCivic in 2022 for $130,000,000, against a Telfair County tax valuation of approximately $48,000,000, and then budgeted $25,657,146 in fiscal 2024 to open it (Women's Incarceration in Georgia; McRae Women's Facility: the public record). The same fiscal 2024 act zeroed out the Governor's separate recommendations of $1,629,757 for engineering and construction, $3,405,311 for rehabilitation and risk reduction, and $1,186,164 for food and farm operations tied to that opening — the operating and programmatic money was cut while the beds were funded.

Surveillance Over Rehabilitation

The new money went disproportionately to watching people. The Over Watch and Logistics unit — the command center that aggregates facility cameras, body cameras, tablets and mail screening — drew $7,224,150 for body cameras and tasers in the amended fiscal 2025 budget, $2,506,740 for officer tablets, $913,248 for off-site mail screening, $4,114,511 for a digital forensics contract, $1,950,000 for a data intelligence system and $3,805,472 for personnel and technology fees in fiscal 2026. Fiscal 2027 added $1,443,038 in personnel and $5,521,230 in technology, for $6,964,268 (GDC Overwatch & Logistic (OWL) Unit Command Center; FY2027 GDC Approved Budget — HB 974). Beyond the unit itself, the state budgeted $84,661,607 for fire alarms, perimeter security, lighting, thermal cameras and closed-circuit television statewide, and $35,027,675 for managed access cell-phone interdiction in the amended fiscal 2025 budget alone (GDC Overwatch & Logistic (OWL) Unit Command Center).

Rehabilitation spending is a rounding error beside it. The canonical two-cycle investment in new rehabilitation programming across amended fiscal 2026 and approved fiscal 2027 is approximately $1,225,705 — an Autry State Prison peer-led pilot at $150,000 that was not continued, $93,179 for Metro Reentry Facility programming in amended fiscal 2026 (zeroed to $0 in fiscal 2027), and high school diploma staffing (GDC Budget Baseline FY2025–FY2027). Against roughly $27.1 million in new security and technology line items, that is a surveillance-to-rehabilitation ratio of about 22 to 1. GPS previously published "over $120 million" and a 46-to-1 ratio; the baseline series has since retracted both, noting the $120 million figure cannot be reconciled to the line-item changes across those two cycles.

Education sits even lower. Georgia's vocational education budget for the entire state prison system was $172,000 in fiscal 2025 — about $3.44 per incarcerated person per year against a $1.48 billion agency budget (GDC Mission vs. Reality; GDC Budget Baseline FY2025–FY2027). The Senate Appropriations Committee cut the high school diploma program by $104,000 and directed the department to "explore virtual high school options." Education is not a standalone line item at all; it is buried inside the $901 million-to-$938 million State Prisons appropriation with no dedicated allocation, which is why no one — including GPS — can state Georgia's true per-person education spend.

Food is the starkest comparison. The Food and Farm Operations line ran $30,914,139 in fiscal 2024, $31,748,617 in fiscal 2025, $31,137,154 in amended fiscal 2026 and $31,261,736 in fiscal 2027 — approximately $0.54 to $0.55 per meal (GDC Budget Baseline FY2025–FY2027). The Marshall Project reported Georgia spending about $1.69 per person per day in 2024 and proposing $1.60 for fiscal 2027; GPS's own line-item calculation puts the figure at $1.63 to $1.68 depending on the population basis used, a gap that should be closed with a direct records request. The American Correctional Association benchmark of roughly $3.66 per meal would require about $211 million a year, nearly seven times current spending.

The Costs Pushed Onto Families

A meaningful share of Georgia's prison operating revenue never appears in the appropriations bill. Commissary sales generate roughly $47 million annually at a reported profit margin near 66 percent, with markups running from 67 percent to 280 percent over vendor cost; GPS documented 153 items where the vendor lowered the contract price while the department held or raised the price charged to incarcerated people, extracting about $420,000 (Women's Incarceration in Georgia; Georgia's Prison Commissary Extraction Machine). Fees collected from incarcerated individuals exceed $10 million annually in each of the last three years (Georgia Department of Corrections: Budget & Spending Trends FY2022-FY2027).

Budget cuts get converted into price increases on the people inside. A more than $5 million reduction in the fiscal 2021 budget was absorbed by raising commissary prices, shifting the cost to incarcerated people and their families rather than reducing agency spending (Georgia Department of Corrections: Budget & Spending Trends FY2022-FY2027; Women's Incarceration in Georgia).

Telecommunications is the largest off-books channel. Georgia's contract with Securus specifies a commission rate of 59.6 percent of gross revenue paid to the department — among the highest in the country against a national average near 43 percent — plus a minimum monthly guarantee of $325,000 and a one-time $4,000,000 signing bonus. Commissions totaled $8,062,200.60 in 2019 and $7,040,000 in 2022 (Follow the Money: Georgia Prison MAS Vendors). Those dollars flow into inmate welfare funds that operate, in many states, free of legislative appropriation oversight, with reporting required only on suspicion of fraud or a change in the personnel managing the account (Families as the Hidden Tax Base; Georgia's Prison Commissary Extraction Machine). What Georgia's own welfare fund takes in and spends remains an open records target.

Accountability, and What the Money Did Not Prevent

The state paid nearly $2,700,000 to Guidehouse Inc., with The Moss Group and Carter Goble Lee, for the system-wide assessment that produced the 2025 spending recommendations (Georgia's $600 Million Prison Spending Infusion). No independent oversight mechanism was attached to the resulting money: Georgia has no prison ombudsman, no independent inspector general for corrections, and no public reporting requirement on spending or outcomes. A 2024 Senate study committee recommended asking the Department of Audits to review five years of contract renewals for a pattern of runaway vendor costs, and the accreditation relationship itself has no competitively bid contract on the Georgia Procurement Registry (2024 Georgia Senate Study Committee; ACA Accreditation as Compliance Shield).

The transparency gaps are specific and documented: complete spending breakdowns by facility and category, monthly staffing by facility, lock-replacement progress, contraband technology deployment, private prison contract detail, modular unit construction status, new prison planning expenditures, healthcare contract terms and facility-level violence data are all missing from the public record (Georgia's $600 Million Prison Spending Infusion). GPS's own baseline series lists unresolved gaps on total education spending and on the department's separately calculated per-person operating cost.

The spending also did not prevent the deaths that define the system's human ledger. GPS's death registry records the following:

• Christina Marie Buttery died December 21, 2022, at Pulaski State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending.
• Marquis Reshawn Jefferson died May 11, 2022, at Washington State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Homicide.
• Bobby Edward Lee died July 13, 2020, at Macon State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Homicide.
• Demitri Carter died October 29, 2017, at Phillips State Prison; the Department's own cause coding, obtained by the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project through an open records request, lists Suicide. That coding is not an autopsy finding — no pathologist examined the body for that determination.
• Bonnie Rocheleau died March 19, 2015, at Pulaski State Prison; the Department's own cause coding lists Other, under the same provenance caveat.

Each death carried a fiscal trace the budget documents do not show. The state paid $700,000 in 2021 to settle the claim over Carter's death and $925,000 in 2018 over Rocheleau's; Lee's estate settled for $1,375,000 in 2023. In Jefferson's case, records obtained by his family showed the dormitory was so understaffed that no one was watching when he was attacked (Phillips State Prison: the public record; Pulaski State Prison: the public record; Macon State Prison: the public record; Staffing Crisis & Correctional Officer Turnover).