Communications & Technology
Key Findings
Critical data points synthesized across multiple research collections.
The Contraband Technology Complex: MAS, Vendors, and Budgets
GPS research places Georgia’s contraband technology spending at approximately $50 million, funding three Managed Access System vendors — Trace-Tek/ShawnTech, CellBlox/Securus, and Hawks Ear — according to the Follow the Money: Georgia Prison MAS Vendors, Contracts & Financial Conflicts collection. The MAS Technology, Vendors & Deployment in Georgia Prisons collection reports the same $50 million through FY2026 and documents an expansion from 23 to 27 prison facilities. This spending sits inside a GDC budget that reaches $1.712 billion in FY2026 and $1.779 billion in FY2027, per Georgia Department of Corrections: Budget & Spending Trends FY2022-FY2027.
The stated aim is contraband control. But the DOJ Investigation of Georgia Prisons: Violence, Safety & Constitutional Violations collection found that between November 2021 and August 2023, GDC recovered 27,425 weapons, 12,483 cellphones, 2,016 illegal drug items, 262 drone sightings, and 346 fence-line throw-overs. Those recoveries — while inherently incomplete — show the $50 million MAS apparatus has not stopped weapons, drugs, phones, or drone and throw-over contraband from entering Georgia prisons.
Separately, the GDC Overwatch & Logistic (OWL) Unit Command Center: Technology, Surveillance & Budget Analysis collection documents an expanding surveillance command structure, but GPS has not identified public outcome metrics tying that technology to reduced violence or contraband.
Phone and Financial Extraction: Commissions, Monopoly, and Welfare Funds
Prison communications is a $1.4 billion annual industry in the United States, according to the Prison Communications & Financial Exploitation: The Extraction Economy Behind Bars collection. Securus Technologies and ViaPath Technologies (formerly GTL) together control roughly 80% of the U.S. prison telecommunications market, serving about 3,450 correctional facilities and 1.1 million incarcerated people. In Georgia, the Follow the Money: Georgia Prison MAS Vendors, Contracts & Financial Conflicts collection confirms GDC receives more than $8 million per year in Securus kickbacks at a 59.6% commission rate on prison phone services gross revenue.
That money flows into a larger welfare-fund structure documented in Georgia’s Prison Commissary Extraction Machine. At least 49 state prison systems and the federal Bureau of Prisons have some form of inmate welfare fund; 39 draw revenue from commissary purchases, 19 draw revenue from communications kickbacks — including phone, email, and video calling fees — 16 draw revenue from trust account interest, and 3 draw revenue from disciplinary fines. This structure makes the Georgia Department of Corrections a direct financial beneficiary of higher phone volume and higher communications prices.
The Families as the Hidden Tax Base: How Incarceration Costs Are Shifted to Families collection calculates that families spend $5.6 billion annually on commissary, phone calls, and other basic necessities, with markups reaching 600% above retail cost. Those family payments are not incidental: they are core revenue streams for the same systems that impose the markups.
The Commissary Markup Machine and Family Debt
Georgia’s commissary prices show the scale of the markup. The Georgia’s Prison Commissary Extraction Machine collection documents that incarcerated people pay $0.90 for a 3-ounce packet of Maruchan ramen that costs $0.15 to $0.31 at Walmart, and $4.00 for 20 to 24 tablets of generic 200mg ibuprofen that costs $0.40 to $0.48 at retail. Across 20 sampled items, the collection estimates the commissary system extracts $3 million to $5 million annually from families who have no alternative. Separately, Prison Labor & Wage Exploitation in Georgia reports Georgia commissary markups of 83% to 1,150% above retail prices.
These costs are borne almost entirely by families because prison wages are negligible. The Economic Exploitation in Prison: Wages, Fees, and the Poverty Cycle collection reports that incarcerated people in Michigan prisons average $12 to $16 per month, and Prison Labor & Wage Exploitation in Georgia confirms that roughly 800,000 incarcerated workers nationally produce more than $2 billion in goods and $9 billion in services for prison maintenance. With so little income inside, families become the hidden payer.
The burden is not evenly distributed. Families as the Hidden Tax Base reports direct out-of-pocket spending averages $4,200 per year for people with an immediate family member in prison — more than 27% of income at the federal poverty line — while Black family members average $2,256 per year on visit travel, compared to the overall visiting-family average of $1,703. Economic Exploitation in Prison adds that 65% of families with an incarcerated loved one were unable to meet basic needs, 58% could not afford conviction-related costs, and court-related fines and fees pushed families into average debt above $13,000.
The Security Narrative vs. Conditions: Contraband, Violence, and Mortality
Georgia’s scale makes these failures acute. The DOJ Investigation of Georgia Prisons collection notes Georgia has the fourth-highest state prison population, and Recidivism & Reentry Failures in Georgia reports a state incarceration rate of 881 per 100,000 residents — the 7th highest nationally. The 2024 Georgia Senate Study Committee Report on Prison Conditions identifies about 49,000 inmates as of August 2024, 31% validated Security Threat Group members, 14,000 inmates with identified mental health needs, and a 12% increase in the proportion of the violent population since 2012 reforms. Those figures are often invoked to justify tight controls on phones, tablets, and communications.
Yet the conditions the controls are supposed to fix have worsened. The Staffing Crisis & Correctional Officer Turnover collection reports that between 2019 and 2024, assaults on inmates rose 54%, assaults on staff rose 77%, and the prison death rate surged 47% — from 2.8 per 100,000 to 4.1 per 100,000. Total deaths in Georgia prisons hit a record 333 in 2024, according to the MAS Technology, Vendors & Deployment in Georgia Prisons collection. GDC has 5,991 budgeted corrections officer positions, with 2,985 vacant — a system-wide vacancy rate near 50% — and eight to ten facilities exceeding 70% vacancy rates.
The contraband totals are the contradiction at the center of the technology program. Georgia recovered 12,483 cellphones, 27,425 weapons, 2,016 illegal drug items, 262 drone sightings, and 346 fence-line throw-overs in under two years, even as the state expanded Managed Access Systems. The Mass Incarceration as a Public Health Crisis: Life Expectancy, Medical Access, and Georgia's Prison System collection reports that each additional year in prison produces a 15.6% increase in the odds of death — roughly a two-year decline in life expectancy per year incarcerated — and that five years in prison raises mortality odds by 78% for a 30-year-old.
Policy Alternatives and Data Gaps
GPS research collections point to alternatives that do not require families to fund prison operations. The Policy & Advocacy: Monitor-Not-Block, Scamming, Legal Path & Cost Model collection documents a monitor-not-block framework and legal cost models designed to replace revenue-generating blocking technology with oversight and access. The Prison Communication: Violence, International Evidence & Human Impact collection reports that the United Kingdom invested £10 million installing in-cell landline phones across its prison estate — treating communication as a basic rehabilitative service rather than a billing opportunity.
Accountability remains hindered by data gaps. The Families as the Hidden Tax Base collection estimates the total U.S. criminal legal system cost at $417.1 billion in 2025 dollars, while estimating the total annual cost to families at nearly $350 billion — almost four times the $89 billion taxpayers spend on jails and prisons. The Prison Mortality & Deaths in Custody: Data Gaps, Misclassification, and Accountability Failures collection notes BJA-reported deaths in custody for FY2020 totaled 5,674 and are widely understood to be significant undercounts. Similar gaps exist in contraband, communications pricing, and welfare fund spending: Georgia’s exact extraction totals remain undisclosed.
The political economy behind these policies is not accidental. The Model State — ALEC and the Georgia General Assembly collection reports ALEC’s FY2024 total revenue of $10,918,816, with contributions of $9,508,430 making up 87.1% of revenue and CEO compensation of $507,409. Earlier estimates from 2012 put corporate-funded travel for legislators at more than $4 million from 2006 to 2012. That legislative infrastructure has been a vehicle for correctional contracting and deregulation that shapes Georgia’s current communications and commissary landscape.
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Sources
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