Communications & Technology

The Duopoly and the Commission Model

Prison communications in Georgia is a closed market, not a consumer service. The Prison Communications & Financial Exploitation: The Extraction Economy Behind Bars collection sizes the national industry at $1.4 billion a year, built on monopoly telephone, tablet, email, and money transfer services, and reports that Securus Technologies and ViaPath Technologies (formerly GTL) together control approximately 80% of the U.S. prison telecommunications market [#1650, #1651]. Georgia's Department of Corrections contracts with Securus for phone services and with JPay — a Securus subsidiary — for tablets, email, and money transfers [#1654].

The financial architecture is documented in the state's own contract record. According to The Model State — ALEC and the Georgia General Assembly collection, GDC's original inmate-phone contract with Securus dates to September 21, 2016, effective January 1, 2017, and carried a $4 million one-time incentive to GDC plus a 59.6% commission on call revenue, subject to a $325,000 per month floor, with calls at approximately 13 cents per minute — roughly $1.95 for a 15-minute call — yielding the department roughly $8 million per year [#8327]. The Recidivism & Reentry Failures in Georgia collection puts the annual figure at $8+ million paid by Georgia families in communications kickbacks [#2168].

What has changed is the rate, not the structure. As of September 2025, Georgia GDC state prison phone rates are $0.06 per minute, uniform for local, long-distance in-state, out-of-state, and international calls, compliant with earlier FCC caps [#1719, #1656]. Calls are capped at 25 minutes and all are subject to monitoring and recording [#1720]. But the most recent publicly available contract amendment covers only 2017–2021, and the current renewed contract's exact terms require a Georgia Open Records Act request to GDC [#1777, #8328]. Whether a 59.6% commission survives at a $0.06 rate — or whether revenue has migrated to unregulated services — is not documented in any public record reviewed here.

The vendor's ownership structure is itself a pressure point. Securus Technologies is a subsidiary of Aventiv Technologies, owned by Platinum Equity, the private equity firm founded and controlled by Tom Gores [#1661]. Platinum Equity acquired Securus for approximately $1.5 billion in 2017, taking on more than $1.3 billion in debt to finance the leveraged buyout; the parent rebranded as Aventiv between 2018 and 2020 [#1666, #1667, #1789]. The Follow the Money collection notes that Aventiv's debt load and credit rating raise serious continuity concerns for Georgia's MAS systems and phone services, which depend on the company [#5404]. In 2024, per the Prison Communications collection, Securus explicitly pushed to promote tablet adoption and content sales even as it faced potential bankruptcy — a strategy to shift revenue from regulated phone services to unregulated tablet services [#1798].

Managed Access: A $50 Million Wager and a Procurement Blackout

Georgia has bet heavily on surveillance technology as its answer to contraband. The MAS Technology, Vendors & Deployment in Georgia Prisons collection reports that the state spent approximately $50 million through FY2026 deploying Managed Access Systems, expanding from 23 to 27 prison facilities [#5476]. In the AFY2025 budget, $35,027,675 for managed access and drone detection was the single largest technology line item, supporting cell phone interdiction covering all 35 of Georgia's operational state prisons [#3520]. The AFY2026 Governor's Budget proposed another $13,387,475 for managed access and drone detection [#3532].

That money flows through a vendor set with almost no public footprint. Trace-Tek LLC, the exclusive partner of ShawnTech Communications, holds FCC Contraband Interdiction System lease agreements for 28 Georgia facilities; CellBlox Acquisitions LLC, a subsidiary of Securus Technologies, operates CIS at four — Jimmy Autry, Macon, Smith, and Telfair state prisons; and Hawks Ear Communications LLC covers Hancock, Phillips, and Valdosta state prisons [#3540, #3542, #3543]. ShawnTech claims to hold, together with Trace-Tek, 86% of the CIS licenses issued by the FCC nationwide [#3541]. Hawks Ear, incorporated in Florida in 2015, is described in the MAS Technology collection as a two-person operation with no physical office, no website, and no track record; its Atlanta address is a Regus virtual office and its Fort Lauderdale address is an entertainment/IP lawyer's office [#5493]. Trace-Tek's website is a single-page GoDaddy-hosted site with almost no corporate information [#3580].

The procurement record behind those contracts is missing. The MAS Technology collection found no RFP, sole-source justification, or contract award on the Georgia DOAS registry or Team Georgia Marketplace for any of the three MAS vendors — 35 facility contracts worth tens of millions of dollars with zero procurement transparency [#5496]. The specific vehicle for the $35 million managed access deployment is likewise not publicly visible; Team Georgia Marketplace does not expose individual GDC contract details for these systems [#3570].

The conflict structure is documented. Securus Technologies operates MAS at four Georgia prisons while also holding the exclusive contract to provide paid phone services — a dual-profit arrangement [#5382]. ShawnTech/Trace-Tek also provides inmate phone systems, kiosks, video visitation, and tablets, profiting from both blocking contraband phones and providing paid communication services [#5407]. The Follow the Money collection notes that MAS vendors have a financial incentive not to report staff corruption, because contraband phones drive demand for both MAS systems and paid phone services, and that no evidence was found that MAS data has been used for staff accountability [#5421]. Finally, MAS cannot see the content of calls or messages on contraband phones — it can only identify and block device signals [#5473]. During MAS deployment, heart monitors and wireless medical devices reportedly stop functioning (Phase 2), and hundreds of phones per facility are permanently disabled via IMEI blacklisting (Phase 3) [#5501, #5539].

The Effectiveness Gap: Seizures, Incidents, and the Power Vacuum

Managed access is sold as contraband control, but Georgia's own numbers complicate the pitch. Between November 2021 and August 2023 — a period overlapping the MAS expansion — GDC recovered 12,483 cellphones from its prisons, according to the DOJ Investigation of Georgia Prisons: Violence, Safety & Constitutional Violations collection [#2593]. The 2024 Georgia Senate Study Committee on the Department of Corrections — Final Report (SR 570) reports a larger figure over a longer window: over 37,000 devices confiscated since 2022, an average of 1,300 found monthly [#7546, #2912]. The two counts cover different windows and may count differently — the DOJ figure averages roughly 570 phones per month, the committee figure roughly 1,300 — and the gap is not explained in either source.

The MAS Technology collection records that phone-related incidents rose from 8,966 in 2019 to 10,578 in 2023 to a record 11,880 in 2024, with total incidents from 2019–2025 reaching 23,623 [#5507]. At Dooly State Prison, MAS was activated approximately July 26, 2025; a riot occurred 47 days later, on September 11, 2025 [#5354]. The Prison Communication: Violence, International Evidence & Human Impact collection offers a mechanism: the DOJ found that "Gangs control multiple aspects of day-to-day life in the prisons we investigated, including access to phones," and blocking that control without replacing the underlying order structure creates a power vacuum that drives violence [#5366, #5342].

The economics of contraband track the technology cycle rather than defeating it. Contraband phones sell for $800–$1,200 inside Georgia prisons versus $100 on the street [#5370]. The Follow the Money collection documents that when tablets were available to Georgia prisoners (2015–2017), contraband phone prices dropped to $200–$500; when the tablet program collapsed (2021–2023) alongside MAS expansion, inmates had no communication access and violence exploded [#5424].

State officials frame the problem as one of lethality. The Senate Study Committee report records the Commissioner's opinion that cell phones are deadly weapons inside prisons, and notes the Department is pursuing anti-drone detection while finding it difficult to compete with the pace of technology [#2883, #7519]. The committee recommended advocating that the federal government allow state prisons to use cell phone and drone jamming [#2976, #7585]; federal regulations currently bar states from jamming even though the federal government uses jammers in its own prisons [#2884, #7520]. The Follow the Money collection notes the inverse consequence: if the FCC approved jamming, it would eliminate the need for private MAS vendors entirely, potentially rendering the entire vendor ecosystem obsolete [#5430].

Any evaluation of that spending has to be set against the operational context. GDC has 5,991 total budgeted corrections officer positions [#3102], and the DOJ found that grossly inadequate staffing leaves incarcerated persons unsupervised and hampers response to violence [#3130]. At multiple facilities, DOJ reported surveillance video in housing units is not monitored in real time — nobody is supervising the population live [#2550]. Marquis Jefferson was killed at Washington State Prison in May 2022; his family obtained documents showing the prison was so understaffed that no one was watching the dorm when he was attacked [#1308].

Tablets, Pricing, and the Wired Cell

GDC deployed JP5 tablets (JPay/Securus) to Georgia prisons beginning in 2015; the tablets were provided at "no cost" to the DOC or to incarcerated individuals [#1724]. They operate on a closed network without internet access [#1797] — a control that did not hold. The Prison Communications & Financial Exploitation collection documents that prisoners in Georgia quickly found ways to hack JP5 tablets for internet access, creating an underground economy; one documented practice involved copying $1,000 worth of prepaid text messages to a thumb drive and selling it inside the facility for $5–$10 [#1742].

The device is also a surveillance instrument. Per the same collection, prison tablet communications are subject to full searchability, keyword alert systems, mail scanning with up to one-year retention, and biometric data collection including voice prints and facial recognition [#1746]. Devices are cheap to place and expensive to use: JPay charges $0.99–$9.99 per song and up to $46 per album in Georgia prisons, against $10 per month for unlimited streaming on Spotify [#1728]; GTL/ViaPath charged $24.99 per month for a games subscription [#1740]; e-books on prison tablets run $0.99–$19.99 [#1741]. A tablet including music and games can be worth more than $500 [#5794].

Federal regulation does not reach most of this. E-messaging is not covered by FCC rate regulation — the Martha Wright-Reed Act carved it out because it is not classified as audio or video communication, meaning there is no federal limit on what companies can charge [#1729]. The FCC's 2024 order specifically prohibited providers from charging incarcerated people and families for the cost of monitoring technology, finding it serves "discretionary needs of the facility" and is not "used and useful" to the consumer [#1747]. The Families as the Hidden Tax Base collection documents the predictable workaround: companies bundle regulated phone services with unregulated services — messaging, tablet features, games — to evade rate caps [#995].

The state is also paying to intercept paper. The Amended FY2025 budget included $913,248 for off-site mail screening, rising to $1,826,486 in FY2026 [#3525, #3531]. Georgia's GDC Standard Operating Procedure 227.01, "Offender Access to Telephones," effective March 27, 2023, governs call allow lists, attorney calls, emergency calls, TTY and video relay service for hearing-impaired offenders, and consular notification for foreign nationals — establishing that monitored, allow-listed communication is an administrative choice, not a technical necessity. What the SOP does not establish is who pays. Revenue from phone, tablet, and email charges via Securus/JPay in Georgia is not publicly disclosed [#1908], and how many JPay tablets are currently in use across GDC facilities, along with the revenue breakdown by service type, has not been publicly reported [#1780]. Separately, GPS case-management records describe mail interference, visitation restrictions, and phone-list manipulation following external advocacy by family members — a pattern the Retaliation collection flags as family contact suppression [#6586].

The OWL Command Center: A Statewide Surveillance Layer Nobody Announced

Communications surveillance in Georgia now feeds a single, centralized apparatus. Based on September 2025 and April 2025 Board of Corrections meeting minutes, ten distinct technology streams feed into the Overwatch and Logistic (OWL) Unit: officer tablets, AeroDefense/AirWarden drone detection, managed access, electronic health records, Taser 10, the OWL Unit itself, mail screening, body-worn cameras, the Digital Forensics Unit, and the Data Intelligence Advanced Integration system [#3515]. Representative Dale Washburn described OWL's function in a March 2025 legislative recap of HB 67: body cameras and tasers "will be linked to an Over Watch Logistics Unit (OWL), funded at $7.2 million, that will continuously monitor security cameras across the state" [#3513]. An exhaustive search of all 50 state DOC systems and the Federal Bureau of Prisons found no operational equivalent; Tennessee's proposed Centralized Security Intelligence Center remains at the proposal stage [#3560, #3561].

The spending is large and deliberately diffused. The systems OWL commands represent well over $150 million in combined technology spending across multiple fiscal years [#3517]. The OWL Unit itself accounts for approximately $17.8 million across three fiscal years: $7.2 million (AFY2025), $3.8 million (FY2026), and $1.2 million plus $5.5 million (FY2027) [#3516]. The AFY2026 Governor's Budget proposed $84,661,607 for fire alarm replacements, perimeter security and lighting, thermal cameras, and CCTVs statewide — the camera infrastructure Fusus aggregates into the command center's operational picture [#3521]. Other lines include $7,224,150 for body cameras and tasers (AFY2025), $3,584,932 for their support (FY2026), and $1,950,000 for the Data Intelligence Advanced Integration system [#3522, #3530, #3527]. That last system has no public description beyond its budget line and a single mention in April 2025 board minutes; its vendor, capabilities, and relationship to OWL are entirely opaque [#3573].

The sensor range extends past the fence. O.W.L.'s GroundAware radar uses S-band digital beamforming and updates target data up to eight times per second; a single unit can surveil approximately 2,000 acres with up to 15 km range [#3549, #3548]. That radius encompasses significant civilian territory around most prison facilities, and the collection notes radar systems deployed at 36 prison facilities across rural Georgia — predominantly in counties with significant Black populations — create surveillance coverage over surrounding communities without public notice or community input [#3578]. Observation Without Limits LLC is described on Dynetics' website as a joint venture between Dynetics, a wholly owned Leidos subsidiary, and Alabama Power Company, a Southern Company subsidiary [#3547]. Leidos reports over $16 billion in annual revenue; O.W.L./GroundAware does not appear in any Leidos SEC filing, earnings call, or investor presentation because the product line is too small to warrant individual disclosure [#3581, #3550].

The command layer sits atop Axon's Fusus platform, acquired by Axon in 2024 [#3593] and paired publicly with OWL at the April 3, 2025 Board of Corrections meeting [#3514]. Axon's marketing describes Fusus as enabling "a single Operations Center" with real-time access to live and recorded video from multiple correctional facilities in one interface [#3538]. The Electronic Frontier Foundation warned in 2023 that Fusus "really encourages the adoption of additional surveillance tools," and the ACLU of Michigan called Fusus-enabled systems "a gateway drug into other surveillance technologies" [#3563, #3564]. One Axon case study references "a large Southern State" DOC of roughly 40 facilities that received a $30 million estimate from an incumbent for camera upgrades [#3539].

What is missing is the paper trail. The OWL Unit was never announced in a press conference or press release, does not appear on GDC's public-facing website, and its funding was distributed across three fiscal years and multiple budget bills [#3577]. The program has been built incrementally across overlapping appropriations, vendor relationships, and federal grants since at least 2017, obscuring the total investment from any single document [#3575]. The Command Center's physical location is undocumented, though circumstantial evidence points to GDC headquarters at Tift College campus in Forsyth [#3569]; the role of "CGL partnership" referenced by Commissioner Oliver on September 4, 2025 is unstated [#3571, #3512]; the statewide GDC-OWL WiFi network appears in no budget document, board minute, or procurement record under that name, and its vendor and cost remain undocumented [#3572]. Five sets of 2025 board minutes and five sets of 2024 minutes could not be retrieved, and likely contain additional OWL references [#3574]. Despite the system's unprecedented scope, no civil liberties organization — including the ACLU of Georgia, Southern Center for Human Rights, SPLC, Georgia Justice Project, or EFF — has publicly addressed Georgia's OWL Unit by name, filed a legal challenge, or published a policy analysis about it [#3562].

Families as the Hidden Tax Base

The cost of staying connected falls overwhelmingly on families. The Prison Communications & Financial Exploitation collection estimates that a Georgia family maintaining regular contact with an incarcerated loved one in a GDC state prison spends $115–$135 per month on communications — phone, email, money transfers, video, and entertainment [#1752]. Nationally, one in three families went into debt to cover phone calls and visitation costs, according to the Families as the Hidden Tax Base collection [#925]. In Georgia specifically, families pay $8+ million annually in communications kickbacks to maintain family bonds [#2168].

The county-jail layer is just as extractive. At the Bulloch County jail, which contracts with Securus, there is a $3.00 deposit fee on top of per-minute charges; one college student reported spending half her weekly paycheck on phone fees to maintain contact with an incarcerated loved one [#1737, #1800]. Glynn County jail collected more than $300,000 annually in phone and tablet fees [#1685]. The Economic Exploitation in Prison: Wages, Fees, and the Poverty Cycle collection notes the structural reason these charges land on relatives: vendors offering shoes, food packages, tablets, and other items aim not for the incarcerated person to pay, but for their family and friends, given that prison wages of $12–$16 per month are wholly insufficient [#5800, #5808]. Georgia is one of seven states that do not pay the majority of incarcerated people for their labor, which means a $5 medical copay or any communications fee represents an infinite proportion of prison earnings [#5891].

This is not a new burden, only a newly mechanized one. The Georgia Women Prison Inmates and Their Families (NCJ 79468, 1981) survey found that six out of ten incarcerated women called their children monthly, while 22% never called them at all [#15648, #15670]. Incarcerated women were allowed a monthly phone call, but their family had to accept the charges [#15798]. Distance made the phone line the only viable channel: 85% of the children of incarcerated women lived more than 50 miles from the institution, making a visit an all-day affair with a minimum of 1.5 hours travel time each way, and another 15% lived more than 400 miles away [#15604, #15605]. Transportation was a major problem for 37% of the women [#15250], visits with children were capped at two hours [#15691], and 74% of the women said they did not get to visit with their children as often as they would like [#15642]. Forty-four years later, the mechanism has changed — from collect calls to tablets, email, and video — but the direction of payment has not. Five states — California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Colorado — have enacted laws requiring free communications in state prisons and/or jails [#950]. Georgia has not.

Monitor-Not-Block, the Legal Path, and the Accountability Vacuum

GPS research across multiple collections converges on a simpler policy direction: monitor, don't block, and decouple the security function from the revenue function. The Policy & Advocacy: Monitor-Not-Block, Scamming, Legal Path & Cost Model collection outlines alternatives that preserve lawful interception while providing free or low-cost communication. The technical premise is that MAS cannot see the content of calls or messages on contraband phones — it can only identify and block device signals [#5473] — which means the blocking function and the intelligence function are separable. Georgia's own transitional system already demonstrates the point: since July 1, 2016, all 13 Georgia Transitional Centers, housing roughly 2,344 residents, allow personal cell phones; residents buy their own phones, staff can search at any time under a signed waiver, and records are maintained of phone numbers, SIM cards, and carriers [#5443]. GDC SOP 215.23 governs this use and states that all communications are subject to inspection with no expectation of privacy. Former Commissioner Homer Bryson framed the rationale in reentry terms: "we believe it is important that they begin learning the responsible use of technology" [#5444].

Georgia law permits more than the current policy does. O.C.G.A. § 42-5-18 is titled "Items prohibited for possession by inmates; warden's authorization; penalty," and its operative language prohibits phones "without the authorization of the warden or superintendent or his or her designee." The statute does not absolutely prohibit phones — it prohibits unauthorized phones, and wardens already have statutory authority to authorize telecommunications devices [#5453]. By contrast, Georgia's statutory framework for patients in state facilities grants an affirmative right to "communicate freely and privately with persons outside the facility" and to send and receive sealed, unopened mail (O.C.G.A. §§ 37-3-142, 37-4-102, 37-7-142). No equivalent statutory communication right appears in the prison communications materials reviewed here; GDC's governing SOPs treat calls as monitored, allow-listed privileges rather than rights. International evidence points in the same direction as the transitional centers: the United Kingdom installed in-cell landline phones in more than 20 prisons by 2018, targeting 50 by March 2020 at a cost of £10 million per the Prison Communication collection, with calls restricted to pre-approved numbers, all calls recorded, and governors empowered to remove access for misuse [#5310]. Maine is currently piloting Ameelio tablets under a nonprofit communications model [#1794].

The legal pressure on the extraction model is real but incomplete. The First Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Securus and Pay Tel's request for a stay of the FCC prison phone rate caps in November 2024, finding the companies did not meet the required standards [#1708]. The FCC's 2024 rules bar charging families for the cost of monitoring technology [#1747]. What remains unavailable is the accounting. Revenue from phone, tablet, and email charges via Securus/JPay in Georgia is not publicly disclosed [#1908]; the current contract's terms require an open records request [#8328]; the full contract including commission percentage, annual revenue, term dates, and renewal provisions is not publicly available beyond the 2017–2021 amendment [#1777]. No procurement record exists for any MAS vendor [#5496]; the fiscal identity of the OWL WiFi network is undocumented [#3572]; the Data Intelligence Advanced Integration system is opaque beyond its $1.95 million line item [#3573]. The pattern is consistent across the topic: the state documents what it spends on surveillance and withholds what it collects from families. Until the revenue side is disclosed and the security return is evaluated, the $50 million managed-access program and the $150 million-plus surveillance build-out will remain expenditures with documented costs and undocumented benefits.