Policy & Advocacy

The Fiscal Case for Reform

Georgia spends approximately $1.8 billion per year on its state prison system — $1,913,888,054 in FY2025 actual expenditures and $1,799,204,979 in the Amended FY2026 budget (Fiscal Impact of Post-Conviction Reform in Georgia; GDC Budget FY2026-FY2027). Governor Kemp's January 2025 proposal added another $600 million in proposed corrections investments on top of that baseline (Legal Settlements & Lawsuits Against GDC). That figure does not capture the full cost of mass incarceration. Families of incarcerated Georgians bear an estimated $350 billion nationally in total hidden costs annually — nearly four times what taxpayers spend on jails and prisons — including $5.6 billion on commissary, phone calls, and basic necessities at markups reaching 600% above retail, and $1.8 billion on prison visit travel (Families as the Hidden Tax Base). According to the Ella Baker Center, roughly 65% of families with a loved one in prison are unable to meet their basic needs because court-related fines and fees send them into debt averaging more than $13,000 per family — and the Prison Policy Initiative finds that 58% of families could not afford the costs associated with a conviction at all (Economic Exploitation in Prison: Wages, Fees, and the Poverty Cycle). GDC alone extracts over $8 million per year in kickbacks from Securus Technologies at a 59.6% commission rate on prison phone revenues (Follow the Money: Georgia Prison MAS Vendors). These are not incidental costs — they are structural features of a system that transfers incarceration's true price tag from the state budget onto the poorest families in Georgia.

The fiscal argument for decarceration is not theoretical. The United States reduced its prison population by 25% between 2009 and 2021 — from over 1.6 million to under 1.2 million — while crime continued to fall (The Case for Decarceration in Georgia: An Evidence Base). Georgia, by contrast, incarcerates at a rate of 881 per 100,000 residents, the 7th highest nationally and higher than any country in the world except El Salvador (Recidivism & Reentry Failures in Georgia). With over 528,000 Georgia residents under total criminal justice supervision — including 191,000 on felony probation alone, the highest felony probation population of any state — the system's footprint is vast, its costs compounding, and its returns diminishing (Georgia Probation & Community Supervision). Every dollar spent warehousing people who could be managed in the community, or who have completed their just sentence, is a dollar unavailable for education, mental health, housing, or the environmental remediation — including lead abatement — that research now confirms reduces crime more effectively than incarceration (Lead Poisoning Drove America's Crime Epidemic).

Sentencing Reform: Truth-in-Sentencing, the Trial Penalty, and the Parole Gate

Georgia's sentencing architecture was shaped in significant part by federal financial incentives that prioritized incarceration over evidence. Between FY1996 and FY2001, Georgia received $82,211,036 in federal Violent Offender Incarceration and Truth-in-Sentencing (VOI/TIS) grants — ranking 9th nationally among recipients — conditioning this funding on requiring offenders to serve at least 85% of their sentences (Truth in Sentencing & Fiscal Impact: The $40 Billion Story). By 2001, 29 jurisdictions had collectively received $2.7 billion through this program. The practical result in Georgia is a prison population that has shifted: since the 2012 criminal justice reforms, the proportion of the incarcerated population convicted of violent offenses has grown by 12% (2024 Georgia Senate Study Committee Report on Prison Conditions), in part because the reform's front-end sentence reductions were offset by back-end release restrictions that kept violent-offense prisoners in longer.

The parole gate compounds this problem. In FY2024, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles considered 19,328 parole-eligible cases and cast 69,375 total votes — releasing only 5,443 people, 420 fewer than the prior fiscal year (Georgia's Parole System: Denial).

The Liability Cost of Systemic Neglect: Settlements, Lawsuits, and the Discipline Gap

The published GDC budget understates the true cost of Georgia's prison system by omitting a mounting and largely invisible line item: litigation liability. Since 2018, the state of Georgia has paid out nearly $20 million to settle claims involving death or injury to prisoners in GDC facilities, per records from the Department of Administrative Services (DOAS) — and that figure is a floor, not a ceiling (Legal Settlements & Lawsuits Against GDC). It excludes Attorney General defense costs, GDC's own legal services budget, commercial insurance layer payments, and consent decree compliance expenditures. When identified larger settlements from the same period are aggregated across all payment sources, the total reaches approximately $27.5 million. In 2023 alone, identified larger GDC settlements totaled over $10 million, including a $5 million payout in the Giles case, $1.5 million each for Agnes Bohannon, Mollianne Fischer, and an unnamed North Georgia prisoner, and additional six- and seven-figure settlements for Brandon Peters, Coty Silvers, and James Yarbrough.

These settlements document a consistent pattern: prisoners dying from preventable violence, medical neglect, and suicide after staff failed to act, and the state paying to make the cases go away without holding anyone accountable. Thomas Henry Giles died at Augusta State Medical Prison on October 28, 2020, after setting fire to his mattress while mentally ill; guards watched and took no action. The GBI found a carbon monoxide level of 76% at death and ruled it a homicide. The state paid $3 million through the DOAS State Tort Claims Trust Fund and Lexington Insurance paid an additional $1.3 million plus a structured annuity — the largest single identified GDC payout. The officers who watched Giles die resigned voluntarily. None faced criminal charges. One supervisor was promoted. David Henegar was hogtied, beaten, and choked by his cellmate over five hours at Johnson State Prison in 2021 while guards heard his pleas and ignored them; his family settled for $4 million. Per plaintiffs' counsel Rachel Brady of Loevy + Loevy, "most of the named officers face no criminal consequences and remain employed by the Department of Corrections." Bobby Edward Lee Jr. was placed in a cell with a prisoner who had previously killed a fellow parolee and was strangled despite pleading for protection; his family settled for $1.375 million. Jenna Mitchell, a transgender woman in solitary confinement at Valdosta State Prison, died by suicide in December 2017 after her mother reported suicide threats to the warden; GDC conducted only a "superficial" investigation, and the supervisor who prepared a false incident report was not terminated or prosecuted.

The pattern extends across facility types and years. Medical neglect settlements include Agnes Bohannon ($1.5 million, cardiovascular distress ignored for days at Lee Arrendale), Brandon Peters ($750,000, severe abdominal symptoms ignored for days at Georgia State Prison), James Yarbrough ($700,000, uncontrolled diabetes leading to ketoacidosis at Dooly State Prison), Bonnie Rocheleau ($925,000, COPD and pneumonia inadequately treated at Pulaski), and Avis McNeil ($700,000, cardiovascular death at Lee Arrendale). Mental health and suicide settlements include James Wheeler ($750,000, history of self-harm, placed in solitary at Wilcox, hanged himself), Demitri Carter ($700,000, multiple prior attempts, died by suicide at Phillips State Prison), Amanuel Selassie Geberyesus ($650,000, counselor recommended against a regular cell, placed in one anyway at Hancock, died by hanging), and Jimmy Lucero (mental health deterioration ignored at Wilcox, transferred to Augusta State Medical Prison where he died). Nicholas Baldwin had two prior suicide attempts, was denied recommended emergency psychiatric care, and was left permanently disabled; the state portion of his settlement was $1 million.

These are not isolated failures. The DOJ's October 1, 2024 CRIPA findings letter — 93 pages — concluded that Georgia engages in a "pattern or practice" of Eighth Amendment violations across its prison system, subjecting incarcerated persons to unreasonable risk of serious harm from violence, sexual abuse, and inadequate medical and mental health care. The DOJ singled out LGBTI prisoners as particularly at risk. Of the 17 facilities the DOJ identified in its findings, a clear majority appear in the publicly identified larger-settlement dataset, including Augusta State Medical Prison and Valdosta State Prison. Ashley Diamond, a Black transgender woman, was placed in men's facilities, sexually assaulted at least eight times, and had 17 years of hormone therapy terminated under GDC's now-rescinded "freeze frame" policy before her case compelled policy change — a case that illustrates how litigation, not internal accountability, has driven the few reforms that have occurred.

The comparison to peer states is instructive. Alabama's incarcerated population is approximately 25,000, compared to Georgia's approximately 47,000–50,000. Alabama's General Liability Trust Fund claims for its Department of Corrections totaled $17.4 million for 2020–2024 alone — more than any other state department in Alabama — up from $2.9 million for 2015–2019, with annual claims filings growing 1,585% from 14 in 2014 to 236 in 2023. Alabama's total ADOC legal expenses since 2020 exceed $57 million when federal lawsuit defense costs are included, with defense costs running roughly double settlement payments. On a per-capita basis, Alabama's settlement burden is materially higher than Georgia's based on publicly available data — a comparison that likely reflects Alabama's more extensive federal court oversight, not meaningfully better conditions in Georgia.

The healthcare liability picture adds another layer. Trauma care for Georgia's roughly 39,000 Wellpath-covered prisoners cost $16.4 million in 2023, compared to $9.25 million for 111,403 inmates across eight other Wellpath state systems combined — a per-capita rate reflecting the severity of violence inside Georgia prisons. Before declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2024, Wellpath alleged in a May 2024 lawsuit against GDC that it had spent $40 million of its own funds over three years to subsidize GDC's healthcare obligations — costs the company claimed the state had refused to cover. GDC's healthcare contract has since transitioned to Centurion under a $2.4 billion agreement.

The Discipline Gap

The most important finding in the settlements data is not financial. It is structural. GDC will fire and prosecute wardens for taking bribes from drug-smuggling rings — conduct that injures the institution. It does not fire or prosecute correctional officers whose deliberate indifference kills prisoners — conduct that injures only the incarcerated. Of 428 GDC employees arrested between 2018 and September 2023, an average of more than seven per month, 80% were arrested for contraband smuggling. The discipline data shows GDC refers staff for criminal prosecution where the staff conduct harms the institution's interests, and declines to do so where it harms only prisoners. Warden Brian Dennis Adams of Smith State Prison was arrested by GBI and terminated the same day in February 2023, charged under Georgia RICO for his role in a drug-smuggling operation. The officers who watched Thomas Henry Giles burn to death were never charged. The guards who heard David Henegar's pleas for five hours remain employed.

GDC's published PREA policy states that employees who engage in sexual contact or misconduct with prisoners will be terminated and referred for criminal prosecution. The October 2024 DOJ findings letter concluded that this policy is not being enforced in practice. For 12 of the 17 identified settlement cases above $100,000, the personnel discipline outcome is "not publicly documented" — a data gap that itself reflects a policy choice about transparency.

The DOAS settlement authority structure compounds this opacity. Many GDC settlements are signed at the staff Liability Program Officer or Director level without public sign-off by either GDC leadership or the Attorney General, meaning the financial consequences of staff conduct are absorbed by the State Tort Claims Trust Fund with no public accounting and no visible connection to the disciplinary record of the officers involved.

What Reform Would Cost — and What Continued Impunity Costs

Georgia's tort liability framework caps state tort claims at $1 million per claimant and $3 million aggregate per occurrence under O.C.G.A. § 50-21-29(b). Juries are not told these caps exist. Larger settlements reaching $4–5 million are structured to stack 42 U.S.C. § 1983 federal civil rights claims — which carry no damages cap — against named officers alongside state tort claims, drawing payment from both the DOAS trust fund and commercial insurance layers. This architecture means the state's exposure grows with each case that survives dismissal, and the 95% dismissal rate for prisoner § 1983 litigation means the cases that do settle represent a small fraction of the underlying harm.

Governor Kemp has proposed $600 million in new corrections investments. That capital will be spent on facilities and staffing in a system the DOJ has found systematically violates the Eighth Amendment and in which the structural incentives for accountability have not changed. The $20 million in documented settlements since 2018 — rising sharply in 2023 — is not an argument against investment in Georgia's prisons. It is an argument that investment without accountability reform will produce the same outcomes at greater scale. In May 2025, Governor Kemp signed the Wrongful Conviction and Incarceration Compensation Act (O.C.G.A. §§ 17-22-1 to -12), making Georgia one of the last states to establish a statutory compensation mechanism for wrongful conviction — a meaningful step that nonetheless leaves the broader discipline gap unaddressed. Pending legislative resolutions sought $1.6 million for Joey Watkins (wrongfully incarcerated for 22 years) and $1.8 million for Lee Clark (25 years), among others.

The question Georgia's legislature has not answered is this: at what point does paying settlements become more expensive than preventing the deaths that generate them — and who, inside GDC, is accountable when the answer is neither?