Violence & Safety

The Scale of the Killing

From 2011 through 2018, the number of homicides in Georgia prisons never exceeded nine in a single year, according to the Department of Justice's review of Georgia Department of Corrections mortality reports (DOJ Investigation of Georgia Prisons: Violence, Safety & Constitutional Violations). Then the curve bent. The same records show 7 homicides in 2018, 13 in 2019, 28 in 2020, 28 in 2021, 31 in 2022, and 35 in 2023 — 48 across the first three years of that span and 94 across the last three, an increase of 95.8 percent (same collection). In 2019, Georgia's prison homicide rate was 34 per 100,000 people against a national state-prison rate of 12 per 100,000, the Department of Justice found (Health care in Georgia's prisons collection; also recorded in Solitary Confinement in Georgia Prisons). Between 2021 and 2023, Georgia recorded 98 prison homicides; Texas, with twice the prison population, recorded 37 (Mass Incarceration as a Public Health Crisis).

The 2024 numbers are worse, and they are contested. The Georgia Department of Corrections investigated 66 deaths as homicides in 2024 — roughly eight times the national prison homicide rate, according to GPS's analysis (Mass Incarceration as a Public Health Crisis) — while the Atlanta Journal-Constitution confirmed at least 100 (Gang Separation as Violence Reduction Strategy). GDC's own 66 was already the deadliest year in state history by its count, with total deaths in custody at 330 to 333 (Georgia's $600 Million Prison Spending Infusion; Who Decides How They Died).

The published figures do not agree with one another, and readers should not average them. For 2023, the Department of Justice's findings report uses 35 homicides; GPS's own analysis of state data put the figure at 37 (EIGHTH AMENDMENT STANDARDS & EVOLVING CASE LAW); a law review account uses 38 (The Abuse Provision); and the Department of Justice elsewhere describes a 2023 count of at least 38 (Georgia's $600 Million Prison Spending Infusion). These are different publishers working from different records, not different years. The direction is the same in every version: a five-year escalation that state officials have not reversed.

What the Justice Department Found

On October 1, 2024, the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorneys for Georgia's three federal districts announced findings from a civil rights investigation of the state's prisons. The 93-page report (one account describes it as 94 pages) concluded there is reasonable cause to believe the State of Georgia and the Georgia Department of Corrections violate the Eighth Amendment — first, by failing to protect incarcerated people from violence and harm by other incarcerated people, and second, by failing to protect them from sexual violence (Nobody Watches the Watchmen; Prison conditions under the Eighth Amendment in Georgia's federal courts). Investigators described conditions as involving "near-constant life-threatening violence" functioning "as the norm," and characterized the findings as among the most severe violations uncovered in any Department of Justice prison investigation (Prison Classification Systems & Violence; Who Is Responsible for Violence in Georgia's Prisons?).

The evidentiary base was large. Across 24 close- and medium-security prisons, investigators documented more than 1,400 reported incidents of violence between January 2022 and April 2023, including fights, assaults, hostage incidents, and homicides (DOJ Investigation of Georgia Prisons). Of those, 19.7 percent involved a weapon, 45.1 percent resulted in serious injury, and 30.5 percent required offsite medical treatment (same collection). Interviewees at 16 of the 17 prisons the Department visited reported witnessing life-threatening violence and said weapons were widespread (Georgia prison deaths, violence and parole by year). The report recommended 82 remedial measures covering staffing, supervision, incident response, investigations, contraband, facility conditions, classification and housing, and sexual safety (Health care in Georgia's prisons).

The Department's central legal conclusion was that the State is "deliberately indifferent to these unsafe conditions," that the violations are "exacerbated by serious deficiencies in staffing and supervision," and that "the State has known about the unsafe conditions for years and has failed to take reasonable measures to address them" (Who Counts as a Victim? — Research Foundation). GDC rejected the findings, and no consent decree followed (Women's Incarceration in Georgia). As of February 2026 the Department had 43 open investigations into jails, prisons, or entire state systems nationally (National Prison Reform Models & Georgia Comparison), which situates Georgia's unresolved findings inside a much larger federal docket.

Gangs Fill the Vacuum Left by Absent Staff

The Department of Justice traced a causal chain rather than a moral one: chronic understaffing at or below 50 percent, an inability to run basic daily counts or maintain supervision, gangs filling the resulting vacuum and controlling housing units, incarcerated people able to unlock their own cells and move at will, classification becoming meaningless when no staff enforce security boundaries, and violence becoming the norm (Prison Classification Systems & Violence). Vacancy rates were around 50 percent systemwide and over 70 percent at ten of the largest facilities; by December 2023, 18 GDC prisons had correctional officer vacancy rates above 60 percent and ten were above 70 percent (Prison conditions under the Eighth Amendment in Georgia's federal courts; Conditions produce the behaviour). On every shift roster reviewed at one close-security prison, at least one and sometimes up to four officers were assigned to two buildings at once — each single-handedly responsible for nearly 400 beds — and a regional director acknowledged those officers must rotate posts every 30 minutes, leaving buildings unsupervised (Conditions produce the behaviour).

Into that space, gangs govern. The Department found that gangs control housing units, direct where people sleep, decide who eats and showers and who gets a job, and extort incarcerated people and their families for money (DOJ Investigation of Georgia Prisons; GDC Mission vs. Reality). State-hired Guidehouse consultants reached the same conclusion independently: at some prisons, gangs are "effectively running the facilities" (Who Is Responsible for Violence in Georgia's Prisons?). The Department declined to accept GDC's own explanation. The share of the men's prison population incarcerated for violent crimes rose only from about 51 percent in 2016 to 56 percent in 2023, which "does not explain the dramatic rise in violence," and some of the prisons with the highest homicide counts have relatively low gang populations (Conditions produce the behaviour).

Contraband is the physical substrate of the violence. Between November 2021 and August 2023, GDC recovered 27,425 weapons, 12,483 cellphones, and 2,016 illegal drug items (Conditions produce the behaviour). Fewer than 6 percent of incidents involving a weapon across 22 prisons were forwarded by the facility for investigation (DOJ Investigation of Georgia Prisons). Validated security threat group members number more than 14,000 — roughly 31 percent of the population by the Commissioner's own figure, and 33.4 percent of the state prison population as of November 2024 in the Guidehouse assessment (Gang Separation as Violence Reduction Strategy; Guidehouse System-Wide Assessment).

The exception proves the mechanism. Walker State Prison, with a higher proportion of security staff positions filled and more robust programming, had no reported homicides in several years and less violence and contraband than the other 16 prisons the Department visited (Evidence-Based Prison Rehabilitation; Sexual Violence & PREA Compliance).

How the Violence Happens: Classification, Supervision, and the Record of Specific Deaths

The Department of Justice's case files show a recurring sequence: a known risk, a housing decision made without review, and a death that staff had been warned about. At Calhoun State Prison in May 2022, a 21-year-old man was killed by his cellmate after staff moved the assailant out of segregation, into general population, and back to segregation without following procedure; the assailant asked for a particular cell and staff housed him there, and the two men told an orderly they wanted to be separated the day before the killing (DOJ Investigation of Georgia Prisons). The victim, DaQuavious Cachone Lackey, died of a stab wound to the neck and multiple blunt force injuries (Calhoun State Prison: the public record). In a separate Calhoun killing, an officer had reported that two men should not share a cell because of both men's security threat group status and a size disparity — the assailant was seven feet tall and 340 pounds — yet a supervisor failed to verify room status (same collection).

Group violence follows the same pattern at scale. On January 6, 2023, a lieutenant at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison found two wounded people in a housing unit, one with a broken ankle from jumping off an upper walkway to escape; six more had assault wounds and six were hospitalized (Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison: the public record). Four nights later, four more people were assaulted in the same unit (same collection). At Smith State Prison, hours after the arrest of Warden Brian Adams was announced on February 8, 2023, a gang fight broke out in a housing unit: nine people were stabbed, six hospitalized, two airlifted, and almost 90 minutes passed between staff first observing the fighting and the first airlift (DOJ Investigation of Georgia Prisons). At Macon State Prison in March 2023, four Bloods members walked past an officer, ran to the kitchen, and stabbed a man working there, who later died; 11 people were stabbed, officers deployed 75 pepper balls, and the first ambulance was called just over an hour after fighting began (same collection; Macon State Prison: the public record).

Some deaths are simply unwatched. In a substance-abuse treatment unit at Lee Arrendale State Prison, Sherry Joyce, 61, and Hallie Reed, 23, were strangled eight days apart in April and May 2024; Reed had submitted a written request for protective custody after reporting Joyce's killing, and it was denied (Women's Incarceration in Georgia; Mental Health Care and Mental Illness in the Georgia Department of Corrections). At Wilcox State Prison, a contraband cellphone video showed a person being assaulted outdoors while an officer watched, and GDC records confirm staff then allowed the assailant to drag the limp victim along a walkway by cart; two officers were terminated (DOJ Investigation of Georgia Prisons; Wilcox State Prison: the public record). In January 2026 at Washington State Prison, four people were killed in a single disturbance and 12 were charged with murder (Washington State Prison: the public record).

The Record Is Not the Count: Underreporting and Misclassification

Georgia's official violence statistics are not a record of what happens; they are a record of what gets coded. Fewer than 6 percent of weapon incidents and fewer than 23 percent of inmate-on-inmate assaults were forwarded by facilities to the Office of Professional Standards between January 2022 and April 2023 (DOJ Investigation of Georgia Prisons). The Department found staff completing incident reports whose narratives described an assault or fight while the report was coded as "injury," "disruptive event," or "special hospital transport" — categories that exclude the incident from violent-incident totals (same collection).

The death data fail the same way. In June 2024, GDC reported six homicides; its own incident records documented at least 18 (Prison Healthcare & Mental Health Crisis in Georgia; EIGHTH AMENDMENT STANDARDS & EVOLVING CASE LAW). GDC's mortality data classifies deaths that were obviously homicides as "unknown" cause, and in 2024 still listed at least two 2021 homicides as unknown (DOJ Investigation of Georgia Prisons). The Department identified seven deaths from 2022 that GDC categorized as undetermined or natural until reclassifying them as homicides in 2024, although other official records made the homicides clear much earlier (Prison conditions under the Eighth Amendment in Georgia's federal courts). It identified additional homicides that GDC's reported totals do not reflect at all, and stated that GDC "inaccurately reports these deaths both internally and externally, and in a manner that underreports the extent of violence and homicide in its prisons" (Georgia Prison Drug Research; Who Is Responsible for Violence in Georgia's Prisons?).

GPS's own death registry shows how much of the record remains unresolved. GPS has recorded 1,918 deaths in Georgia prisons since January 1, 2020, and a substantial share of those entries are still coded Unknown/Pending — the cause has not been established, and GPS does not guess at one. In 2024 GDC also stopped reporting causes of death for people who die in custody, citing the Georgia Secrecy Act (Heat, Cooling, and the Eighth Amendment). The consequence is that the historical series cannot be repaired retrospectively: the Atlanta Journal-Constitution built its earlier counts from records the agency no longer releases (same collection).

The Dead, Named

Counts are a summary of named people, not a substitute for them. The following are the most recent entries in GPS's death registry for people discussed in the record above.

• Maurice Antonio Brown died September 3, 2026, at Wilcox State Prison; the registry lists the cause as homicide.
• Walter Brown, 66, died August 3, 2026, at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison; the registry lists the cause as unknown/pending.
• Kristi Ray Perkins, 59, died July 12, 2026, at Pulaski State Prison; the registry lists the cause as natural/medical.
• Timothy Wilson, 48, died June 7, 2026, at Telfair State Prison; the registry lists the cause as unknown/pending.
• Jaylin Bell, 32, died February 6, 2026, at Hancock State Prison; the registry lists the cause as homicide.
• Melvin Gay Johnson, 35, died January 27, 2026, at Hays State Prison; the registry lists the cause as homicide.
• Steven Monroe Wood, 54, died January 25, 2026, at Hancock State Prison; the registry lists the cause as homicide.
• Jerry Wayne Merritt, 59, died January 20, 2026, at Augusta State Medical Prison; the registry lists the cause as homicide.
• Silas Rodrigioeuz Westbrook, 42, died January 17, 2026, at Washington State Prison; the registry lists the cause as homicide.
• Teddy Dewayne Jackson, 27, died January 11, 2026, at Washington State Prison; the registry lists the cause as homicide.
• Jimmy Lee Trammell, 42, died January 11, 2026, at Washington State Prison; the registry lists the cause as homicide.
• Ahmod Dewayne Hatcher, 23, died January 11, 2026, at Washington State Prison; the registry lists the cause as homicide.
• Preston C Phelps, 28, died December 13, 2025, at Telfair State Prison; the registry lists the cause as homicide.
• Andre Rashad Weems, 36, died September 9, 2025, at Hancock State Prison; the registry lists the cause as homicide.
• Malindzo Eddy Hatcher, 42, died July 21, 2025, at Telfair State Prison; the registry lists the cause as homicide.
• Sheqweetta Vaughan, 32, died July 9, 2025, at Arrendale State Prison; the registry lists the cause as unknown/pending.
• Corey Jose July, 33, died June 17, 2025, at Hancock State Prison; the registry lists the cause as homicide.
• William Holeman died January 30, 2025, at Hancock State Prison; the registry lists the cause as homicide.
• Prince Porter died January 30, 2025, at Hancock State Prison; the registry lists the cause as homicide.
• Sinjuan Harmon died January 12, 2025, at Valdosta State Prison; the registry lists the cause as homicide.
• Joshua Parrott, 45, died January 12, 2025, at Dooly State Prison; the registry lists the cause as homicide.
• Lawrence L Williams, 30, died October 24, 2024, at Hays State Prison; the registry lists the cause as homicide.
• Henry Earl Crump, 41, died September 2, 2024, at Telfair State Prison; the registry lists the cause as homicide.
• Keith Antwone Green, 44, died August 30, 2024, at Macon State Prison; the registry lists the cause as homicide.
• Mariol Juante Rawls, 41, died August 27, 2024, at Wilcox State Prison; the registry lists the cause as homicide.

The full registry, which GPS updates continuously, is at https://gps.press/georgia-prison-deaths/.

Accountability: Standards, Settlements, and the Missing Overseer

The constitutional standard has been settled since 1994, when the U.S. Supreme Court held in Farmer v. Brennan that officials violate the Eighth Amendment when they act with deliberate indifference to a substantial risk of serious harm — requiring both a sufficiently serious deprivation and actual knowledge of the risk (EIGHTH AMENDMENT STANDARDS & EVOLVING CASE LAW). Courts have applied it to Georgia repeatedly. In Lane v. Philbin, the Eleventh Circuit held that a Valdosta State Prison complaint stated a claim where it alleged one officer supervised two 50-person dormitories of 90 percent gang-affiliated men while stabbings and beatings occurred and weapons made from maintenance materials went unconfiscated (Prison conditions under the Eighth Amendment in Georgia's federal courts). Yet the remedies are individual and slow: GDC paid $1.375 million in 2023 to settle the family of Bobby Edward Lee Jr., strangled by a cellmate in 2020 after pleading for protection, and $350,000 to settle the estate of a prisoner murdered at Hays State Prison during a 2012–2013 stretch in which four Hays prisoners were killed over five weeks (Macon State Prison: the public record; Prison conditions under the Eighth Amendment in Georgia's federal courts).

Georgia has been here before. Federal litigation over Georgia State Prison at Reidsville produced a takeover that ran from 1972 to 1999, including a July 23, 1978 riot that killed two incarcerated men and a guard, and a special monitor's finding that guards waged a "reign of terror" in the months that followed (Guthrie v. Evans: The Federal Court Takeover of Georgia State Prison). What distinguishes the present period is the absence of any equivalent structural remedy: no consent decree, no independent oversight body, and an agency that the Department of Justice described as resisting records production as "unnecessarily contentious" (Nobody Watches the Watchmen).

Underneath all of it sits the failure to investigate. Of incidents involving a weapon across 22 prisons, fewer than 6 percent were referred for investigation; of inmate-on-inmate assaults, fewer than 23 percent (DOJ Investigation of Georgia Prisons). In the Calhoun homicide that followed the classification failures described above, the Office of Professional Standards identified multiple policy violations, yet personnel files for the three security staff named contained no mention of the homicide and no discipline or counseling (Calhoun State Prison: the public record). Georgia does not lack for evidence about why people die in its prisons. It lacks a mechanism that treats the evidence as an obligation.