The Empty Column: Georgia Won't Say How Prisoners Die

Georgia built a field for cause of death in its own mortality report, left it blank for 330 deaths in 2024, filled it for one month, then removed the column entirely. The state knows how people die in its prisons. It has chosen to stop saying. https://gps.press/the-e...

In January 2025, Georgia's Department of Corrections published a list of 29 people who died in its custody that month. Beside each name was a cause of death. Twelve were killed. Four were strangled. Then the column disappeared, and it has not come back. The department's 2024 mortality report contains a column labeled "Cause of Death." It is empty for all 330 entries. Georgia built the field, collects the data, and has demonstrated it can publish it. The agency's own policy requires mortality reviews that determine how each person died. The information exists. It is simply withheld. What does it say about a prison system that it knows how people die inside its walls but refuses to tell the public?

Georgia's Department of Corrections published a cause-of-death column for exactly one month. In January 2025, it revealed that 41 percent of the people who died in state custody that month were killed. Four were strangled. For the rest of 2024, the same column sits empty — 330 deaths, 330 blank spaces. The department's own policy requires it to track and review how every person dies in its custody. The data exists. Georgia has simply decided the public does not need to know.

Georgia Prisoners' Speak has documented at least 1,848 deaths in Georgia Department of Corrections custody since January 2020. For well over half, no cause of death has ever been established by the state. The roughly 800 that do carry a cause were assembled by medical examiners, county coroners, reporters, families, and incarcerated people — by everyone except the institution holding the bodies. The department's 2024 mortality report includes a column labeled "Cause of Death." It is empty for all 330 entries. A single month — January 2025 — filled the column, revealing that 12 of 29 deaths were homicides. Then the column was removed. Georgia's position is not that it does not know how people die in its prisons. Georgia's position is that the public does not need to be told. This withholding is not a clerical oversight; it is a policy choice that prevents accountability, obscures patterns of violence, and leaves families without answers.