The OWL Sees All: Georgia's $150M Prison Surveillance

Georgia is building America's most advanced prison surveillance system—spending $186 on monitoring for every $1 on job training. Violence has increased 10x since 2017. The cameras see everything but fix nothing. https://gps.press/the-owl-sees-all-georgias-150m-pris...

Georgia is quietly constructing an unprecedented $150 million prison surveillance system called OWL—a command center that will monitor every state prison in real time through cameras, health records, mail scanning, and cell phone interception. This system is the first of its kind in American corrections, yet no civil liberties group has examined it and no legislative hearing has questioned its scope. Meanwhile, homicides in Georgia prisons increased from 8-9 per year in 2017-2018 to over 100 in 2024. The state spends $186 on surveillance technology for every $1 invested in vocational education. If cameras and monitoring haven't prevented the violence crisis, why should taxpayers fund an even more expensive surveillance apparatus?

Georgia is building America's most advanced prison surveillance system without public debate. The $150 million OWL command center will monitor every state prison through cameras, health records, mail scanning, and cell phone interception—the first system of its kind in the country. Yet Georgia spends $186 on surveillance for every $1 on job training while prison homicides have increased from 8-9 per year in 2017 to over 100 in 2024. #GeorgiaPrisons #PrisonReform #CriminalJustice #GPS #MassIncarceration #Georgia

Georgia is constructing an unprecedented $150 million centralized prison surveillance system called the Overwatch & Logistic Unit (OWL)—a command center that will monitor all 35 state prisons through integrated cameras, health records, mail scanning, and communication interception. No equivalent system exists in any other state corrections department. The fiscal priorities reveal a troubling approach to public safety: Georgia allocates $186 for surveillance technology for every $1 invested in vocational education programs. Despite years of deploying security technology, prison homicides increased from 8-9 annually in 2017-2018 to over 100 in 2024. This suggests that surveillance expansion addresses symptoms rather than systemic causes of institutional violence and recidivism. https://gps.press/the-owl-sees-all-georgias-150m-prison-surveillance/