State fire inspectors found padlocks and slide bolts on cell doors in four housing units at Washington State Prison in September. Broken locks, the warden said. Georgia has been buying new ones for more than a decade, and this year it set aside another $84,596,895.
Georgia’s corrections commissioner told senators single cells cut prison violence. At Calhoun, Dooly, Washington and Wilcox, GDC is packing more Close security men into single-man cells that hold three, at prisons built for 500 and holding up to 1,800, and the homicide rate shows it.
Corey July had twenty months left on a Floyd County sentence when he was chased across the Hancock State Prison yard and cornered at a locked gate. His killer got life without parole. But Georgia built the gate, locked it, and left no one watching the corridor between.
Georgia spent $50 million deploying phone-blocking technology at most of Georgia’s prisons. Homicides quadrupled. At every facility where GPS confirmed activation dates, violence erupted within weeks. The crackdown isn’t stopping crime — it’s destabilizing the power structures that kept people alive.
On April 1, 2026, coordinated Blood-on-Blood gang violence erupted across Georgia’s prison system. At least 12 prisons locked down, life flights dispatched to two facilities, stabbings at five. GPS has demanded gang separation for months. Arizona cut violence 50%. Georgia still refuses.