#GDCAccountability

The Classification Crisis: How Four Medium Security Prisons are Killing People

Georgia has secretly packed four medium security prisons with close security inmates at rates up to 10 times higher than other facilities—creating a deadly mismatch that’s killing people. GPS obtained data showing Dooly, Wilcox, Calhoun, and Washington State Prisons now house 28-30% close security populations. The result? Homicide rates 4-5 times higher than properly classified prisons, with 33 deaths in 2024 alone—over half under age 50. The DOJ found all four facilities in violation of the Eighth Amendment. GDC’s response? Stop reporting causes of death. On November 7, 58-year-old Darrow Brown was stabbed to death at Dooly after accidentally bumping into a gang member. He was under officer escort during restricted movement. It didn’t matter. When you operate medium security prisons as close security facilities without proper safeguards, violence becomes inevitable. And GDC knows it.

The Price of Love: How Georgia’s Prisons Bleed Families Dry

For many families in Georgia, having a loved one behind bars doesn’t mean only missing birthdays and phone calls—it means chronic financial strain. A new national study finds that families who provide direct support to incarcerated relatives spend on average 6 % of their household income each month just to cover direct costs like commissary items, hygiene products and phone calls. 
When that national figure meets the realities inside Georgia’s prison system—sky-high commissary mark‐ups, inadequate meals that force reliance on overpriced snacks—the results are devastating.

Georgia’s “Hardened” Solution: Another Fortress Instead of Reform

Georgia is spending hundreds of millions on new “hardened” prisons while people inside are starving, dying, and losing hope.

The state calls it reform, but it’s really just repackaged repression — concrete solutions to moral failures. The Department of Justice has already declared Georgia’s prisons unconstitutional, yet instead of addressing the root causes — chronic understaffing, violence, medical neglect, and starvation — the state keeps doubling down on construction contracts and calling it progress.

Prisoners are wasting away on trays of cold grits and two slices of bologna while $600 million is poured into walls, gates, and locks. If Georgia redirected even a fraction of that money to food, healthcare, and staffing, violence would drop, lives would be saved, and rehabilitation might finally mean something again.

Until Georgia chooses reform over repression, its new walls will stand as monuments to failure, not justice.