Georgia Department of Corrections

Forced Criminality: Inside Georgia’s Prison Violence Factory

The DOJ documented 142 homicides in Georgia prisons from 2018-2023. GPS documented 100 homicides in 2024 alone—nearly triple the previous year.

This isn’t random violence. It’s the inevitable result of deliberate GDC policy:
→ Zero wages for prisoner labor
→ 1,200 calories/day (half what’s needed)
→ Ramen marked up 350% to $0.90
→ Ibuprofen marked up 1,076% to $4.00

The equation is impossible: You cannot earn money. The food provided cannot sustain life. The prices are unaffordable.

What would you do?

Kitchen workers steal food to survive. Prisoners make alcohol for $150/bottle. Gangs charge $0.90 for shower access. Underground “medics” treat stab wounds to hide violence from guards.

And GDC policy criminalizes ALL of it – even trading soup for clean laundry.

This is forced criminality: survival strategies the state makes mandatory, then punishes.

Read how Georgia’s zero-wage policy creates the violence it claims to address.

The Poverty-to-Prison Pipeline: How Georgia Criminalizes Being Poor

Georgia has the world’s highest incarceration rate – achieved by systematically criminalizing poverty through cash bail, court fines, and predatory fees.

Boys from Georgia’s poorest families face 20x higher incarceration rates than those from middle and upper-class households.

Normalization: The Principle That Changes Everything

Georgia’s prisons aren’t broken—they’re illegal. Learn how the normalization model can end unconstitutional punishment and rebuild safety, dignity, and justice.

Georgia’s prisons aren’t “broken” — they’re illegal.

The Constitution says the punishment is the loss of liberty, not starvation, violence, neglect, or death.
Yet every day, Georgia piles on punishments no judge ever ordered.

Every other developed nation treats prison as a place for rehabilitation.
Georgia treats it as a dumping ground for suffering.

Normalization is how we realign Georgia with the law, with humanity, and with public safety.

Georgia now faces a choice:
continue running prisons that violate the Constitution, or adopt the normalization model that every safe, sane society already follows.

One path breeds violence.
The other creates redemption.
Only one is legal.

Georgia Prison Security Levels

The Georgia Department of Corrections’ own numbers show how medium-security prisons are now functioning like high-security facilities. This table—based on October 27, 2025 data—exposes systemic classification drift that’s fueling Georgia’s deadly prison crisis.

The Price of Staying Close: Families Pay the Cost of a Broken System

Across Georgia, families are going broke just to keep their loved ones alive and connected behind bars. From elderly grandparents skipping meals to mothers living on disability, the human cost of Georgia’s prison economy runs far deeper than commissary prices or phone bills. These are the voices of those paying The Price of Staying Close.

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 Prison Commissary Extortion: Convenience Store Rejects Sold at Premium Prices for $47 Million

Stewart Distribution supplies convenience stores across Georgia with chips, honey buns, and ramen. When products approach expiration, stores pull them from shelves. Where do those products go?

Back to Stewart’s warehouse in Blackshear—then straight to Georgia’s prisons at premium prices.

The result: Inmates pay $0.90 for ramen worth $0.20 wholesale, $4 for ibuprofen that costs $0.40 at Walmart, $5.60 for peanut butter worth $2.18. Prison families—already missing a wage earner—paid $47 million in 2024 for products worth $28 million, with the state pocketing $18.7 million in pure profit.

Then on November 1, 2025, Georgia raised prices another 30%.

Georgia doesn’t pay inmates a single cent for their labor, then charges them 300-1,000% markups on necessities. Commissioner Tyrone Oliver could reduce these prices today through administrative action. He chooses not to.

Fixing Georgia’s Parole System: The Ultimate Plan for Justice

Parole Board

Georgia’s prison system is failing, driven by a parole board that perpetuates injustice through bias, lack of transparency, and arbitrary decisions. This broken system has fueled violence, overcrowding, and catastrophic deaths across the Georgia Department of Corrections, leaving inmates without hope and families in despair. This article explores the urgent need for reform, highlighting the transparency measures proposed in Senate Bill 25 and advocating for a bold new model that ties parole to rehabilitation and accountability. By fixing Georgia’s parole system, we can restore fairness, reduce recidivism, and create a pathway to justice for all.