They Knew: Empty Posts, Broken Locks, and Georgia’s Deadliest Prison Week

UPDATE (January 18, 2026): A fifth person connected to Washington State Prison has now died. On Saturday, January 17, Washington County Coroner Mark Hodges confirmed that another inmate involved in the January 11 riot died while receiving treatment at Jefferson County Hospital. Hodges stated the inmate “was involved in the riot however we do not know if the death is related to his injuries or not.” The coroner did not release the inmate’s name. This brings the total death toll to five: Dajhmere Hall (found dead January 9), plus four inmates connected to the Sunday riot—Jimmy Trammell, Ahmod Hatcher, Teddy Jackson, and now this unnamed individual. ¹

On Sunday, January 11, 2026, a gang war that had been building for weeks finally exploded at Washington State Prison. By the time the blood dried, four men were dead, more than a dozen were hospitalized, and Georgia’s prison system stood exposed—not for what it failed to prevent, but for what it refused to see coming.

The violence didn’t arrive without warning. It announced itself in December, spread through contraband phones and whispered threats, and erupted during visiting hours while families watched in horror. Now, with every state prison locked down and inmates padlocked into cells with broken doors, the question isn’t whether Georgia’s Department of Corrections failed. The question is whether anyone will finally be held accountable.

Open records obtained by FAIR Georgia in the days following the riot reveal what officials have tried to hide: a facility with 69 security posts staffed by just five or six officers, entire housing units left completely unmonitored, zero incident reports filed four days after the deadliest prison violence in years, and a county coroner who claims “no knowledge” of a death he personally confirmed to media outlets.

This is not negligence. This is a system designed to fail—and to hide the evidence when it does.

Four Deaths in Four Days

The first death came on Friday, January 9. Dajhmere Hall, 30, was found dead at Washington State Prison at 7:15 a.m. Washington County Deputy Coroner Mark Hodges confirmed the death to local media, noting it was “not expected to be a result of foul play.” ²

Two days later, the prison erupted.

At approximately 1:25 p.m. on Sunday, an altercation broke out on the sidewalk among inmates the Georgia Department of Corrections later identified as “gang-affiliated (security threat groups).” What happened next would leave three more men dead:

Jimmy Trammell, 42, was just 72 hours from freedom. After serving nearly a decade on a burglary conviction out of Fulton County, his maximum release date was January 2026. His family was preparing to welcome him home. His brother, Aquinas Stillwell, was supposed to pick him up on Wednesday. Instead, Stillwell received a phone call no family should ever have to take. His aunt, Michelle Lett, told reporters: “It’s like they’re just letting them run around, do whatever. They weren’t trying to stop nothing.” The family says Jimmy had no gang affiliation. He was three days from seeing his grandchildren. ³

Ahmod Hatcher, 23, had been at Washington State Prison for eight months—and he was terrified. His mother, Deamonte, told reporters her son had warned her about the conditions inside. “He was scared. He said he hoped he could make it out of prison because it was so bad in there. He said the inmates run the prison.” After his death, she issued a statement that should haunt every official responsible for his safety: “My son was supposed to be safe. These people in prison are humans. They’re not animals.” ⁴

Teddy Jackson, 27, was serving 10 years for aggravated assault out of Bibb County, with a maximum release date of July 2028. He was pronounced dead hours after the riot at Wellstar MCG Augusta, having succumbed to injuries sustained in the violence.

The GDC’s press release, issued 37 hours after the incident, painted a picture of swift, professional response: “Staff responded immediately to the altercation and deployed non-lethal weapons. At approximately 3:00 p.m., staff had completed count and wellness checks and the incident was brought under control.” ⁵

The shift rosters tell a different story.

Five Officers for 1,500 Inmates: The Rosters That Expose the Lie

On January 15, 2026, FAIR Georgia founder Allen Wigington—an advocate—received a response to his open records request for staffing data from Washington State Prison. What the documents reveal is a facility operating in a state of controlled collapse.

The shift rosters for January 9 and January 10, 2026—the day Dajhmere Hall was found dead and the day before the riot—show a prison with 69 designated security posts. On both days, only five to six correctional officers were assigned to cover the entire facility. ⁶

On January 9, 2026, Second Shift staffing consisted of:

• Lt. Serria Harrison – Shift Supervisor (also assigned to Kitchen)
• Sgt. Terrell – Annex Sergeant
• Ofc. Lambry – Perimeter
• Ofc. Carnelio – Main Control/PDS
• Ofc. Bostic – E Control
• Ofc. Wright – J Control

That’s six officers for a facility housing over 1,500 inmates.

The rosters show every single housing unit unstaffed:

• E-1 Dorm (Administrative Segregation) – EMPTY
• E-2 Dorm – EMPTY
• F-1 Dorm, F-2 Dorm – EMPTY
• G-1 Dorm, G-2 Dorm – EMPTY
• H-1 Dorm, H-2 Dorm – EMPTY
• I-1 Dorm, I-2 Dorm – EMPTY
• J-1 Dorm, J-2 Dorm – EMPTY
• D-1 through D-4 Dorm (Annex) – EMPTY

Building I-2—previously identified by GPS as a gang-controlled unit in our January 2025 investigation—had no officer assigned. ⁷

Most critically: Front Visitation and Rear Visitation posts were both empty.

This explains what eyewitness Jennifer Fender described to GPB News. On a typical day, she said, there were usually two officers at the front of the facility and three in the visitation area. That Sunday, there was only one officer in visitation—and the official rosters show that even that single officer was likely pulled from another assignment.

When violence erupted, that one officer—a woman working alone in a room full of civilian families—had to bar the door against blood-covered inmates while simultaneously evacuating visitors. The GDC praised this as evidence of “dedicated Correctional Officers.” The rosters reveal it as evidence of a facility operating without minimum safe staffing.

The January 10 roster is nearly identical: the same six officers, the same empty dorms, the same unstaffed visitation posts. The comments section notes officers assigned to hospital duty—suggesting staff were already stretched thin monitoring inmates injured in previous incidents.

Zero Incident Reports: The Documentation That Doesn’t Exist

When Wigington requested incident reports for all events between January 7 and January 12, 2026, the GDC’s response was stunning:

“The GDC possesses no documents responsive to the request for incident reports between 1/7/2026 and 1/12/2026. Any incident reports have not been completed as of this time, so the GDC does not possess a record that is responsive to this request.”

Four men dead. More than a dozen hospitalized. A riot that made Associated Press national news. Bean bag rounds and chemical agents deployed. CERT teams and IRT squads called in from across the state.

And as of January 15, 2026—four days after the deadliest prison violence Georgia has seen in years—not a single incident report exists.

The GDC cited O.C.G.A. § 50-18-71(j), which states that agencies are not required to “prepare new reports, summaries, or compilations not in existence at the time of the request.”

But incident reports are not “new compilations.” They are basic documentation that any functioning correctional facility generates within hours of a critical incident. The absence of these reports four days after a mass-casualty event suggests either catastrophic administrative failure or deliberate delay in creating a paper trail.

Wigington noted in his follow-up that the GDC provided shift rosters only for January 9 and January 10—not for January 11 (the day of the riot) or January 12. No explanation was given for the missing documents.

The Coroner Who Forgot

The response from Washington County was equally troubling.

Wigington’s January 12 request to the Washington County Coroner sought basic investigative records for deaths at Washington State Prison between January 9 and January 12, 2026. The county attorney’s initial response claimed the coroner would need to “physically review well over 1,000 files” to locate responsive records—for a request covering four days. ⁸

When Wigington pointed out that the names of the deceased had been publicly released—by the coroner’s own office and reported by media outlets in Atlanta, Savannah, and Augusta—the attorney’s response revealed a more troubling reality:

“In speaking with the Coroner to relay the error concerning the intended scope or date range in your original request, he advised that he currently has no responsive records because the bodies have been sent to the state crime lab which apparently falls under the jurisdiction of the DOC. He indicated that once the autopsies are complete, the crime lab will provide him with information on the causes of death which he will then incorporate into the death certificates and he otherwise anticipates no further involvement by his office.”

The coroner has sent the bodies to a crime lab controlled by the Department of Corrections—the same agency responsible for the facility where these men died—and “anticipates no further involvement.”

The attorney added one final detail: “He also added that he has no knowledge of an individual by the name of Dajhmere Hall.”

Dajhmere Hall—the 30-year-old whose death the coroner’s office confirmed to 13WMAZ on Friday, January 9. The death that was reported publicly before the riot even occurred. The coroner now claims he has never heard of him.

When asked whether coroner’s inquests had been conducted or scheduled for any of the four deaths—as required by O.C.G.A. § 45-16-27(a)(2) when an inmate “dies unexpectedly without an attending physician or as a result of violence”—the attorney’s response was: “No inquests have been conducted to date concerning the individuals named below. Whether any will be in the future is presently unknown to me.”

Three men were stabbed to death in a prison riot. Georgia law requires the coroner to hold an inquest. No inquest has been scheduled. The coroner has washed his hands of the matter.

A Pattern of Stonewalling

This is not new behavior from the GDC.

In September 2025, Wigington filed an open records request for investigative files concerning the death of Joshua Holiday, who died on October 21, 2024, at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison. The Butts County Coroner’s report confirmed that GDC’s Criminal Investigations Division was notified and acted as the peace officer in charge of the death investigation, as required by the Georgia Death Investigation Act.

The GDC denied the request, citing O.C.G.A. § 42-5-36(b)—the same “internal investigation” exemption it uses to block virtually all transparency into deaths in custody.

Wigington’s rebuttal cited Blau v. Georgia Department of Corrections, 364 Ga. App. 1, 873 S.E.2d 464 (2022), in which the Georgia Court of Appeals held that this provision “is not a blanket exemption” and that the GDC “must articulate specific reasons why disclosure of a particular record would compromise security or safety.”

The GDC’s response: “The Department has reviewed and considered your response and stands by the original decision on your request.”

No specific security justification. No explanation of how releasing records about a death already publicly classified as suicide would compromise institutional security. Just a flat denial and a closed door.

This is the system families navigate when they try to learn how their loved ones died. This is why GPS documented in Lethal Negligence that the GDC’s strategy is to delay disclosure until the statute of limitations expires, deny families the documents they need to challenge official narratives, and bury the truth alongside the dead. ⁹

“Something Is Going On”

Jennifer Fender was visiting a loved one at Washington State Prison when the violence began. In an interview with GPB News, she described the chaos that unfolded in the visitation room.

On a typical day, Fender said, there were usually two officers at the front of the facility and three in the visitation area. That Sunday, there was only one officer in visitation. The other guards had already been called away before visitors noticed anything was wrong.

Then the walkie-talkies erupted.

“Something is going on; we heard very loud yelling from the walkie-talkies,” Fender recalled. A single female officer tried to bar the door as injured inmates—some covered in blood—attempted to enter the visitation room. “You could hear her say, ‘Don’t open that door. You can’t come in here.'”

The inmates who forced their way in “had blood on them,” Fender said. “They were just kind of wild.”

That one officer—working alone because the staffing rosters show no one else was assigned to visitation—managed to escort every visitor safely out of the facility. She did this while a riot raged outside and blood-covered inmates pushed through the doors.

The shift rosters now confirm what Fender witnessed was not an aberration. It was policy.

The Warnings They Ignored

The riot didn’t come out of nowhere. People inside the prison—and across Georgia’s prison system—knew it was coming.

In the days following the violence, a Telegram chat among inmates at Washington State Prison and Johnson State Prison revealed the conflict had been brewing for weeks. The messages paint a damning picture of intelligence failures:

“It all started in my dorm before christmas,” one inmate wrote.

“It was over a room,” another explained—a housing assignment dispute that escalated into full-scale gang warfare.

The conflict was between Gangster Disciples and Bloods—two of the largest gangs in Georgia’s prison system. Inmates described watching the violence unfold in real time: “I watched a dude try to climb over rec yard fence to get away get stuck get stabbed get snatched off fence then get killed.”

On December 13, 2024—nearly a month before the riot—the Human and Civil Rights Coalition of Georgia posted video from Washington State Prison showing fighting at the facility. The warning signs were public. They were documented. They were ignored.

The GDC bills itself as “the largest law enforcement agency in the state with approximately 9,000 employees.” Yet somehow, its intelligence apparatus—which exists specifically to monitor gang activity and prevent violence—failed to detect a conflict that inmates across multiple facilities knew about through contraband cell phones.

Or perhaps they detected it and simply did nothing. After all, with only five officers working a shift, what could anyone have done?

The Next Day: Violence Spreads

The bloodshed didn’t stop at Washington State Prison.

On Monday, January 12—less than 24 hours after the riot—multiple law enforcement agencies responded to a disturbance at Hancock State Prison in Sparta, just one county over. According to the Union-Recorder, at least five inmates were injured in stabbing attacks. Two were seriously wounded and airlifted to area hospitals after being stabbed with makeshift weapons. Three others were transported by ambulance. ¹⁰

The Hancock County Sheriff’s Office, Georgia State Patrol, Washington County Sheriff’s Office, and Milledgeville Police Department all responded. A drone unit was deployed to monitor the facility until tactical prison personnel could arrive.

The GDC provided no details about the Hancock incident. No press release was issued. No explanation was offered for how violence at one facility could cascade to another within 24 hours.

Family members across Georgia reported that their loved ones’ facilities had gone on lockdown. Posts flooded social media from people with incarcerated relatives at Wilcox State Prison, Wheeler Correctional, Jenkins, and Hays State Prison—all reporting lockdowns and, in some cases, violence.

By Monday night, the GDC had placed every state prison in Georgia on lockdown. They remain locked down today.

The Lockdown Paradox

For officials, lockdown is the default response to crisis—a way to freeze movement while they assess the situation. For the more than 50,000 people incarcerated in Georgia’s prisons, lockdown is a pressure cooker that makes future violence inevitable.

During lockdown, inmates are confined to their cells around the clock. At facilities like Washington State Prison, that means two or three men sharing a space designed for one, with a shared open toilet and no privacy. There is no yard time, no showers, no programming, no movement. Food is delivered through doors by officers—and, reportedly, by “select inmates” who are often gang members themselves. Civilians are even more frustrated by this as the Gangs are responsible for the violence and the GDC administration allows them to be out of their rooms “helping” staff run the prisons, while everyone else is behind the doors.

The meals during lockdown are worse than the already-inadequate portions served in normal operations. Many inmates have commissary food in their lockers, but items like ramen noodles require hot water to prepare—and there’s no hot water access during lockdown. Men go hungry.

For inmates with mental health conditions—and the DOJ documented in its October 2024 report that Georgia’s prisons are failing to provide adequate mental health care—extended lockdown can be catastrophic. No movement, no stimulation, no human contact beyond cellmates. Just time, tension, and the knowledge that rival gang members are locked in cells throughout the facility, waiting.

The wardens know how this ends. They will eventually meet personally with gang leaders, negotiate assurances that their organizations will “sit down” and not retaliate. The gangs will comply—for a while. But as long as rival gangs are housed in the same dorms, the same facilities, the same system, the next explosion is just a matter of time.

As one Facebook commenter who identified as an inmate at Washington State Prison wrote: “The news outlet says we are locked down but truth be told our doors doesn’t lock and we still are moving around. There has been more fights as well. Word around the yard is this gang war will not be stopping no time soon.”

Padlocked Into Death Traps

The broken locks are not a new problem. The Guidehouse consulting report commissioned by Governor Kemp found that broken locks allow inmates to roam freely throughout Georgia’s prisons—a finding that contributed to the state’s $600 million “historic budget infusion” announced in January 2025.

Commissioner Tyrone Oliver told legislators in December that fixing all the locks could take five to six years.

In the meantime, some facilities have found a solution: padlocks.

According to reports from family members and advocacy groups, inmates at facilities with broken electronic locks are being secured in their cells with external padlocks during the current lockdown. This practice is not only dangerous—it’s unconstitutional.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s CRIPA investigation into Georgia’s prisons documented non-working alarms, broken locks, and severe staff shortages. External padlocks on cell doors violate national correctional standards and fire safety codes. In the event of a fire or medical emergency, inmates cannot be evacuated quickly. The cells become death traps.

As one family member wrote on Facebook: “I literally have called EVERYONE, local fire marshal, state fire marshal, local police station, the prison/GDC from bottom rung to top, all it did was get the inmates in trouble. I stated the law/code that makes padlocks illegal. NO ONE CARES. We need a class action lawsuit. Now.”

$600 Million Later

Six weeks before the Washington State Prison riot, Georgia legislators were already asking uncomfortable questions about the $600 million the state had poured into corrections.

At a December 1, 2025 House Budget Committee hearing, Rep. Billy Hitchens expressed frustration with the lack of visible progress: “I haven’t seen any locks being changed. There are no improvements.”

Advocate Wendy Hunnicutt posed the question that should haunt state officials: “So where is the $600 million going?”

Commissioner Oliver’s response was telling: the GDC is still 1,000 guards short of recommended staffing levels. Fixing all the locks could take five to six years. The problems are so deep, so structural, so embedded in decades of neglect that even hundreds of millions of dollars cannot produce immediate change. ¹¹

The shift rosters from Washington State Prison show what “1,000 guards short” actually looks like: five officers covering 69 posts, every dorm empty, visitation unstaffed, and a single lieutenant pulling double duty as both shift supervisor and kitchen officer because there’s no one else.

What the money is producing: a $436.9 million, 3,000-bed mega-prison being constructed in Washington County, directly behind the current Washington State Prison. The same county where four men just died. The same facility where five officers work a shift that should require dozens.

Georgia is building a bigger cage. It is not building a better system.

A Pattern of Failure

Washington State Prison is not an anomaly. It is a symptom.

GPS’s November 2025 investigation, The Classification Crisis, identified Washington State Prison as one of four “killing field” medium-security facilities where dangerous misclassification has created conditions ripe for violence. At Washington SP, 27.7% of the population is classified as close security—inmates who should be housed at maximum-security facilities—despite the prison being designated as medium security.

For comparison, properly classified medium-security facilities house 0-3% close security inmates. Washington State Prison houses 418 of them.

The result: six deaths in 2023. Five deaths in 2024—80% of them under age 50. Two confirmed homicides in the first days of January 2025, before the riot. And now four more dead. ¹²

The DOJ’s October 2024 findings confirmed that Georgia’s classification system is broken. The department “does not enforce classification housing assignments, enabling gangs… to dictate housing assignments.” Gang leaders decide who lives where. The classification system exists on paper but not in practice.

Warden Veronica Stewart, who oversees Washington State Prison, has a history that should concern anyone who believes in accountability. GPS documented in Violence and Corruption Unleashed that before becoming warden at Washington SP, Stewart served as Deputy Warden of Security at Telfair State Prison—another facility plagued by violence and unexplained deaths. As one source told GPS: “The warden had bodies behind her, and no one did anything about it.” ⁷

The staff roster obtained through open records confirms that Ricky Alexander—identified in GPS’s previous reporting as Deputy Warden of Security accused of facilitating contraband through drone drops—remains employed at Washington State Prison. His job title is now listed as “Correctional Ofc 2.” After a previous death at Washington SP, Alexander allegedly addressed inmates directly, warning them that “if they see a murder about to happen, they better leave the room.”

These are the people entrusted with keeping incarcerated Georgians alive.

What the Families Are Saying

The official narrative—that this was an isolated gang incident, that staff responded professionally, that the situation is under control—crumbles when you listen to the families.

On Facebook, in community groups like Georgia Prisons Exposed and They Have No Voice, the posts tell a different story:

“My son been stabbed twice almost lost his life! The commissioner of Corrections don’t care I emailed him ten times no response… They understaff need to do a 10,000 hiring bonus plus raise the pay to get quality guards! It’s not right they suppose to protect our loves ones and they don’t.” — Cicely Shanta Knight Howell

“Georgia politicians caused this when they started using the DOC as their go to for cutting the State budget back in the 90’s. Prisons used to be very well staffed… Officers weren’t getting burned out and you had quality staff. All posts were well covered daily. As time went on staffing kept getting dangerously lower and lower. This is the result.” — Kiley Johnson

“Cellphones are not the problem the overcrowding is the problem. Take cell phones and the public can not be address the issues that are going on in here.” — Mark Clarke

“GDC & Georgia politicians want cell phone jammers so the public will not be aware of the injustice going on within the prisons. I’ve saw sooooo many videos showing inmates alone in dorms, no officers anywhere to be found!” — Melinda Roxanne Ackron

The push for cell phone jammers—a priority for GDC leadership—takes on a different meaning when you realize that contraband phones are often the only way families learn what’s actually happening inside. As one advocate noted: “Cell phone jammers don’t stop violence. They don’t protect officers. They don’t respond to riots, stabbings, or medical emergencies. Staff does. You can’t jam your way out of a staffing crisis.”

The Solutions That Already Exist

Georgia does not need another study commission. The solutions have been documented, published, and ignored.

In A Simple Message for the GDC, GPS outlined nine reforms that could be implemented immediately at minimal cost:

In When Warnings Go Ignored, GPS added a tenth urgent fix: single-cell segregation. Too many homicides are happening in protective custody and “the hole”—spaces where double-bunking turns conflicts deadly. End double-bunking in segregation statewide. No exceptions.

These reforms require political will, not massive budgets. Georgia chose to spend $1.6 billion on new construction instead. Four men are dead. The doors still don’t lock. And now we have the rosters proving that when the killing started, almost no one was there to stop it.

The Reckoning That Must Come

The U.S. Department of Justice declared in October 2024 that Georgia’s prisons violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. The state is “deliberately indifferent” to violence. The homicide rate is nearly eight times the national average for prisons and 30 times the rate in Georgia. People are dying in numbers and circumstances that constitute a constitutional crisis.

Under the Biden administration, federal oversight offered hope that Georgia would be forced to reform. That hope has dimmed with the change in administrations. If federal enforcement withdraws, Georgia’s leaders will face no external pressure to change—and the deaths will continue. And federal enforcement disappeared in May 2025 as 70% of DOJ personnel in the Civil Rights Division were forced out.

The question now is whether Georgians will demand accountability themselves.

Someone authorized the staffing levels that put five officers on a shift covering 69 posts.

Someone decided that visitation could operate without assigned staff.

Someone chose not to file incident reports for four days after a mass-casualty event.

Someone instructed the coroner to send bodies to a crime lab controlled by the agency responsible for the deaths—and to anticipate “no further involvement.”

Someone decided that inquests required by Georgia law would not be scheduled.

Someone signed off on a system where wardens negotiate with gang leaders for peace because there aren’t enough guards to maintain order.

Until individuals face consequences, nothing will change. No charges equals no fear. No fear equals no reform. No reform equals more deaths.

Jimmy Trammell was 72 hours from freedom. He had served his time. He had a family waiting. He deserved to walk out of Washington State Prison on Wednesday and start his life again.

Instead, his name is on a press release, and his family is planning a funeral.

Georgia’s prison system didn’t fail Jimmy Trammell. It worked exactly as designed—underfunded, understaffed, unaccountable, and invisible to the public until the bodies pile too high to ignore.

Four men are dead. The doors still don’t lock. The shift rosters show empty posts where officers should have stood. The incident reports don’t exist. The coroner has walked away. And somewhere in Georgia, in a cell without working locks, another man is praying he survives long enough to see his release date.

“My son was supposed to be safe. These people in prison are humans. They’re not animals.” — Deamonte, mother of Ahmod Hatcher

This Is What Deliberate Indifference Looks Like

Call to Action: What You Can Do

Awareness without action changes nothing. Here are the most effective ways you can help push for accountability and real reform:

Use Impact Justice AI

Our free tool at https://impactjustice.ai helps you instantly draft and send personalized emails to lawmakers, journalists, and agencies. No expertise required—just your voice and your concern.

Contact Your Representatives

Your state legislators control GDC’s budget, oversight, and the laws that created these failures. Demand accountability and transparency.

• Find your Georgia legislators: https://open.pluralpolicy.com/ga/
• Governor Brian Kemp: (404) 656-1776
• Georgia Department of Corrections Commissioner: (478) 992-5246

Demand Media Coverage

Journalists need to know these stories matter. Contact newsrooms at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, local TV stations, and national outlets covering criminal justice. More coverage means more pressure for reform.

Amplify on Social Media

Share this article and call out the people in power.

Tag: @GovKemp, @GDC_Georgia, your local representatives

Use hashtags such as #GAPrisons, #PrisonReform, #GeorgiaPrisonerSpeak

Public pressure works—especially when it’s loud.

File Public Records Requests

Georgia’s Open Records Act gives every citizen the right to access government documents. Request:

• Incident reports
• Death records
• Staffing data
• Medical logs
• Financial and contract documents

Transparency reveals truth.

https://georgiadcor.govqa.us/WEBAPP/_rs/SupportHome.aspx

Attend Public Meetings

The Georgia Board of Corrections holds public meetings. Legislative committees review corrections issues during session. Your presence is noticed.

Contact the Department of Justice

For civil rights violations in Georgia prisons, file a complaint with the DOJ Civil Rights Division:

https://civilrights.justice.gov

Federal oversight has forced abusive systems to change before.

Support Organizations Doing This Work

Donate to or volunteer with Georgia-based prison reform groups fighting for change on the ground.

Vote

Research candidates’ positions on criminal justice. Primary elections often determine outcomes in Georgia. Your vote shapes who controls these systems.

Contact GPS

Georgia Prisoners’ Speak exists because incarcerated people and their families deserve to be heard. If you have information about conditions inside Georgia’s prisons, contact us securely at GPS.press.

About Georgia Prisoners’ Speak (GPS)

Georgia Prisoners’ Speak (GPS) is a nonprofit investigative newsroom built in partnership with incarcerated reporters, families, advocates, and data analysts. Operating independently from the Georgia Department of Corrections, GPS documents the truth the state refuses to acknowledge: extreme violence, fatal medical neglect, gang-controlled dorms, collapsed staffing, fraudulent reporting practices, and unconstitutional conditions across Georgia’s prisons.

Through confidential reporting channels, secure communication, evidence verification, public-records requests, legislative research, and professional investigative standards, GPS provides the transparency the system lacks. Our mission is to expose abuses, protect incarcerated people, support families, and push Georgia toward meaningful reform based on human rights, evidence, and public accountability.

Every article is part of a larger fight — to end the silence, reveal the truth, and demand justice.

Further Reading

• Violence and Corruption Unleashed: The Truth About Washington State Prison *GPS’s January 2025 investigation into gang control, staff complicity, and systemic failures at Washington SP.*

• The Classification Crisis: How Four Medium Security Prisons Are Killing People *How dangerous misclassification created “killing field” facilities including Washington State Prison.*

• Lethal Negligence: The Hidden Death Toll in Georgia’s Prisons *Documents misclassified deaths, delayed disclosure, and the transparency crisis that hides Georgia’s true death toll.*

• A Simple Message for the GDC *Nine reforms that could reduce violence immediately at minimal cost.*

• When Warnings Go Ignored *How Georgia’s prison deaths became predictable—and preventable.*

• The Hidden Violence in Georgia’s Prisons: Beyond the Death Toll *For every homicide, dozens more are stabbed or beaten—and most incidents are never counted.*

1. 13WMAZ, “Fourth inmate connected to deadly Washington State Prison riot dies Saturday, coroner says,” January 17, 2026, https://www.13wmaz.com/article/news/local/fourth-inmate-connected-deadly-washington-state-prison-riot-dies-saturday-coroner-says/93-69525726-198a-4b65-b9ac-1d50b725358e [↩]
2. 13WMAZ, “Inmate found dead at Washington State Prison 2 days before 3 inmates killed in fight,” January 14, 2026, The first death came on Friday, January 9. Dajhmere Hall, 30, was found dead at Washington State Prison at 7:15 a.m. Washington County Deputy Coroner Mark Hodges confirmed the death to local media, noting it was “not expected to be a result of foul play.” ((13WMAZ, “Inmate found dead at Washington State Prison 2 days before 3 inmates killed in fight,” January 14, 2026, https://www.13wmaz.com/article/news/local/sandersville/inmate-found-dead-at-washington-state-prison-2-days-before-3-inmates-killed-in-fight/93-37fc2077-9f23-4f68-82d0-49b1c0de6fb7[↩]
3. WMAZ, Family interviews, January 2026[↩]
4. GPB News/WRDW, January 2026[↩]
5. Georgia Department of Corrections Press Release, January 12, 2026, https://gdc.georgia.gov/press-releases/2026-01-12/disturbance-washington-state-prison[↩]
6. FAIR Georgia Open Records Response, Reference # R026183-011226, January 15, 2026[↩]
7. GPS, “Violence and Corruption Unleashed,” January 2025, https://gps.press/violence-and-corruption-unleashed-the-truth-about-washington-sp/[↩][↩]
8. FAIR Georgia correspondence with Washington County Attorney Joseph C. Sumner, Jr., January 15, 2026[↩]
9. GPS, “Lethal Negligence,” March 2025, https://gps.press/lethal-negligence-the-hidden-death-toll-in-georgias-prisons/[↩]
10. Union-Recorder, “Five inmates injured at Hancock State Prison in attacks,” January 13, 2026, https://unionrecorder.com/2026/01/13/five-inmates-injured-at-hancock-state-prison-in-attacks/[↩]
11. WMAZ/Legislative hearing coverage, December 2025[↩]
12. GPS, “The Classification Crisis,” November 2025, https://gps.press/the-classification-crisis-how-four-medium-security-prisons-are-killing-people/[↩]