Illustration of an open case file with a scoring grid and a red pen, beneath five checked voting boxes

Who Builds the File Five Members Vote On? Georgia’s Parole Guidelines and the One Unit That Checks Them

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Georgia’s Board of Pardons and Paroles has five members. In fiscal year 2025 they considered 20,364 cases for release or a future tentative parole month. Of those, 13,743 were “guidelines” cases, the ones where a formula produces a recommended number of months to serve. Five people can’t rebuild 13,743 files. So somebody else builds them.

The Board’s own documents say who. A Hearing Examiner identifies the crime severity level, works out a risk score, reads a grid and writes the summary that goes to the members. The members then “individually consider each case and vote electronically.”1

This piece follows that file from the sentence to the vote. It asks two plain questions. Who computes the inputs? And what checks the people who compute them? Every fact below comes from the Board’s annual reports, the Board’s own web pages and charts, or the Georgia Code.

What the Board says happens before a vote

The Board’s FY2025 report describes the Pre-Release Considerations Division (called the Clemency Division in earlier reports) as the group “tasked with preparing cases for the Board to consider.” The first step is “initializing” the case: reviewing the sentencing package for completeness, deciding what kind of consideration it is, and requesting legal investigations. In FY2025 that meant 16,596 cases.2

Then comes the Hearing Examiner. The Board’s guidelines page says the process “begins with a Board Hearing Examiner identifying the offender’s Crime Severity Level from a table of offenses.” The Examiner then cross-references that level with a Risk to Re-Offend score on a grid, which produces a recommended number of months, or for the top offense level a percentage of the sentence.3

An older annual report is more specific about the rest of the Examiner’s job. The Examiner “reviews the offender’s file and extracts specific factors such as education, work history, substance abuse, and prior criminal history to establish a risk score and to prepare a summary of the case for the Board.” The Examiner then “submits the guidelines recommendation, along with the entire Board file on the offender, to the Board Members for their vote.”4

The FY2025 report lists what members may see in the file. One item on the list of documents protected from public disclosure is “the hearing examiner’s executive summary of the offender’s case.”1

The recommendation isn’t binding. Members “may agree with the time-to-serve recommendation” or “deviate from the recommendation by increasing or decreasing the number of months.” A tentative parole month is set when three of the five members agree.5 But a number on a page has a pull. Whoever produces it decides where the conversation starts.

The inputs, one by one

The Georgia Code tells the Board what the guidelines must weigh. O.C.G.A. § 42-9-40(a) says the system “shall take into consideration the severity of the current offense, the inmate’s prior criminal history, the inmate’s conduct, and the social factors which the board has found to have value in predicting the probability of further criminal behavior and successful adjustment under parole supervision.”6

The Board publishes its risk weights. The chart revised July 1, 2023 lists seven factors for men. Among them:

  • GDC Validated Gang Member, weight 0.548
  • GDC Any Violent DR Charge, weight 0.443
  • Prior felony and misdemeanor arrest events, counted from GCIC/NCIC records
  • Primary offense type, admission type and age at admission

For women the chart lists a similar set, with violent disciplinary charges at 0.398 and a prior felony drug arrest at 0.585.7

Look at the labels. Two of the most heavily weighted inputs for men, the gang validation flag and violent disciplinary charges, are named for the Department of Corrections. The labels point to the Department, not the Board, as the source. Board staff then read them and use them. Nothing in the published chart says how the flag reaches the Board’s system, whether the Examiner keys any input by hand or whether the file is populated automatically, or who can correct an entry that is wrong.

The crime severity level has its own discretion. The Board’s page says the full listing of offense levels is available by emailing a request; it isn’t posted.3 Board Rule 475-3-.05(18) covers offenses that aren’t on the list: an offender “will be assigned the Crime Severity Level of the specified offense most similar to their most serious offense.”8 And the published score chart shows the weights, but the report GPS holds doesn’t show the cutpoints that turn a score into Low, Medium or High risk.

Who checks the computation

The Board names one internal check. The Critical Analysis Unit “is staffed by subject matter experts responsible for conducting final reviews and for auditing cases to ensure correctness.” In FY2025 the unit completed 10,360 final reviews, and “random audits were completed to verify the accuracy of case evaluations, risk level assessments and assigned crime severity levels.”2

The report doesn’t say how many cases were audited, how many had errors, what kinds of errors turned up, or what happened to them.

The same unit has a second job. Its stated mission is to “investigate, prepare and submit specialized parole eligible cases to the Board for consideration.” That includes cases involving security threat groups, gang offenders, immigration detainers and medical needs, handled in collaboration with GDC.9 The unit that prepares those cases is the unit that audits cases. It sits inside the same division that produces the files.

The Board’s organization chart, its reports back to FY2001 and the web pages GPS holds show a few other things. A training and internal affairs function appears in earlier charts. Staff complete “Professionalism and Ethics” training every year.10 An “Internal Affairs Office” is described in 2004 as managing “internal investigations and security for Board members and Board events.”11 GPS searched every annual report from FY2001 through FY2025 for the phrase “inspector general” and found no hit. We found no independent ethics office, and no published channel for reporting misconduct by Board staff.

What the law keeps out of view, and what it lets through

Everything the members receive is secret by statute. O.C.G.A. § 42-9-53(b)(1) classifies “all information, both oral and written, received by the members of the board in the performance of their duties” and “all reports, files, records, and information coming into their possession” as “confidential state secrets until declassified by the board.” Subsection (c) makes divulging one a misdemeanor.12

Subsection (d) is the exception that gets quoted. Here is its full text:

All hearings required to be held by this chapter shall be public, and the transcript thereof shall be exempt from subsection (b) of this Code section. All records and documents which were public records at the time they were received by the board shall be exempt from subsection (b) of this Code section. All information, reports, and documents required by law to be made available to the General Assembly, the Governor, or the state auditor shall be exempt from subsection (b) of this Code section.

Read it closely. The last sentence doesn’t give the state auditor a right to anything. It lifts the secrecy label from whatever some other law already requires be made available to the auditor. The auditor’s powers are in O.C.G.A. § 50-6-24, which directs the auditor “to examine and audit thoroughly, at least once a year and more frequently if possible, each and all of the books, records, accounts, vouchers, warrants, bills, and all other papers and records” of each state agency that receives state funds, and to report on whether an agency “is being handled in an efficient and economical manner.”13 That’s a financial and management mandate. Whether it reaches the integrity of individual parole files is a legal question the statutes don’t answer.

GPS searched the catalogue of 2,216 reports from the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts. None has the Board of Pardons and Paroles as its subject organization. The only Board-related audits are 2002-2005 reviews of crime-victim notification in which the Board was one of several parties.

What can’t be measured

It would be natural to ask whether outcomes differ for any identifiable group of people. From what the Board publishes, that can’t be computed.

  • The annual reports break cases down by type only: guidelines, life and short sentence. FY2025 shows 13,743 guidelines decisions, 2,277 life-sentence decisions, 2,154 life cases denied and 123 granted or released.14
  • No report breaks decisions down by facility, sex, race, offense, age, county or examiner. GPS found no published outcome by gang-validation status.
  • “Cases considered” (20,364) counts decisions, including denials and tentative months. “Prison releases by parole” (5,588) counts people who left in the year, some on decisions made earlier. The two aren’t matched to the same people.
  • The files themselves are confidential state secrets, so an outside reader can’t tie an outcome to a person.

Even a perfect dataset would need the recommendation the Board’s grid produced for each case, to tell a low grant rate from an expected one. The Board doesn’t release it.

The questions that follow

Put the pieces side by side. Staff in one division prepare the file. The same division’s audit unit reviews a sample of that work and reports no results. Two heavily weighted risk inputs come from another agency. Everything the members receive is classified as confidential state secrets, and the outside reviewer named in the statute has access only to what other law provides.

This is a description of a design, taken from the Board’s own words. These are the questions the design leaves open:

  1. How many cases did the Critical Analysis Unit audit, and what share had errors?
  2. Who can change a risk input or a case summary after it enters the Board’s system, and is every change logged?
  3. Does the Board have a written process for someone to challenge a gang-validation flag or a disciplinary charge that feeds the score?
  4. How often do members depart from the recommendation, in either direction?
  5. Has any body outside the Board ever reviewed a sample of case files?

The Legislature and the Governor already receive information the statute lets through. Those are the people who can ask.

Call to Action: What You Can Do

Five people voted on 13,743 parole guidelines files in FY2025. The audit unit that checks those files sits in the same division that builds them, and its FY2025 report states no number of cases audited, no error count, no results. The Board's own reports say all of it. If you read this and close the tab, you are the only check left that didn't show up.

Spread the Word: It Takes One Click

Awareness without action changes nothing. Here’s how you can help push for accountability and real reform:

Join the GPS Advocacy Network: Sign up at https://gps.press/become-an-advocate/ and we’ll advocate on your behalf every week. GPS identifies your state legislators, crafts personalized letters on the most pressing prison issues, and sends them directly to the representatives who represent you. You receive a copy of every letter. It takes two minutes to sign up, and we handle the rest.

Send a 60-Second Message: Pick an issue, get a ready-to-edit message with the verified facts already in it, and email your state House representative and senator directly from your own inbox at https://gps.press/send-a-message/. No signup, nothing stored. It takes about a minute.

Tell My Story: Are you or a loved one affected by Georgia’s prison system? GPS publishes first-person accounts from incarcerated people and their families. Submit your story at https://gps.press/tellmystory/ and help the world understand what’s really happening behind the walls.

Contact Your Representatives: Your state legislators can ask the Board for the audit results and process documents listed above. Find your Georgia legislators at https://gps.press/find-your-legislator/ or call Governor Kemp at (404) 656-1776.

Demand Media Coverage: Contact newsrooms at the AJC, local TV stations, and national criminal justice outlets. More coverage means more pressure.

File Public Records Requests: Georgia’s Open Records Act gives every citizen the right to request records. Start with the GPS Action Toolkits at https://gps.press/toolkits/. The Open Records Toolkit walks you through what to ask for, gives you ready-to-file request templates, and tells you what to do when the state says no.

Attend Public Meetings: The Georgia Board of Corrections and legislative committees hold public meetings. Your presence is noticed.

Vote: Research candidates’ positions on criminal justice. Primary elections often determine outcomes in Georgia.

Contact GPS: If you have information about how Georgia’s parole process works, reach us securely at GPS.press.

Further Reading

The Amplifier: How Five Unelected Officials Turned Georgia’s Prisons Into a Constitutional Crisis

The five members who vote on the file, and the guidelines rule that ties release to judges’ sentences.

The Board That Stopped Saying Yes: Georgia’s Lifer Parole Collapse, in Its Own Numbers

What the Board’s own reports show about decisions in life-sentence cases.

Georgia Parole Board Rejects Constitution

GPS’s reporting on a Board decision.

A Second Chance for Georgia: Fixing Parole With the Reform It Desperately Needs

Proposed reforms to how Georgia handles parole.

GPS Intelligence System

The GPS Intelligence System maintains living research profiles that aggregate data, news, settlements, and analysis on Georgia’s prisons and the issues defining them. The profile below provides deeper context for the issues raised in this article:

Oversight and Investigations

Who reviews Georgia’s corrections agencies, and what their reviews have and haven’t covered.

Explore the Data

GPS makes GDC statistics accessible to the public through several resources:

  • GPS Statistics Portal: Interactive dashboards translating complex GDC reports into accessible formats, updated within days of official releases.
  • GPS Datasets: The datasets GPS publishes from its research.
  • Parole Packet Builder: A GPS tool that helps people assemble a parole packet.
  • GPS Lighthouse AI: Ask questions about Georgia’s prison system and get answers drawn from GPS’s investigative archive and data analysis.
  • GPS llms.txt: A single machine-readable index of every GPS data resource, published using the open llms.txt standard. Point any AI tool at this URL and the model can navigate to facility profiles, intelligence briefs, mortality records, statistics, and the full investigative archive.
  • GPS Public MCP Server: For AI tools that support the Model Context Protocol, connect directly to GPS’s data: read-only tools covering population, facilities, mortality, parole, the Georgia Code, settlements, and more. Every answer arrives with its source link and citation built in.

For a walkthrough of how to put these resources to work with AI, see How to Use GPS Data with AI Tools: a step-by-step guide for researchers, advocates, families, and journalists analyzing Georgia prison conditions, statistics, and policy with tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.

Contact GPS at media@gps.press for access to underlying datasets used in this analysis.

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.

GPS Footer

The Architecture Is the Evidence

Across the 32 state prisons whose original design figures we hold, Georgia built for 15,737. They hold 33,805 — 215% of design capacity.

Dorms tripled. Cells double- and triple-bunked. Medical, kitchens, libraries — unchanged. Every facility, every design figure, every source.

See the receipts →
Footnotes
  1. Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles Annual Report FY2025 p. 20, https://pap.georgia.gov/document/document/pardons-paroles-ar-2025-d12-1pdf/download [↩][↩]
  2. Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles Annual Report FY2025 p. 25, https://pap.georgia.gov/document/document/pardons-paroles-ar-2025-d12-1pdf/download [↩][↩]
  3. Board of Pardons and Paroles, Parole Decision Guidelines page, https://pap.georgia.gov/parole-consideration/parole-consideration-eligibility-guidelines [↩][↩]
  4. Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles Annual Report FY2008 p. 17, https://pap.georgia.gov/document/document/annual-report-2008/download [↩]
  5. Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles Annual Report FY2025 pp. 20-21, https://pap.georgia.gov/document/document/pardons-paroles-ar-2025-d12-1pdf/download [↩]
  6. O.C.G.A. 42-9-40, Parole guidelines system, https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/title-42/chapter-9/article-2/section-42-9-40/ [↩]
  7. Board of Pardons and Paroles, Risk to Re-Offend Score Chart, updated 07/01/2023, https://pap.georgia.gov/document/document/72023-updated-new-guidelines-risk-factor-infopdf/download [↩]
  8. Board of Pardons and Paroles, Rule 475-3-.05 synopsis, https://pap.georgia.gov/document/document/475-3-05-board-rule-synopsis-52021pdf/download [↩]
  9. Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles Annual Report FY2025 p. 24, https://pap.georgia.gov/document/document/pardons-paroles-ar-2025-d12-1pdf/download [↩]
  10. Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles Annual Report FY2025 p. 37, https://pap.georgia.gov/document/document/pardons-paroles-ar-2025-d12-1pdf/download [↩]
  11. Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles Annual Report FY2004 p. 9, https://pap.georgia.gov/document/document/annual-report-2004/download [↩]
  12. O.C.G.A. 42-9-53, Preservation of documents; classification of information, https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/title-42/chapter-9/article-2/section-42-9-53/ [↩]
  13. O.C.G.A. 50-6-24, State auditor powers and duties, https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/title-50/chapter-6/section-50-6-24/ [↩]
  14. Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles Annual Report FY2025 pp. 24-25, https://pap.georgia.gov/document/document/pardons-paroles-ar-2025-d12-1pdf/download [↩]

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