Top Georgia lawmakers acknowledged during this year’s legislative session that costly steps were needed to deal with a prison system operating in crisis mode, and they acted accordingly.
The state House and Senate approved most of what Gov. Brian Kemp asked for in a special request for the prison system and incorporated some of their own ideas, too. The result: $434 million in new funding for the Georgia Department of Corrections for the current fiscal year.
Legislators also approved about $200 million in new spending for the Fiscal Year 2026 budget that starts in July.
Kemp approved the budget in a signing ceremony at the Capitol on Friday. He highlighted the new money for the Department of Corrections in his remarks. “This was a priority both for my administration but also the leaders in the Legislature and I am proud that we worked together to deliver these results.“
Yet even with the giant new investment, lawmakers who have studied the prison system say it‘s just a start.
“We’ve taken a step in the right direction,” said Sen. Randy Robertson, R-Cataula, who chaired a study committee last year that examined the state of Georgia’s prisons. “I don’t think we’re near where we’re going to have to get to. I think we have a lot more work to do on that because it has taken a while to get here, so it’s going to take a while to get out.”
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Facing a prison system struggling with violence, massive understaffing, security lapses and criminal enterprises, Kemp in January requested a “historic budget infusion” of more than $600 million in new spending to try to quickly address the problems.
Kemp’s decision followed a two-year investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that revealed rampant corruption and record homicides, even as state officials clamped down on releasing information about how people had died inside its prisons.
Kemp’s own consultants said in a December report that staffing vacancies had reached “emergency levels” at 20 of Georgia’s 34 prisons. Lawmakers learned in January that basic security is compromised because prison locks routinely don’t work and replacing them could take five years or longer.
The Department of Corrections also was the subject of a lengthy report by the U.S. Department of Justice last year that described horrific violence, sexual assaults and gang-run prisons enabled by a culture of indifference.
A large chunk of the new spending will try to improve understaffing by adding positions and upping officer salaries by 4%. Maintenance projects to repair locks and a host of other problems account for millions in new spending.
Lawmakers also agreed to spend millions to bring in prefab units to house prisoners while repairs take place. Technology will be added to better monitor activities in short-staffed prisons.
Rep. Matt Hatchett, R-Dublin, House Appropriations chairman, told colleagues during the session that the big bump in prison spending is “just the beginning of a costly but essential endeavor.”
He told the AJC that he would continue to be frank about the challenges within the prison system and will closely monitor the GDC’s progress in the coming months. “We’ve got to see some results,” he said.
‘Emergency mode’
Kemp said little last year about the problems within the prison system. But in June, the governor announced that he had hired consultants to conduct an in-depth assessment of the Department of Corrections. The announcement came a day after a gun smuggled into Smith State Prison led to the fatal shooting of a kitchen worker by a prisoner who then turned the gun on himself.
Kemp’s budget proposal calling for the budget hike came after the consultants presented him with a 245-page report in December. The report, labeled “Draft for Discussion,” described a prison system operating in “emergency mode.”
The consultants found that buildings with maintenance issues enabled prisoners to strip off materials from walls and ceilings to make weapons. They could also easily leave cells because the locks don’t work. Understaffing meant there often were no officers around to monitor the movements, the consultants reported, and officers working alone reported being fearful of retribution if they enforced the rules.
The consultants said gangs are able to sell bed space, forcing some prisoners to sleep on floors or in common areas instead of their assigned bunks. They can also extort family members who worry about their loved ones’ safety and use violence to collect debts tied to the sale of drugs or phones, the consultants found.
Credit: Courtesy photo
Credit: Courtesy photo
The governor said in January that the consultants’ recommendations guided his budget request. More recommendations are expected when the consultants issue a final report this summer.
Since 2023, the AJC has reported on corruption, violence and dysfunction within the prison system. The problems included the arrest of a warden accused of helping prisoners run a lucrative criminal scheme, and the firing of hundreds of guards who tried to smuggle in contraband. Prisoners could pull off heists and operate drug rings from the inside, the AJC found.
The AJC has identified 62 people who died from suspected homicides in state prisons last year. The GDC, without providing details, has said it investigated 66 prisoner deaths deemed to be homicides in 2024. The tallies far surpass 2023’s record of at least 38 killings.
The GDC stopped releasing initial cause of death information in early 2024, as homicides continued to climb, making it difficult for the public to measure Georgia’s deaths in custody. The AJC filled the gap by using records and interviews to identify suspected homicides.
State Rep. Scott Holcomb, D- Atlanta, said it’s critical for the GDC to reveal what’s happening at its facilities especially as new resources have been committed. “This process will take years,” Holcomb said. “I’m focused on not just the money being spent, but also how, and the outcomes being achieved. To that end, there must be continued oversight and transparency along with regular updates as to conditions, staffing, and infrastructure – as well as the status of all the work in progress.”
High levels of staff vacancies
The AJC tracks prison staffing over time and the latest numbers show how challenging the situation continues to be.
As of March, more than 60% of the correctional officer positions were unfilled at 10 of the state’s 13 high-security prison facilities, according to GDC data obtained through the Georgia Open Records Act. Telfair State Prison was the most understaffed in the state, with 79% of the correctional officer jobs unfilled, leaving just 32 officers to work shifts at a prison that is supposed to have at least 153 officers.
Violent attacks can go unnoticed with such limited staffing. The AJC reported in August that a prisoner at Valdosta State Prison was beaten and tortured for hours by other inmates until he died. Video evidence was cited in warrants that charged 11 inmates in his death, but it’s unclear if any staff members observed the attack on Shane Griffith.
Now, Griffith’s family members have filed a notice of intent to sue the state, with that notice shedding even more light on the gruesome incident. The notice says Griffith was beaten, kicked, knocked out and awakened. He was beaten more and showered and then hit in the face with a pipe, the letter alleges. Inmates put a rope around his neck, dragged him around, burned him and made him lap up water like a dog, the notice alleges. They also jumped off a table onto him and he was dead when staff finally did breakfast rounds around 6:30 a.m., according to the notice.
The GDC declined to comment on Griffith’s case since litigation is pending.
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
‘We can’t get comfortable’
The agency thanked Kemp and the General Assembly on Friday after the spending plan was approved. “We are confident this budget will help us in maintaining our mission,” said Joan Heath, a spokesperson for the GDC.
Robertson, the senator who led the study committee last year, said it can take a while for the entire General Assembly to grasp some of the problems the state is facing and take them on.
“It starts out that we all feel like John the Baptist — at some point, we’re just a voice crying in the wilderness,” he said. But now, after all the reports and hours of testimony, he said lawmakers are on board with spending taxpayer dollars to deal with the prison system’s issues and he said that needs to continue.
“We can’t get comfortable,” Robertson said. One big spending increase, he said, isn’t going to fix the system.
“This problem is where everybody has to get in there, grab a shovel, and we’re going to be digging for a long time to get out of this hole.”
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