In a scathing report released Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Justice called out the Georgia Department of Corrections for violating the constitutional rights of prisoners and being “deliberately indifferent” to violent and unsafe conditions.
Hays State Prison in Trion was among the 17 facilities the DOJ visited in 2022 and 2023 as part of the investigation, which began in 2016.
The department also reviewed incident data produced from the state from Jan. 1, 2022, to April 26, 2023, that covered Hays and 23 other prisons housing incarcerated men or women at the close and medium security levels.
“GDC uses segregation for improper purposes when responding to threats of violence or incidents of harm. Specifically, we found numerous instances where victims of sexual assault or other violence were placed in segregation in inhumane conditions for an extended or indefinite period… (One) incarcerated individual was placed in a suicide-watch cell at Hays after he was assaulted, suffering a cut to his eye. All his property had been stolen by other incarcerated individuals and he was held naked in the suicide cell with no mattress or blanket. After he continuously beat on the suicide cell window, staff moved him to administrative segregation for refusing housing,” the report states.
Georgia has almost 50,000 people incarcerated in 34 state operated prisons and four private prisons and it ranks fourth in the nation for the number of people incarcerated.
Federal investigators canvassed the state’s medium and close security prisons. What they found was significant understaffing and systemic deficiencies in security as well as housing and prison classification — all of which, the report stated, led to widespread violence.
“Our findings report lays bare the horrific and inhumane conditions that people are confined to inside Georgia’s state prison system,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “Our statewide investigation exposes long-standing, systemic violations stemming from complete indifference and disregard to the safety and security of people Georgia holds in its prisons. People are assaulted stabbed, raped and killed or left to languish inside facilities that are woefully understaffed.”
The DOJ stated that gangs exert significant influence in Georgia prisons and also determined that gangs exert improper influence on prison life without retribution.
“Inmates are maimed and tortured, relegated to an existence of fear, filth and not so benign neglect. These dangerous conditions not only harm the people Georgia incarcerates — it places prison employees and the broader community at risk,” Clarke said. “The Justice Department is committed to using its authority to bring about humane conditions of confinement that are consistent with contemporary standards of decency and respect for basic human dignity.”
The report stated that the DOC also is also specifically failing to protect inmates who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex from harm caused by sexual violence or abuse.
“Individuals who are LGBTI are subjected to unreasonable risk of harm from sexual abuse in Georgia prisons due to inadequate sexual safety screening and classification practices, problematic and ineffective housing assignments, and other systemic deficiencies,” a DOJ statement read.
The report states the DOC is violating inmates’ Eighth Amendment rights.
“Individuals incarcerated by the Georgia Department of Corrections should not be subjected to life threatening violence and other forms of severe deprivation while serving their prison terms,” U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia Ryan K. Buchanan said in a media statement. “Our constitution requires humane conditions in prisons that at a minimum, ensure that people in custody are safe. The findings of the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act investigation of the Georgia Department of Corrections reveal grave and diffuse failures to safeguard the men and women housed in its facilities, including disturbing and increasing frequencies of deaths among incarcerated people.”
The state has been working to come to grips with conditions inside Georgia prisons. The corrections department hired a consultant in June to conduct an assessment of the state’s prisons, while both the Georgia House and Senate have formed study committees to focus on prison conditions and consider funding recommendations aimed at improving safety.
Georgia Commissioner of Corrections Tyrone Oliver told a Senate study committee in August that reduced staffing and aging infrastructure are contributing to an influx of contraband that is driving an increase in criminal activity inside the prisons.
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