In October 2024, the Department of Justice published the long-awaited findings of its investigation(s) into violence inside Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) prisons, including one detail that those of us incarcerated here have been talking about for at least 10 or 20 years: A lot of the locks on the doors here are broken. Rather than fix them, GDC puts padlocks on the doors. GDC is not supposed to do that.
“This practice exposes incarcerated people to an unacceptable risk of harm in the event of a fire or other emergency, because of the additional time it would take to evacuate,” the DOJ report stated. “GDC’s staffing shortages and inoperative fire safety systems (e.g., fire detectors and alarms) further exacerbate that risk … In some prisons, entire systems or most alarms are nonoperational due to GDC’s failure to fix them.”
The DOJ went on to note that areas without working fire alarms weren’t being regularly checked by staff as required, and that the person in charge of the fire safety system lacked “sufficient authority to make necessary improvements.” GDC did not respond to Filter’s inquiries.
“[I]ncarcerated people are able to manipulate cell-door locks, damage door hinges … exit cells unauthorized, and even exit housing units,” the DOJ continued. “One warden told DOJ that door locks in his large facility are frequently ‘popped’; a captain at the same facility said that incarcerated people pop the locks of their cells ‘all the time,’ and sometimes of the housing units.”
What happens if there’s a fire? “Oh, we’ll die,” Jerky said.
Jerky* has been in GDC custody for 40-plus years, but before he was locked up he was a professional locksmith. Not a skillset he advertises to GDC, but among the prison population he’s known for his artistry with the sort of lock-manipulation the DOJ is describing. A leading expert on the subject of how GDC is and isn’t locking its doors.
These days, GDC uses steel barrel bolt locks welded to the outside of each door. Big, ugly, KISS (“Keep It Simple Stupid”) locks that are not supposed to have padlocks on them. Jerky calls them “Kiss of Death” locks. It would take at least five years and something like $77 million to get the original primary locks working the way they’re designed to. Padlocks are cheaper, but that means staff are carrying around—or trying to find—a lot more keys than they were before. What happens if there’s a fire, you ask?”
“Oh, we’ll die,” Jerky said. “I have no faith whatsoever that any guards are going to rush into a smoke-filled living unit and wrestle 25 padlocks off 25 doors.”
Even if they did, we’d all run out of air while they fumbled with the impossible number of keys on their keychains. Maybe they’d get a couple of the lower doors open, but everyone on the upper range is gone. Fires are about a bimonthly occurrence here by the way, usually due to someone setting their mattress alight.
When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived and Jerky realized his 1,200-person facility was being staffed by three officers, he immediately went to work on his own cell door.
The Kiss of Death locks are relatively recent.
When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived and Jerky realized his 1,200-person facility was being staffed by three officers, he immediately “went to work” on his own cell door. It was the kind with a swinging door, not a sliding one, and disabling those ones was simpler. Wedge a broom handle in the hinged side and push hard—as if trying to shut the door—and you can warp the hinges. After that the door won’t shut anymore; too wide for the frame.
This maneuver isn’t viable for everyone. You have to be willing to live with a front door that doesn’t lock, and not everyone has that kind of relationship with their neighbors. For those who prefer to retain the option of locking their cell door, Jerky said the simplest way to manipulate the lock is to just jam it.
“Either wedge the bolt back in the lock,” he explained, “or fill the hole it goes into with paper. Then if you want the door to lock, just remove the jam.”
In the depths of pandemic lockdowns, many of us went months never seeing anyone on night shift. During the day the wardens and captains and lieutenants would make rounds, and notice all the open doors with broken locks. Jerky recalls them standing around watching the maintenance crews unjam the locks and hammer the hinges back into shape.
But as soon as they left, Jerky and other prisoners with similar talents would go right back to work. With no security to rush him, his methods became more sophisticated. Most people who successfully pop out a lock either make it into a shank or just throw it away; Jerky opened them up to look at the insides. He made screwdrivers, picks and wrenches to dismantle the locks into their separate pieces, and then he used the pieces to make better tools.
Lock disassembly was a good hustle, for a while at least. Do it properly and you could render a lock essentially decorative.
“You get inside the cylinder and dump the little springs and cotter pins that make a key necessary; then anything that fits in the rotor is the key,” Jerky explained. “Put the lock back together, and it appears perfectly fine.”
Staff didn’t notice at first, because their keys still worked, because any key that wasn’t too big to put into the lock would have worked. But eventually they noticed that they weren’t having to try a dozen different keys at each door before finding the one that opened it. That or someone snitched. Next came the Kiss of Death locks, currently used throughout the prison system.
Jerky talks about the lock situation with recent transfers from facilities all over the state as they come in, and the barrel bolts seem to be on every cell door as well as on most of the living unit fire escapes. There aren’t enough padlocks to go around though, so staff decides which dorms and cells stay unlocked and which are less fortunate.
Jerky said what with the semi-regular fires and the fact that everyone’s locked down at least once a day, the saving grace so far has been the trustees—prisoners considered trustworthy enough to do jobs that require giving them more access more to the facility. Not the official GDC-designated trustees, though; Jerky is referring to the gang members whom shift supervisors have been letting out to conduct count and deliver mail. They can access every living unit. Every day after inspection they go to each locked-down dorm and free one friend, and from there everyone can get off lockdown until the next day’s inspection when the doors are locked again. Heroes, but they don’t represent a long-term solution.
“It’s just a matter of time,” Jerky said. “The Kiss of Death locks are going to be responsible for 100 dead convicts one night. Then there will be noise, and studies, and findings, and no one held accountable.”
*Name has been changed to protect source
Image (cropped) via United States Department of Justice
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