Nine years ago when the Department of Justice opened an investigation into violence inside Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) prisons, and four years ago when they expanded it, those of us incarcerated here rejoiced. It was as if the cavalry had finally arrived at the gates, when we’d all but given up hope that anyone was coming.
Since then we’ve learned better. Nearly eight months after the investigation findings were made public, nothing has happened. In some cases, worse than nothing has happened.
On October 1, 2024, the DOJ published its long-awaited report. Ninety-four pages detailing torture, assault, sexual slavery, starvation and all other manner of Eighth Amendment violations.
The DOJ advised GDC and the State of Georgia that legal action could begin in 49 days if substantial efforts were not made to correct the failures identified in the report. It’s been 233 days, and the most tangible of GDC’s efforts has been to issue us rubber spoons that can’t be sharpened into shanks.
No one has been arrested. No one has been fired. No one has been sued. GDC continues to withhold the cause-of-death data it’s legally required to include in its mortality reports. State legislators continue to approve GDC budget increases in the hope that the department will soon oversee even more prisons, and more people.
I suppose we should have known better, given how Eighth Amendment lawsuits against GDC have worked out in the past.
Walla*, a few decades into a life sentence at a medium-security GDC facility, was one of many prisoners who had the opportunity to speak with DOJ investigators while they were still gathering information. It seemed like the potential benefits were greater than the potential consequences.
“I got unassigned from my warehouse job as soon as I spoke with the DOJ investigators,” he told Filter. “I went out the next day in my usual way, thinking about all I needed to get done, but the staff member at the warehouse told me she couldn’t let me in. That I was being reassigned. Said she didn’t know why.”
Other people who spoke with investigators have subsequently reported parole denials, abrupt transfers, loss of job assignments and educational placements, and loss of personal property under questionable circumstances.
Some of these instances probably weren’t retaliation. Some of them probably were, but for something unrelated. Few people who took on the risk of speaking with the DOJ will ever get confirmation that whatever happened to them next wasn’t a coincidence, but the lack of closure would be easier to live with if anything they’d said had made a difference.
I suppose we should have known better, given how Eighth Amendment lawsuits against GDC have worked out in the past.
In 2019 GDC agreed to a settlement that required it to redress conditions in its maximum-security Special Management Unit, following a lawsuit that described staff “holding people in an extreme form of solitary confinement for years on end with no meaningful review and no clear way of getting out.” In April 2024, after six years of blithely ignoring its obligations, GDC was ordered to pay some fines.
Commissary prices went up that same week. SMU conditions appear to be the same.
*Name has been changed for source’s protection.
Show Comments