Decades ago when he first entered Georgia Department of Corrections custody, D* used to look forward to transfers. Prisoners with long sentences often spend the early years in some of the state’s more notorious higher-security institutions before eventually being reclassified as medium-custody.
“I was always glad to leave the hell I was in,” he told Filter, “hopeful that there was a better place ahead.”
If one is young and physically fit, transfers help the time pass faster. The business of getting settled at a new facility can keep one occupied for at least six months, same as it does for anyone outside prison when they move to a new town and change jobs or schools. But as time goes on, transfers become feared and dreaded.
Some transfers are requested. Some are not wanted, but at least expected, as they come following a disciplinary violation. But corrections departments also practice administrative transfers, usually called “population management” or “population redistribution,” that they subject us to without our input.
These transfers are traumatic. They happen without warning. Someone will come tell you to pack your things, and within minutes you’re saying goodbye to everything you’ve known. You’re shackled and put in a bus without knowing where the bus is going. Personal property is lost or stolen. Friends are not seen again for years, if ever.
It’s rare that anyone serves decades in the same prison. The only people who can expect any degree of reassurance that they won’t be suddenly shipped across the state at any moment are workers whose skills are, in the opinion of some senior supervisor, essential for institutional operations. Groundskeepers, kitchen workers, program and recreation aides are generally more likely to have their files tagged as excluded from the constant population redistribution that terrorizes the rest of us.
Meanwhile wardens, deputy wardens, captains and unit managers who are promoted to a post at a new facility are often able to bring with them a handful of prisoners who are great at certain tasks, which, depending on the circumstances, can good or bad news for the skilled prisoners in question.
“Hands down the safest prison in the state, [and] to maintain that culture the prison relies on one major component: Transfers.”
During his years at Walker State Prison near the Tennessee border, R* recalls few fights, no stabbings and no violent deaths. The culture is one of no gangs and no drugs.
“Hands down the safest prison in the state,” he said. “To maintain that culture the prison relies on one major component: Transfers. A person will find himself on the next bus to the deepest of South Georgia prisons for any … possession of tobacco or cell phone.”
Administration keeps most people at Walker three years or less. Competition for essential work assignments is fierce, since that’s the best shot at staying. The fear of being sent to one of the half-dozen state prisons known for violence is a powerful motivator.
Georgia can maintain this level of control at one prison, but not all of them. There has to be a slaughterhouse alternative to threaten people with to keep them in line. Valdosta, Macon, Calhoun, Dooly, Smith—these are names of prisons that send a cold knot of dread into the stomach of anyone hoping to live quietly.
As of June 2025, the 52,804 people in Georgia state prisons have on average been transferred 3.9 times. More than 20 percent of the population has been transferred more than five times.
“If I don’t [try to walk to chow and to medical appointments], my next transfer will be to [Augusta State Medical Prison] where many of my old friends went to die.”
Polo* has been at his current medium-security facility since Bostick State Prison closed in 2010. His health was already in decline even then, and for years Bostick had been where the state warehoused older prisoners so they could live in relative peace. Polo is in his 80s now, and over the past 15 years he’s come to rely on neighbors who know him and who, out of respect for his age, will help him take his laundry in and out, or bring him hot water for coffee. There’s a seat reserved for him at one of the TVs. He’s about as comfortable as he could hope to be.
“I make the effort to walk to chow and to medical for my meds and appointments, but that’s all I can do and it is sometimes too much,” he said. “But,” he added, wagging a crooked finger in the air, “if I don’t do that, my next transfer will be to [Augusta State Medical Prison] where many of my old friends went to die.”
Polo has come to terms with dying in prison, but he’d much rather spend his last days here in the environment that’s familiar to him, surrounded by people he knows rather than by strangers.
“A transfer is unthinkable. I can’t carry my property, so I would just have to abandon everything at the first change of buses,” he said. “Which wouldn’t matter, because the stress and depression would kill me before I got to wherever I was meant to go. What a way to go, shackled and chained on a transport wagon.”
There are few things the corrections industry hates more than the thought of prisoners organizing. This is always presented as a security concern, with the assumption that the only things we’ll organize are riots or gang activity. But really, what they don’t want is organizing for fair wages, safe living conditions, edible food or equitable medical care.
When people feel a sense of permanency, like the place they live is their home, they are motivated to make it better. Despite administration’s best efforts, communities do form in prison, and for many this is the first place they’re able to be a part of something like that. To plant a seed of sorts and see it grow.
The system’s use of constant transfers is short-sighted. It teaches us that we don’t have to take care of our communities. It would be much better rehabilitation to instead learn that it’s on us to help our neighbors, maintain common areas, deescalate violence. Transfers should be the exception, not the rule.
*Names have been changed to protect sources.
Image (cropped) of transport bus entering Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison via Georgia Department of Corrections/YouTube.