The numbers are available in the Board’s latest annual report, released earlier in January. After the requisite glossy bios reminding us that there’s a new addition to the Board and that all five members still have backgrounds in law enforcement, we eventually learn that 20,364 people were eligible for parole in 2025. Not a good reflection on GDC’s rehabilitative programming that the Board saw fit to release so few.

Nothing about this is decarceration. Per Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) annual reports the prison population grew by about 684 people in 2025. To those of us inside GDC’s prisons these are not numbers, but human beings sleeping on floors and in mop closets and in shower stalls.

Parole is the mechanism that could fix this, or at least provide substantial relief. The Board constantly references the imperative of public safety and yet, as suicides and homicides continue to rise inside GDC, not once do these reports ever reference the safety of the incarcerated population.

Proponents of mass incarceration characterize parole as if it opens the floodgates for people who are somehow cheating the system. But in addition to the fact that the system considered them parole-eligible, the people being released were about to be released anyway.

An analysis by Georgia Prisoners’ Speak found that in 2024, nearly one in four people granted parole were within six months of their release date. To be sure, those months make a big difference to prisoners and their families, but the Board gets to tout the statistic that 73 percent of Georgia parolees were “successful” in 2025, comparing favorably to the national average of 60 percent. Lifers who do make parole have exceptionally low recidivism rates, but no one seems to consider this reason to release more of them.

The Georgia Prisoners’ Speak analysis also indicates that almost all the lifers currently out on parole have been out for a very long time—estimating that the state has only 17 lifers out on parole whose convictions likely took place within the past 20 years. Per the new annual report, in 2025 the Board considered 2,277 parole-eligible lifers for release, and released 123 of them.

Nearly 200,000 people in the United States are serving life sentences, and nearly half of those are eligible for parole. But parole is essentially a bygone era.

More than a dozen states don’t even pretend to offer parole. Those that do are steadily pulling it out of reach of those of us with life sentences.

In the early 1990s when I began my sentence, lifers were eligible for parole after seven years. By the time I’d served seven years the bar had been raised to 14 years, and by the time I’d served 14 years it had been raised to 30 years.

Since the 1970s, Colorado has progressively raised lifers’ parole eligibility from 10 years to 20 years to 40 years to effectively removing parole for life sentences entirely. Louisiana has charted almost the same trajectory. Tennessee requires a minimum of 51 years served before parole—the longest of any state.

Meanwhile, each state’s parole or other executive clemency processes are overseen by a group not too dissimilar from Georgia’s Parole Board: a small handful of retired sheriffs and district attorneys who aren’t beholden to much if any transparency about their decisionmaking. 

It should not be lost in all this that parole is hardly a mercy. It is dragging vulnerable people to the brink of human endurance and then kicking them back out into an unfamiliar world with $35, and often a one-way bus ticket back to prison intake.

Top image (cropped) via Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles. Inset graphic via Filter.

The post The Last Days of Parole appeared first on Filter.

On November 21, the Board and the Georgia Department of Agriculture hosted the state’s Turkey Pardon Ceremony. The five-member Board was represented by Chair Joyette Holmes and Executive Director Christopher Barnette. There were actually two turkeys: Tom and Jerry. Everyone seemed to find these names very funny.

Holmes, holding a large framed document addressed (presumably) to Tom, said that the board had been able to review Tom’s investigation and all the documents sent on his behalf, and decided to grant the pardon.

“Tom has lived a law-abiding life, since having his sentence previously commuted and being released from the initial farm where he was,” Holmes said before turning to the turkey on her other side. “I know you see Jerry over here and you’re thinking, ‘Well, where is Jerry’s pardon?’ Jerry has a couple more documents to submit.” 

Everyone laughed. Stupid Jerry. No pardon for Jerry. Why don’t we actually remand Jerry to farm custody for not being able to figure out the electronic-only application. Hahahaha.

They couldn’t even bring themselves to pardon two turkeys. One was just there so they could make a point. There were also jokes about senators needing to stay on the Board’s good side in case their help would be needed later. Incarceration is a punchline.

It should be noted that Tom and Jerry weren’t standing during the 12-minute ceremony. Two handlers were hugging the enormous, strangely placid birds to their chests the whole time.

Pardons are for people who have completed their sentence, including parole. They’re nice but don’t actually expunge one’s record or confer any specific material change. Parole, on the other hand, allows one to leave prison and serve the rest of the sentence under supervision in the community.

In 2024 a total of 19,328 GDC prisoners were considered for parole. This means all had met the statutory requirements for release, including minimum time served. Only 5,443 were granted parole. 

Though the Board has guidelines for its decision-making process of whether to grant or deny someone parole, it doesn’t have to apply them to lifers. In 2024 the Board denied parole to 1,953 parole-eligible lifers, and allowed 93 to go home.

The Board has lately been posting a lot of photos to social media, showing the members engaged in field trips around the state. Advocates and families are sick of seeing them. So much time showing the public how great and important their work is. So much investment in the propaganda that citizens must be protected from themselves. So few people being pardoned or paroled.

In 30-plus years of incarceration, I’ve never received a parole denial on time. After eight years of waiting for a decision that’s then a month or more overdue, the most you’ll get out of a counselor is, The Board’s running behind on its caseloads; just be patient.

While Board members make around $160,000 a year, GDC prisoners fight over food, clothes, shelter and any other basics that the state is supposed to provide people in its custody.

I didn’t want Tom to get pardoned. I wanted to eat him.

Top image (cropped) via Georgia Department of Agriculture/YouTube. Inset graphic via Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles.

The post The Georgia Parole Board Pardoned a Turkey appeared first on Filter.

Less than a year later, we’re already up to 10,232 GDC lifers. This includes the 34 people serving death sentences; the 7,995 people serving life sentences; and 2,203 serving LWOP. Hundreds of people are additionally serving decades-long de facto life sentences.

At the end of 2012, the year the GDC prison population peaked at around 54,000 people, there were 8,097 lifers—95 serving death sentences; 7,220 serving life sentences; and 782 serving LWOP. People often point out that the GDC population has marginally decreased in the past decade, but never mention that during that time the LWOP population has swelled nearly 300 percent.

In 2012 Georgia enacted legislation that was supposed to slow GDC’s population growth, by diverting people with nonviolent convictions to drug courts and the like rather than the prison system. “The expectation is that over time,” GDC stated as recently as April, “these measures will reduce the percentage of first-time non-violent incarcerants in prison.”

But of course, now all GDC talks about is the unprecedented proportion of people with violent convictions the department is tasked with incarcerating.

“What we are seeing in Georgia is a shift in the makeup of the prison population,” GDC Commissioner Tyrone Oliver told Justice Trends in March. “More individuals entering the system have histories of violent offenses. Currently, 96 percent of those inside of our 35 state prisons have been convicted of this type of crime. The average length of sentence is about 42 years. With a total population of 50,000, that presents unique challenges … Because of this, we are moving toward single-man cells in new facilities. The goal is to reduce violence and make it easier for staff to manage the population.”

Oliver is molding some statistics to better fit a narrative—for instance, about 35,000 people are inside GDC’s state prisons while the rest are in private prisons or county jails or transition centers—because of course the goal isn’t to reduce violence. The goal is to build new facilities. Someone has to fill them. If not enough new people are coming into the system, the old ones will simply have to stay longer.

“Violent conviction” is frequently misleading. While many people are here due to unequivocally violent actions that they themselves committed, I couldn’t begin to count the number of men I’ve personally met in counseling groups over the decades who have transcripts showing they were in the car when someone else pulled the trigger. One murder results in multiple life sentences; plea bargains people take to avoid a possible LWOP sentence at trial. Never mind that research consistently shows that lengthy sentences don’t accomplish anything and that lifers released on parole pose very little risk to the community.

Meanwhile, there are now 1,762 people in GDC who’ve been incarcerated for more than 30 years. Of that number, 1,156 including myself are people sentenced to life with the possibility of parole. If we were released on parole, as the system is purportedly designed for us to be, that’d save the state of Georgia upwards of $27 million per year. The state has its own plans: Lock everyone in single-occupancy cells for 23 hours a day, 365 days a year, in the 100-cell block living units of newly constructed prisons.

“Looking ahead, infrastructure will remain a critical area,” Oliver told Justice Trends. “Here in Georgia we’ve done a 60-month projection of our prison population and found that in the next five years, we’ll have at least 1,300 new individuals coming into our system serving life without parole, bringing our number to approximately 3,500 total. That means we have to think about what’s needed long-term … and how we manage a population that isn’t going anywhere.”

Top image and inset graphics (cropped) via Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles

The post Georgia Prisons Now Hold Over 10,000 Lifers as Parole Crisis Deepens appeared first on Filter.

Under HB 123, a defendant’s intellectual disability will only have to be demonstrated by a “preponderance of evidence,” a more realistic standard. The bill passed almost unanimously, receiving a standing ovation from legislators and a great deal of praise from the media. It was sent to Governor Brian Kemp (R) on April 8. He has until May 18 to sign or veto, or do neither and let it become law without his signature.

If HB 123 does become law, then when a defendant is deemed intellectually disabled they will receive a life sentence in Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) custody. Which raises the question: If Georgia can’t sentence intellectually disabled people to death because that would be cruel and unusual punishment, why can it sentence them to life?

An extensive federal investigation into the rising deaths inside GDC prisons found that the conditions here violate the Eighth Amendment. Obviously one can appreciate the difference between being executed by the state and being strangled to death by one’s cellmate, as well as the fact that the death penalty is unjust. But locking intellectually disabled prisoners in this environment until they die doesn’t seem justifiable either, if it’s to shield them from cruel and unusual punishment.

Most lifers with the possibility of parole aren’t getting out any sooner than those without parole.

The original version of the bill proposed only that if a defendant is found to be intellectually disabled, then the “death penalty shall not be imposed and the court shall sentence the defendant to imprisonment for life.” As the bill worked its way through the Senate, an addition was tacked onto the end of that sentence: “… or imprisonment for life without possibility of parole.” Apparently to make prosecutors feel better about it.

Yet there is less and less difference between the two sentences. 

When I began my sentence in the early 1990s the mandatory minimum for a life sentence for was seven years, though no one was expecting to actually parole out that soon. In 1995 it was raised to 14 years. In 2006 it was raised to 30 years. Each new minimum isn’t supposed to apply to people whose “crime commit date” predated it then, but ask all of us here who’ve been parole-eligible since the ’90s how that’s working out.

More than 20 percent of Georgia’s prison population is now serving a life sentence of some kind, and most lifers with the possibility of parole aren’t getting out any sooner than those without parole.

Georgia’s “malice murder” law exists to justify life and death sentences alike by saying that the defendant’s actions “show an abandoned and malignant heart.” It is the state that has repeatedly shown that moral turpitude, in its treatment of the 52,603 people currently in its custody.

Prosecutors inclined to pursue the death penalty against intellectually disabled defendants don’t have to worry about those them getting out of GDC alive unless parole is removed from the equation. To parole out they’d first have to survive 30 years in here, or whatever the new mandatory minimum is up to by then, as surviving becomes more and more difficult to do. But they wouldn’t actually make parole if they did survive long enough; prosecutors know that. Hope is what’s being removed from the equation, that’s all.

Image (cropped) via Georgia Department of Corrections/YouTube

The post Georgia’s Death Penalty Reform Bill Has an Odd View on Life Sentences appeared first on Filter.

The bill pertains to registrants trying to move to a new county, potentially as they’re getting off the SOR. As of March 26, it appears to be in the Senate Judiciary Committee. It proposes a handful of brief changes to the state code covering SOR, mainly the following:

“Such petition [for removal from SOR] shall be served on the district attorney of the jurisdiction where the petition is filed, the sheriff of the county where the petition is filed, the sheriff of the county where the individual resides, the sheriff of the county of intended residence, and the chief superior court judge of the county of intended residence.”

In Georgia, registrants are what we call “booted up.” It means that one way or another, on paper our sentence is always the maximum sentence. Even if you only have to do five years in prison, your actual sentence is probably 15 or 20 years, with the remainder being served under community supervision. In my case, now that I’m off parole I begin my 16 years on probation.

We don’t become eligible to apply for termination from the registry until we’ve completed the entirety of our sentence—plus an additional five-year waiting period, during which we still need to have zero run-ins with the law. And that represents an improvement; up until 2024 the waiting period was 10 years.

Currently, Georgia law states that the court will hold a hearing for a petition for registry removal if one is requested by the petitioner. But under the proposed changes, the sheriff and chief judge of the intended county of residence could also request a hearing. And of course it won’t be because they want to welcome the petitioner into the new county or support their removal from the registry.

It’s also important to note that notifying local sheriff’s department of your movements isn’t as banal as it sounds. The deputies you have to interact with are, more likely than not, going to be nasty. They hate you on sight, and they know you have no recourse no matter what they do.

Image via Sacramento County Probation Department

The post Georgia Suggests Making Sex Offender Registry Removal More Confusing appeared first on Filter.

My mind raced. What did I do? I can’t go back to prison. I can’t ever go back to prison. I won’t make it out alive this time.

The person on the other end of the call said he needed my personal cell phone number. When I hesitated, he rattled off my home address, my parole officer’s name and my ID number from the decade I spent in Tennessee Department of Correction custody. My coworkers were watching. Shaking, I told him my number and said a silent prayer that I would not go back to prison.

Next he called me on my cell phone and said an officer had been dispatched to my work address. As the initial shock wore off and I began to regain my senses, I asked for his badge number. He said something fake-sounding and repeated that an officer was on his way to arrest me right now. I gathered my courage and replied that I’d be waiting out front with my lawyer. 

“Fuck you!” he screamed. “Child molester! Go to hell!” Then he hung up.

A few months later, I picked up a call on my work number from a Lieutenant Robert Morrison of the Davidson County Sheriff’s office, who informed me that I’d missed a DNA sample appointment that morning. This time I asked for his badge number right away. He hung up. I called him back and asked if this was a good number for my attorney to reach him at. He hung up again. 

If you’re one of the approximately 800,000 people in the United States on a sex offender registry (SOR) then information that’s normally private, like your address, is publicly searchable. Anyone can look you up and call you at work saying they have a warrant for your arrest.

I’ll always regret that I hurt the people I loved the most. I also want the chance to redefine myself. And I want some privacy.

In 2018 Tim Huff, who is also on Tennessee’s SOR, received a call similar to mine. But in his case, he was told that in order to clear the warrant and not go back to prison he needed to deposit $400 into a Bitcoin account.

Cryptocurrency scams, and other kind of scams threatening legal action, are fairly common. But they’re especially common for people on SOR. 

On December 11, 2024, Jerry Sherrill picked up the phone to someone saying this was a contact call, he was in SOR noncompliance for failing to update his DNA and photo, and there was a warrant out for his arrest.

“They were quite convincing,” he told Filter. “Kept me on the phone so I couldn’t call my parole officer to verify any of this. Before I knew it they had sent me a Green Dot receipt; then I knew.”

They got him for $1,700. When he filed a complaint, the investigator who met with him said scams like that happen a lot. They’ve even used my name before, Sherrill recalled the investigator saying. Last week they got someone for $2,000.

I’ve never been required to pay fees via Bitcoin, but it’s not that much of a stretch.

Stereotypes about people on SOR prompt plenty of strangers to make these kinds of calls in their spare time, but that’s not the only reason we’re obvious targets.

I’ve never been required to pay my SOR fees via Bitcoin, but it’s not that much of a stretch. I regularly pay fees in cash. Armed officers enter my home without warning whenever they want. I’ve picked up calls from unknown numbers at 9 pm to have someone I’ve never heard of tell me they want to do a video search of my home, and it was legit.

If you say No to something that looks like a scam, and it was an actual SOR requirement, then you’ve pissed off the people who control your entire life. So when strangers call telling you to pay up or you go back to prison, you have to take that seriously.

After Huff sent the $400, he drove to two different sheriffs’ offices looking for the officer who’d called him, to make sure there really wasn’t anything he was supposed to do.

“Both places said, Sorry, they don’t work here. It sounds like you got scammed.“

Top image via Ohio Department of Commerce. Inset image via Office of Sex Offender Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering and Tracking.

The post No One Prepares You for the Sex Offender Registry Phone Scams appeared first on Filter.

The situation has been precarious from the start. The first time a Department of Community Supervision (DCS) officer stopped by the house, Ben’s brother did what many people who use drugs instinctively do when a cop knocks unexpectedly, and hid. Fortunately the officer was inclined to leave a note: Call to set a day for inspection prior to parole. 

On parole, Ben will be subject to DCS stopping by for random searches whenever they want. He has a documented history of substance use, which DCS is obviously aware of. He isn’t willing to gamble his freedom on officers never suspecting that someone in the house uses crack. The fact that Ben’s in recovery doesn’t matter; he doesn’t have to use any drugs in order for his parole to be revoked over paraphernalia. So he’s decided on a pragmatic solution: Send his brother to jail.

“My brother is going to go to the same rehab program I did,” Ben told Filter. “I’ll drop a dime on him  … let him sober up in county. I got no choice.” 

In the wake of being booked into county jail, people lose everything. Cars. Furniture. Clothes. If the cops don’t take it, civilians will.

Ben’s logic may bend a bit in his favor, but it makes an uncomfortable amount of sense. He has no other release address, and can’t be released from GDC custody without one. If he goes back to prison he may never come out; his release date, without parole, is still a few decades away. So staying with his brother while his brother’s actively using isn’t an option, and neither is staying anywhere else.

Meanwhile, over the past few years his brother’s odds of a drug possession arrest seemed to have been increasing, and if that happens Ben needs to already be living with him. If he’s not, there will be no one to watch the house, and that’s not an option either.

In the wake of being booked into county jail, people lose everything. Cars. Furniture. Clothes. If the cops don’t take it, civilians will. Even the smallest household necessities get carried away on the waves of, Well, it’s not like they’re going to be using it now.

“It has been nerve-racking just holding my breath that he would still have the house when I make parole,” Ben said. “I’m down to the wire now… either I save us both or we both fall.”

So the best option Ben sees is that his brother is arrested while Ben is living with him, but it doesn’t happen at home. As long as it’s not there, or his car, there’s no reason GDC and DCS would hear about it. His brother won’t bond out; there’s no one left to post the bail. Conceivably he might be forced into abstinence during a stint in county jail, and the issue of the living together wouldn’t come up until it was his brother’s turn to have his release address inspected for suitability. They might let him live with someone who’d been convicted of a felony since it’s his house and their convictions weren’t related. By then house would have no drugs or paraphernalia, and they both move forward.It’s the kind of rationale that makes sense if you’ve learned from experience that all roads lead to prison.

“The thought of coming back to prison will keep me sober,” Ben said. “Prison saved me. It will save my brother as well.”

GDC Fiscal Report circa 2000

A parole revocation didn’t necessarily mean returning to prison. In the late 1990s, GDC often preferred that parolees—“especially those with drug problems”—go to a Parole Revocation Center (PRC). 

In 2000 the state made a huge push to add thousands of prison beds, and thousands more “alternative beds” including at PRC. They were sort of their own diversion programs, in that parolees were diverted from going back to prison for years by incarcerating them in a PRC program for months. There were several back then. If a six-month substance use program wasn’t enough, “revoked parolees needing long-term substance recovery treatment” were sent to Homerville PRC. Whitworth PRC was touted as a “specialized, one of a kind center for parole revocators.” 

These programs saw a lot of parolees who’d been doing well in all the ways that really mattered—housing, employment, reporting to their parole officer on time—but caught a technical violation. Perhaps they were caught driving without insurance, or stopped at a DUI checkpoint sober, but after curfew. Many parolees could wait in county jail until bed space opened up at a PRC, go work the program there for a couple of months, and be released back into the community on parolee status as before. A couple of months is still more than enough time to lose everything, but it beats losing everything and also going back into the prison system for years or decades.

Today PRC exist in name, popping up on the occasional bit of paperwork mapping out the GDC facilities division, but the state of Georgia no longer operates any. GDC fiscal reports indicate there was one left in 2017, and haven’t mentioned them since. The cost of incarcerating someone in a PRC program was the same as housing them in the prison system, give or take a few cents per day. But as “tough on crime” politics became more popular, PRC fell by the wayside. If your parole is revoked, no matter the reason, you can expect to max out your sentence.

Name has been changed for source’s protection

Image (cropped) via Georgia Department of Corrections

The post Parole Violations Didn’t Always Mean Prison. They Sent Us Somewhere Else. appeared first on Filter.

In November 2023, the Tennessee Board of Parole denied his case and told him they’ll review it again in five years. This is the time period that’s expected these days, according to everyone I’ve spoken with at South Central.

In October, Richmond’s 14-year-old daughter Ionna was diagnosed with B-cell lymphoblastic leukemia. By Thanksgiving she’d been airlifted to a pediatric intensive care unit, where doctors medically induced a coma. Richmond’s wife, Jawanna, lost her job due to having to take so much time off. The hospital where Ionna will be for the duration of her treatment is about two-and-a-half hours from their home, so they need to relocate and have no means to do so. Even if the Board did decide to grant parole in 2028, Richmond’s family can’t afford to wait that long.

“It’s already a challenge raising your daughters and supporting them through a telephone line,” Richmond told Filter. “Knowing you’re release-eligible, and have done the things they’ve asked you to do.”

Douglas and Jawanna have written to the Board, the governor, TDOC administration and a string of legislators requesting compassionate release, but in Tennessee such a process doesn’t exist. And while there are a few pathways to early release from TDOC, none of them appear to consider urgent circumstances like what Richmond’s family is currently facing.

Douglas and Jawanna Richmond

Ionna Richmond and her sister, Loah Richmond, in November

Richmond’s 2023 parole denial was due in part to what a Board representative described to Filter as “substantial risk [he] would not conform to the conditions of release.” In early 2024 Richmond appealed this as being in error, since TDOC had classified his recidivism risk as low. After the appeal was dismissed he filed a civil suit against the Board, but the court dismissed it stating that he hadn’t properly verified his identity when submitting the documents.

After Ionna’s diagnosis he filed a motion to reconsider, attaching various medical records including a statement from their pediatric hematologist-oncologist that “parental involvement is imperative” to treatment. But the court upheld its decision.

In early November the Board suggested that Richmond petition for executive clemency, meaning plead his case to the governor. Board members screen the petitions and make recommendations, but ultimately the governor has final authority to issue commutations and end someone’s sentence early.

Richmond submitted that petition November 18. Board representatives told Filter on December 23 that the petition is currently under review. But clemency petitions, which encompass pardons and exonerations in addition to commutations, are reviewed in the order they’re received, and unlike some other states Tennessee has no process in place to expedite them. Jawanna was told it will be three to six months before they hear anything. Out of the hundreds of petitions for commutation filed each year, only a handful are granted.

A Board representative noted to Filter that Richmond could request a medical furlough, wherein he could be released temporarily to visit Ionna. But the chemotherapy regimen she’s begun is expected to take two-and-a-half years; the situation requires more than a visit.

Though rarely successful, in federal prisons requests for compassionate release can be made to the warden. The warden can then make a recommendation to the director of the Bureau of Prisons, similar to how the Board of Parole makes recommendations to the governor. But there is no state equivalent of this program for someone in Richmond’s position. TDOC Commissioner Frank Strada did not respond to Filter’s inquiry as to whether he would have the authority to grant Richmond some form of early release.

“Since finding out I have cancer, my life has been really scary and painful,” Ionna wrote to South Central Warden Grady Perry in November. “I have to go to the hospital a lot, and the treatments make me feel sick and tired. My mom is doing her best to take care of me, but I know it’s hard for her too. I miss my dad, and I know having him here would make me feel stronger and less alone.”

The family has received no response from prison administrators, despite sending multiple letters.

In my three decades of incarceration in Tennessee, I’ve known many people who took plea deals because they were led to believe they’d get parole long before they served the full sentence. What they are not told is how common it is for people to serve far more than the percentage of time they expected. The Board members, most of whom have backgrounds in law enforcement, are free to tell parole-eligible people like Richmond to come back every five years for the remainder of their sentence. There are no clear benefits to keeping Richmond in prison. There are clear benefits to letting him go home.

Images via Jawanna Richmond

The post TN Prisons Don’t Expedite Early Release. What If It’s an Emergency? appeared first on Filter.

On December 13, the Georgia Senate Supporting Safety and Welfare of All Individuals in Department of Corrections Facilities Study Committee held its fifth and final meeting. The committee was created in February to “examine current issues impacting” GDC and recommend potential solutions.

Since then, some 150 people including eight officers have been arrested in connection to the same contraband operation; the first recorded incident of gun violence inside a GDC facility added two deaths to the unknown total of homicides and suicides; and a Department of Justice investigation found GDC in violation of the Constitution.

The committee voted on recommendations and will include them in its forthcoming report about  whatever it’s supposed to have learned over the past 10-plus months. A lightly condensed version of these recommendations is as follows:

– Create an independent prison oversight bureau? No.

Alas, Senator Randy Robertson (R) cautioned that this would be too dangerous. He sees it time and again: civilians simply gaining too much unchecked power over law enforcement officers.

– Increase mental health services? Yes.

…by way of shopping the idea around to private contractors. Leaning into privatization of services like telecommunications or health care was also a recommendation. Where the state can find no more fat in the budget to trim, for-profit vendors will always be there to find more.

– Invest in corrections officer retention? Yes.

Via pay increases (which they’ve already gotten) but apparently not via de-escalation training (since they’ve already gotten it).

“Instead of us steadily talking about increasing the staff in Georgia Department of Corrections, why have we not visited how we can decrease the number of people who are incarcerated?” Alicia Teague, chief development officer for the National Incarceration Association, asked during her testimony. “I truly believe that if the Georgia Department of Corrections did an audit of every single person incarcerated, you would find quite a few people that are eligible for parole, that are maybe sick, elderly, they pose no more risk to offend than any of us in this room right now.”

– Offer people in custody more programming? No.

It seems this is not necessary, as all the educational and recreational opportunities we could ever need are already here. If you find them, please tell us.

– Increase oversight of the performance incentive credit program? No.

Not applicable, since these recommendations are aimed solely at GDC. Performance incentive credits, and anything else that’s in theory meant to facilitate early release for those of us who are eligible, are the purview of the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles. Which has no connection to any of this whatsoever.

“The overcrowding and the violence within our prisons harms everyone,” said Tiffany Johnson of Georgia Prisons Exposed during her testimony. “We are asking, please allow those that were sentenced under the 14- to seven-year law term to get their parole. Some of them have—you know, they work in the prison, they help with labor, they save you guys so much money. Allow them to be released … the system needs to be changed from the top all the way down, starting with [GDC Commissioner Tyrone] Oliver.”

At which point Sen. Robertson said it was time to move on.

– Convert all existing prisons, and build all future prisons, to be high-security single-person cells? Yes.

“Senator Robertson has stated a preference for 23/7 solitary cells,” W*, serving a life sentence and looking for a reason to be optimistic about the hearing, told Filter. “Damn man, at least read a book on what has failed to work in the past before reinventing the wheel with the same mistakes. A single cell is a tolerable living condition—if one can get out of it for eight to 12 hours a day.”

GDC has been salivating in anticipation of the day it can effectively hand over all operations to AI. It’ll be a lot easier once we’re all living in solitary confinement.

“We kept single cells at Reidsville,” Doug*, incarcerated since the ’70s, recalled of Georgia State Prison. “Until the ’90s when prisoner population doubled … Building singles only promises more prisoners will be double- and triple-celled in the future.”

Georgia State Prison closed in 2022. The state is now working on putting hundreds of millions of dollars toward building a new high-security prison in the same county.

– Continue pushing for cell phone jammers? Yes.

A foregone conclusion if there ever was one. Jammers are prohibited by federal law and stand to interfere with reception of 911 calls. But that’s a small price to pay if they stops people from using contraband cell phones in order, say, to leak footage of this hell hole to social media or call their child on their birthday.

– Increase oversight of wardens? Yes.

Not that this will amount to anything, unless we do away with the current model of stratifying prisoners by security classification. If the prisoners who are most vulnerable to assault and extortion were no longer housed with those best positioned to do the assaulting and extorting, the power dynamics at each facility might be able to evolve a bit.

*Names have been changed for sources’ protection

Image via Georgia Department of Corrections

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One of the first things that happens upon entry into the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) men’s prison system is a group delousing. After a couple of hours shackled on the transport bus, prisoners arriving at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison (Jackson) are taken to a shower room, told to strip, and collectively sprayed down with disinfectant.

Next everyone is handed a towel and uniform and then taken to a room where eight or 10 prisoners being housed at Jackson long-term—as opposed to just being processed through it for intake—are each standing at a barber chair. Everyone with hair longer than three inches is getting it cut.

Christy was forced to take the group delousing shower when GDC first processed her into the men’s system in 2012, but was allowed to shower separately by the time she went through it again for a technical parole violation in 2018. If sent through Jackson a third time, again on a technical violation, the first real battle will be over her hair.

County jails like the one where she is currently don’t require detainees to have short hair. The GDC women’s system requires haircuts for anyone who comes in with dreadlocks, but not for any other hair style. In the men’s system, Christy and other trans women have been held down while someone shaved their head.

“Our society strips trans people of autonomy, using our bodies as tools for profit, entertainment and control,” Aubri Escalera, a legislative aide and LGBTQIA+ liaison for Georgia State Rep. Park Cannon (D), told Filter. “We’re commodified and confined, denied the freedom to simply exist without being used within a system that profits from our oppression.”

Lawsuits have compelled GDC to slightly loosen restrictions on beard length over the years, but to date, the only person who’s grown out their hair while in a GDC men’s prison was Christy. In the later years of her sentence she’d filed a restraining order to stop staff from cutting her hair, but if sent into the system a third time, there’s no guarantee staff at Jackson would know about that.

The only plausible way for someone in this position to avoid the haircut at intake is to immediately, loudly, identify themselves as trans and invoke their right to protective custody—from both prisoners and staff—in order to be taken to solitary confinement. This makes sense for someone who will max out—complete their sentence—in a matter of months or even weeks, as Christy would by the time she was shipped to Jackson. But not for someone with years ahead of them, as is the case with almost everyone. 

GDC has never housed anyone in the men’s or women’s system based on transgender identity.

On October 1, the Department of Justice released the findings of its years-long investigation into the violence taking place on GDC’s watch, and specifically sexual violence against LGBTQ+ prisoners. Christy was sexually assaulted multiple times while in GDC custody as a direct result of being housed in the men’s system, as countless trans women have been. The DOJ concluded that GDC’s “deliberate indifference” to this violated the Eighth Amendment.

Between paroling out in September 2023 and being arrested on a technical parole violation in October 2024, Christy has had multiple gender-affirming procedures including breast augmentation and body-contouring liposuction on her waist, buttocks and hips. She’s also had various non-surgical feminizing procedures, like lip filler.

Christy, building on prior litigation, was already in the middle of lawsuit over access to vaginal reconstruction surgery when she paroled out in 2023. It’s possible that other trans women who’ve been assaulted in GDC men’s prisons have been released, undergone a comparable extent of feminizing procedures, and then sent back into the same the system, but if so none have taken it to court.
Though her current location is reasonably safe, Jackson is not. If the system so comprehensively failed to protect her from assault before, why would she be less vulnerable now?
If sent back to GDC, the department would almost certainly house Christy again in the men’s system. It has never housed anyone in the men’s or women’s system based on transgender identity, and has not appeared particularly concerned with whether or not it’s on the DOJ’s good side.

“Policies that ignore our humanity don’t just devalue us,” Escalera told Filter. “They institutionalize a constant state of mental distress. Forcing us to endure degrading conditions without protection instills [in us] that trans women’s lives don’t matter.”

GDC claims that each prisoner’s housing placement is determined by a variety of factors during the intake process—by which time, of course, they’ve already been sorted into the men’s or women’s system, the latter of which conducts intake at a different facility. The DOJ noted that even though GDC’s own policy holds that housing shouldn’t be determined solely on the basis of “anatomical genitalia,” there are no known reports of GDC relying on any other factors. GDC leadership did not respond to Filter‘s inquiries.

“No search or physical examination of transgender or intersex offenders shall be conducted for the sole purpose of determining the offender’s genital status.”

GDC can say this because it already strip-searches everyone so often that the idea of needing one for this specific purpose is absurd. And because the county jail system will have already done so. 

Read Part 3 of this series here

Image (cropped) of transport bus entering Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison via Georgia Department of Corrections/YouTube

The post Confronting GA’s Practice of Housing Trans Women in Men’s Prisons appeared first on Filter.