Georgia Prisoners' Speak

06/20/2026

Last year, California committed $239 million to transform San Quentin from a maximum-security prison into a medium-security facility modeled on Nordic rehabilitation.

The facility now emphasizes education, job training, and therapeutic programming — and the state plans to replicate the model statewide. This isn’t theory. Rehabilitation works, even at scale.

It’s time Georgia builds a system rooted in human dignity, not just containment.

https://gps.press/end-the-warehouse/?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=poster&utm_campaign=etw_wpsb -prison-should-be

06/20/2026

12,822 people aged 50+ in Georgia prisons. Their healthcare consumes 46% of the GDC budget—$831 million annually. Elderly recidivism: 4–7%. Georgia’s constitutional authority for geriatric parole remains unused. Read the report on how we can end the warehouse.
Source: GDC Inmate Statistical Profile, June 2026.
https://gps.press/end-the-warehouse/?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=poster&utm_campaign=etw

06/20/2026

7 of 9 Georgia Supreme Court justices agreed: the criminal legal system is “a mess” and the legislature must fix it. That near-unanimous call for action from our highest court can’t be ignored. Vision 2027 offers a roadmap for meaningful reform.

https://gps.press/vision2027/?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=poster&utm_campaign=v27_sanders

06/18/2026

𝗚𝗲𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗶𝗮 𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝘀 𝗹𝗲𝗴𝗶𝘀𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗲 𝗮 𝟮,𝟵𝟬𝟬-𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗲, 𝗱𝗶𝗲𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗻-𝗱𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘂.

The State's own budget funds about 53 cents a meal.

You can check the math on a napkin: $31.2 million ÷ 53,514 people ÷ 365 days ÷ 3 meals = 53 cents. That's one-sixth of what the federal government calls the minimum adequate diet for a grown man — and less than what a school lunch costs to feed a child.

Inside, that 53 cents looks like bologna circles for protein and trays with empty compartments.

There's also a tell. The talking points GDC fed the legislature cite the "American Dietary Association" — an organization that does not exist. It appears nowhere in GDC's own 1,400+ policies. We asked the Department who wrote it and how many legislators got the same language. They didn't answer by our deadline.

This is the first in our series tracking exactly what GDC tells the people who fund it — and what the State's own records say back.

👉 Read it, then do the one thing that matters: call your legislator. If you read this and scroll past, you're accepting these conditions.

Georgia tells legislators its prisons serve a 2,900-calorie dietitian-designed menu. The State's budget funds about 53 cents a meal.

06/17/2026

𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝘄𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘃𝗶𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝗮 𝘀𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗱 𝘃𝗶𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗺 𝗻𝗼 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁𝘀.

When the state locks up the wrong person, it closes the case — and the real criminal stays free to hurt someone else.

For two decades, Georgia's crime lab was run by a man who was not a doctor and not a forensic pathologist. It built convictions on hair and fiber "matching" that science has since discredited. Gary Nelson spent 11 years on death row because of it. John Jerome White lost more than 20 years — while the man who actually r***d his accuser stood free in the same lineup.

The Georgia state crime lab, under the direction of one man, helped to convict untold innocent people using junk science.

🔗 The full investigation:

Georgia built decades of convictions on discredited forensic science — and unlike 17 other states, never went back to check who was wrongly imprisoned.

06/17/2026

5,246 Georgians aged 60+ are eligible for parole.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles has constitutional authority to consider age-based release. (Constitutional authority · Article IV, § II, ¶ II(e))

Find your legislators and ask why age-based parole remains unused.

https://gps.press/find-your-legislator/?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=poster&utm_campaign=etw

06/16/2026

𝗢𝘂𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝗮 𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲. 𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗶𝗽𝘁𝘀 𝗱𝗶𝗱.

Plenty of people were angry about lynching, about dying soldiers, about prisons that killed the people inside them. Anger changed nothing. What changed history was a handful of people who did something harder: they wrote it all down.

John Howard weighed the food in England's jails and counted the dead. Florence Nightingale proved soldiers were dying of filth, not bullets. Ida B. Wells turned a campaign of terror into a record no one could call a coincidence. None of them won by shouting. They won by making the truth impossible to deny.

That is exactly what Georgia Prisoners' Speak does — 1,800+ deaths documented since 2020, every commissary markup logged, every dollar of a $1.8 billion budget traced. Not because we're loud. Because we keep the receipts.

And we did one thing none of them could: we gave the entire record away — free, machine-readable, impossible to bury. The light isn't just turned on. The switch has been handed to everyone.

Read the full essay 👇

How documentarians from John Howard to Ida B. Wells ended injustice by making it undeniable — and how GPS continues the method in Georgia.

06/14/2026

One voice gets ignored. Thousands don't.

Every call to a legislator, every signed petition, every shared story is a brick in the wall between Georgia's prison system and the silence it depends on. Alone, it's easy to look away. Together, it's impossible.

The GPS Advocate Network turns outrage into organized pressure — ready-to-send messages, the legislators who need to hear from you, and the data to back every demand. No experience required. Just a refusal to stay quiet.

👉 Join us: https://gps.press/become-an-advocate/

Your voice can save lives.

06/13/2026

Six months. Still on lockdown. Still on restricted commissary.

Since January 11, men at Washington State Prison have been denied outside recreation and visitation, and commissary access is capped at $30 — less than half the normal $80. The individuals involved were transferred months ago. Yet the entire population remains punished.

This is collective punishment, violating GDC SOP 227.07 and 209.01. The solution is known: separate rival groups, don’t punish everyone. GDC refuses. And still no answers about the leadership failures that let the incident happen.

Families: call the Ombudsman at (404) 656-6002, the Governor at (404) 656-1776, and your legislators. Document every denial. Contact the Southern Center for Human Rights and ACLU of Georgia. Repeated calls make a record.

06/13/2026

Georgia spends just $52 per incarcerated person on rehabilitation each year — dead last in the South. For context, every neighboring state invests more, and yet Georgia’s recidivism rate is only half that of its peers. Our analysis of FY2024 corrections budgets shows that while we pour $1.8 billion into prisons, we allocate pennies toward programs proven to reduce reoffending. A system designed to warehouse, not repair, costs us all. Read the full investigation below.

https://gps.press/mission-failure-georgia-spends-1-8-billion-on-prisons-and-52-per-person-on-rehabilitation/?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=poster&utm_campaign=etw