(SRN NEWS/AP/97.5 GLORY FM) – Georgia prison officials are “deliberately indifferent” to unchecked deadly violence, widespread drug use, extortion and sexual abuse at state lockups, the U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday, threatening to sue the state if it doesn’t quickly take steps to curb rampant violations of prisoners’ Eighth Amendment protections against cruel punishment.
Two of the incidents cited in the nearly 100-page report occurred at Phillips State Prison in Buford (pictured). One references an incident that happened four years ago:
On August 3, 2020, an officer at
Phillips State Prison was
conducting rounds in a housing
unit when an incarcerated
person handed him a note
stating that an incarcerated
person in another cell had been
held hostage for days, was
yelling for help, and might be
injured.
In May 2023, DOJ
interviewed the victim, who
reported that he had been held
and tortured for almost four days,
he had been stabbed from
behind and his eye was pierced,
and he suffered a traumatic brain injury.
Almost exactly a year later, on
August 12, 2021, the same
assailant assaulted another
incarcerated person at the same
prison; the victim of the second
assault required outside medical
treatment at a hospital.
The second occurred in 2022:
In September 2022,
following the homicide at
Phillips State Prison of a
young man who was a
member of the Bloods, a
gang war erupted at
multiple other GDC
prisons.
With Bloods attacking
Crips in the several days
that followed, twenty
incarcerated people were
hospitalized following
gang-related violence,
including 13 from Macon
State Prison on October
2, 2022, 5 from Ware
State Prison on October
1, 2022, and 2 from
Coffee State Prison on
October 1, 2022.
Prison officials responded with a statement saying the prison system “operates in a manner exceeding the requirements of the United States Constitution” and decrying the possibility of “years of expensive and unproductive court monitoring” by federal officials.
Allegations of violence, chaos and “grossly inadequate” staffing are laid out in the Justice Department’s grim 93-page report, the result of a statewide civil rights investigation into Georgia prisons announced in September 2021. The system holds an estimated 50,000 people.
“In America, time in prison should not be a sentence to death, torture or rape,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who oversees the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said Tuesday as she discussed the findings at an Atlanta news conference.
In its response, the Georgia Department of Corrections said it was “extremely disappointed” in the accusations. The Justice Department’s findings “reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the current challenges of operating any prison system,” the agency said.
Multiple allegations of sexual abuse are recounted in the report, including abuse of LGBTQ inmates. A transgender woman reported being sexually assaulted at knifepoint. Another inmate said he was “extorted for money” and sexually abused after six people entered his cell.
You can read the full report here: Findings Report – Georgia Department of Corrections (2024) (justice.gov)
(Photo courtesy Georgia Department of Corrections)