Conditions at Georgia prisons violate constitution, Justice Dept. says

WASHINGTON — A Justice Department investigation into Georgia’s state prison system found conditions that violate the Constitution, including rampant violence, sexual assault, drug smuggling and gang activity, according to a report released Tuesday.

The investigation by the department’s Civil Rights Division comes as the system, which houses around 50,000 inmates at any given time, is in crisis — with 142 homicides reported at facilities run by the Georgia Department of Corrections from 2018 to 2023.

In most similar cases, federal and state officials eventually hash out a restructuring plan that includes federal assistance and compliance benchmarks, with the possibility of filing a lawsuit if state officials do not comply.

Driving the dysfunction is a severe and chronic staffing shortage. Some lockups have only half the necessary personnel to provide security and basic services, according to the findings of the report.

“People are assaulted, stabbed, raped and killed or left to languish inside facilities that are woefully understaffed,” according to the report’s authors. “Inmates are maimed and tortured, relegated to an existence of fear, filth and not-so-benign neglect.”

Georgia officials are “deliberately indifferent to these unsafe conditions,” the report said. “The state has known about the unsafe conditions for years and has failed to take reasonable measures to address them.”

The state Corrections Department fired back after the report was released, accusing Justice Department officials of failing to acknowledge “the successful initiatives undertaken to improve conditions” inside the nation’s fourth-largest state prison system.

But the Justice Department presented example after example of horrific violence that has gone, in some instances, unchecked and undiscovered by overwhelmed prison employees.

In December alone, five inmates died after being stabbed or involved in altercations at Central State Prison, in Bibb County; Macon State Prison, in Macon County; and Coastal State Prison, in Chatham County.

Over four days in April 2023, two prisoners were assaulted at Smith State Prison, west of Savannah.

One was assaulted by “multiple incarcerated people,” in an episode that was captured on video and distributed outside the prison. The body of a second man was found, possibly strangled in his cell, four days later. His body was so decomposed that the coroner concluded he had been dead for two days without being discovered.

Investigators also found a widespread pattern of abuse victimizing LGBTQ+ inmates, along with several reports of gang rapes.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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