Prisons in Georgia are plagued by assaults, murder and sexual violence and officials in the southern US state are “deliberately indifferent” to the horrible conditions, the Justice Department said Tuesday.
“Time in prison should not be a sentence to death, torture or rape,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said at a press conference releasing the findings of an investigation into Georgia’s prisons.
Prisoners are confined in “horrific and inhumane conditions,” Clarke said. “People are assaulted, stabbed, raped and killed or left to languish inside facilities that are woefully understaffed.”
The Justice Department report said “the State is deliberately indifferent to these unsafe conditions” and while it has known about them for years it has “failed to take reasonable measures to address them.”
Georgia has the fourth-largest incarcerated population in the United States with nearly 50,000 people behind bars in 34 state-operated prisons and four private prisons.
Georgia’s prison population has more than doubled since 1990. Fifty-nine percent of the inmates in state prisons are Black while Blacks make up 31 percent of the state’s population.
The report detailed a number of harrowing incidents including two brutal cases in April 2023 within days of each other at Smith State Prison.
In one incident, an inmate was found dead in his cell, possibly strangled by his roommate, the report said.
“The local coroner noted the body was badly decomposed, and the man likely had been dead for over two days,” it said.
Four days earlier, an inmate was assaulted by multiple other prisoners and a video of the assault was uploaded on social media, where the victim’s family saw it, the report said.
In the video, the man is seen sitting on the floor with his hands tied behind his back while a group of men punch, kick and stab him.
The Georgia Department of Corrections reported a total of 142 homicides in its facilities between 2018 and 2023.
The Justice Department probe exposed “long-standing, systemic violations stemming from complete indifference and disregard for the safety and security of people Georgia holds in its prisons,” Clarke said.
Peter Leary, US Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia, said he hopes the report serves as a “wake-up call” and the department can “work collaboratively with the State of Georgia to improve these deadly conditions.”
