Legislative Subcommittee To Review Prison Safety After Spike In Homicides

This week state House Speaker Jon Burns announced the creation of a special subcommittee to consider funding recommendations aimed at improving safety, and reducing a record number of deaths and assaults, in the state's prison system.

The measure comes after a record number of deaths and assaults in the prison system. In one year -- between 2021 and 2022 -- 98 people incarcerated in the Georgia Department of Corrections were killed, according to state prison data. In that same time period there were over 3,500 recorded assaults.

That information came to a head last month when an inmate at Smith State Prison in Glennville shot and killed a food-service worker before turning the gun on himself. An investigation revealed the inmate had been involved in a personal relationship with the worker.

Gov. Brian Kemp announced the hiring of Chicago-based Guidehouse Inc. a day later. The Georgia Department of Corrections hired a consultant last month to conduct an assessment of Georgia prisons.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has covered issues in the GDC in a series of stories that illustrated corruption among prison employees who facilitated drug dealing and assaults inside Georgia's prison systems.

The newspaper, using GDC mortality reports and death records, determined that 2023 set a record for homicides inside Georgia’s prisons with 37 deaths. That number outpaces the number of prison homicides in previous years.

The panel will function as a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee.

“The General Assembly has placed significant emphasis on improving the safety, security and conditions of our state-operated corrections facilities,” Burns, R-Newington, said Monday. “With Governor Kemp’s ongoing assessment of Georgia’s prisons, we want to ensure we are prepared to take immediate action when subsequent recommendations and appropriations requests are delivered in January or during the interim."

The new subcommittee will be headed by Rep. Matt Hatchett, R-Dublin, who chairs the full House Appropriations Committee. The panel will include five Republicans and two Democrats.