Georgia

The spike in deaths coincides with multiple federal probes into prisons and jails across Georgia.

The report comes after The Appeal and other news outlets spent years reporting on dangerous conditions inside the facility, leading to attacks on teenagers and LGBTQ+ people, malnutrition, and death.

In Georgia, a person can be charged as a “party to a crime” for simple acts like answering a phone or loaning gas money. I—and many women incarcerated alongside me—are trapped in prison for crimes committed by men or abusive partners.

Prisons and jails across the Southeast have experienced utility outages, evacuations, visitation disruptions, and staff shortages in the storm’s wake.

Medical experts testified that Danyel Smith’s child likely died of natural causes, but Gwinnett County Superior Court Judge Ronnie K. Batchelor rejected a motion to overturn his 2003 murder conviction.

On Wednesday, Tiana Hill testified before the U.S. Senate Human Rights Subcommittee that staff at the notorious Clayton County Jail insisted she wasn’t pregnant—until she gave birth on a metal bed.

Cordero Riley was badly beaten at Georgia’s Clayton County Jail due to longstanding issues with malfunctioning cell locks, a lawsuit alleges. Afterward, he says medical staff ignored his pleas for care.

The overall crime rate is nearly as low as it’s been in decades, but that hasn’t stopped officials from pushing draconian measures likely only to fuel mass incarceration and harm public safety. It’s time for a different approach.

Less than five months into 2024, deaths at the Clayton County Jail have already surpassed last year’s total. The local sheriff’s lack of transparency has only compounded the pain for grieving families.

The bill requires people be held on bail for dozens of new, small-time charges—and virtually eliminates charitable bail funds after nonprofits posted bonds for many anti-Cop City protesters last year. Gov. Brian Kemp is expected to sign the measure into law.

At 15, Shane Kendall, an autistic child with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and intellectual impairment, allegedly fatally shot his mother. Despite Kendall’s disabilities, prosecutors charged him, as an adult, with murder. Before he turned 19, he died at the Fulton County Jail.

A woman incarcerated in Georgia since 1992 says she has endured significant abuse, including forcefully having her head shaved, abrupt stops to her hormone therapy, and sexual assault. She has repeatedly attempted suicide and has been in solitary since 2019.

Georgia prosecutors have launched a first-of-its-kind racketeering case against 61 people, ranging from visitors arrested at a music festival to bail fund organizers. The mass-arraignment on November 6 showed just how much of an insane, unconscionable mess the case really is.

Georgia police killed Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán on Jan. 18 as Terán was protesting against Cop City, the massive police training facility under construction in Weelaunee Forest in Atlanta. But, now that prosecutors have mass-charged activists in an unprecedented use of racketeering statutes, those close to the case say the state has sunk to new lows by entering Terán’s personal diary into public evidence against defendants.

Placement in a halfway house can significantly improve someone’s chances of reintegrating into society after prison. But numerous people imprisoned in Georgia told The Appeal that they were denied access to the state’s transitional housing programs because of their medical conditions.

A horrific death and the high-profile booking of former President Donald Trump propelled Georgia’s Fulton County Jail into the national spotlight. But heightened scrutiny has done nothing to improve conditions.

Organizers with the movement say the charges are meant to “send the chilling message that any dissent to Cop City will be punished with the full power and violence of the government.”

Organizers say they’ve collected thousands of signatures for a referendum to put Cop City on the November ballot. But local officials seem intent on making sure it doesn’t reach a vote.

Gwinnett County Jail’s for-profit health provider NaphCare has been sued more than 100 times for malpractice and neglect.

JShawn Guess recounts how being unable to earn money while in prison led to him missing out on his final moments with his mom.

An official investigation released this week concluded that “medical neglect” contributed to Alan Willison’s death at the Clayton County Jail in January, just a week after his cancer diagnosis.

At least 42 people have been charged with “domestic terrorism” under the state’s wide-ranging statute. Legal experts are calling it a “sloppy” and unprecedented attack on constitutional rights to free speech and protest.

A wave of bills threatens to channel more people toward incarceration, mete out longer prison terms, and limit prosecutors’ discretion.

With a special election for Clayton County sheriff coming up next week, people detained at the county’s scandal-plagued jail are speaking out about horrific conditions.

The Clayton County Sheriff’s Office is refusing to share information about in-custody deaths with the medical examiner’s office, which is responsible for conducting investigations.

More than six years into DOJ probes, the conditions inside Georgia prisons have only further deteriorated.

I was arrested in 2011 after engaging in sex work to survive and later forced to register as a sex offender. Since then, social stigma, footage laws, and crushing monthly court debts have made it difficult to get back on my own two feet and succeed after prison.

The facility’s medical provider described people with mental illness wasting away in a unit overrun by an outbreak of lice and scabies.

Smart Communications, a for-profit Florida company that sells phone, videochat, and email-like services to prisons and jails, told at least one sheriff’s department that it can live “the resort life” on a trip to Florida.

Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat says the county needs more jail beds to fix the jail’s crisis. But a new ACLU report says that significant numbers of people in the jail can be released.

Stacey Abrams wants to give police officers raises. Time and again, Democrats have reacted to calls for racial justice by giving more money to cops.

Expert says trauma from childbirth, not shaking, led to the death of Danyel Smith’s two-month-old child.

Georgia is the strictest state in America when it comes to proving intellectual disability in capital cases. This month, the Supreme Court could save the life of a man who says he is mentally disabled—or let the state kill him.

After the city council passed the ground lease for massive police facility known as “Cop City,” local opposition hasn’t ceased; it’s evolved.

It’s time for political leaders, no matter their party, to listen to voters—and provide financial relief from the pandemic.

By winning a narrow majority in the upper chamber, Democrats could at last stop the Republican assault on voting rights—if its centrist members have the courage to do so.

Control of the U.S. Senate hinges on the results of next month’s runoff.

Efforts by elected leaders in several states are making it harder to get to the polls and fomenting misinformation about the election amid a pandemic.

The law, known as SB 402, eliminates the use of signature bonds for a number of felonies, putting poor people who might not be able to afford cash bail at a disadvantage.

They shared their stories as part of a lawsuit seeking urgent changes to protect prisoners. One prisoner wrote that a jail officer denied his request for a mask, so he tied old underwear around his face.