Justice Department calls conditions of Georgia prisons inhumane

The U.S. Department of Justice declared on Tuesday that the conditions within Georgia state prisons violate prisoners’ Eighth Amendment rights protections against cruel and unusual punishment. The department released a 93-page report describing what it characterized as horrific and inhumane living conditions of prisoners caused by mismanagement and understaffing in both public and privately operated facilities.

Investigators found long-standing, systemic violations stemming from complete indifference to the safety and security of prisoners, said Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general of the department’s Civil Rights Division. Georgia houses the fourth-highest state prison population in the country, with about 50,000 incarcerated individuals, the Justice Department reported. The Constitution requires humane conditions for inmates, and to ensure their safety at a very minimum, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia Ryan K. Buchanan said.

What kind of conditions were described? The government’s report found that Georgia failed to protect inmates from widespread physical violence and regular sexual abuse, specifically failing to protect prisoners who identify as LGBTQ+ from sexual violence. Inmates are stabbed, raped, tortured, killed, or left to languish inside severely understaffed male and female facilities, Clarke said. Understaffing in areas such as housing, contraband control, incident reporting, and investigations contribute to the widespread violence, the department alleged. These conditions harm prisoners while also putting prison employees and the broader public at risk, Clarke added.

How do poor living conditions for prisoners affect the public? Beyond creating poor physical living conditions, the state’s failures have allowed gangs to gain a dangerous foothold in prisons, the report explains. The long-term failures in Georgia’s prisons have allowed criminal networks to grow inside facilities that endanger private citizens, staff, and incarcerated people, said U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia Jill E. Steinberg. Gangs control entire cell blocks and operate illicit and dangerous schemes from behind bars, the department alleged. The Justice Department is committed to working with the Georgia Department of Corrections to create a safer environment with its facilities, she added.

How has the state responded? The Georgia Department of Corrections is extremely disappointed by the Justice Department’s accusations, state corrections spokeswoman Joan Heath told WORLD. The report fails to acknowledge dedicated staffers and ignores many successful initiatives to improve conditions inside state prisons for both staff and inmates, she said. Furthermore, prisons across the country struggle with staffing shortages, violence from inmates, and illegal gang activity, including the Justice Department’s own Federal Bureau of Prisons, Heath added. The operations of Georgia’s prisons exceed constitutional requirements and the federal report’s allegations show a fundamental misunderstanding of the current challenges inside any prison system, she said.

Dig deeper: Read Addie Offereins’ report on Congress considering more oversight of federal corrections facilities.