Gov. Brian Kemp has released his recommendations for strengthening Georgia’s struggling prison system, which include an additional $372 million in state spending.
“We do realize and recognize that this is — I don't know that 'historical' is the proper term, but it is out of the ordinary,” said Georgia House Appropriations Committee Chair Matt Hatchett of the budget recommendations coming in the middle of a fiscal year. “I think it shows the emphasis that he, and us collectively, are putting on this issue.”
The budget recommendations which would bring state funds allocated to the Georgia Department of Corrections to just under $1.9 million for fiscal year 2025.
The recommendations were presented by Georgia Department of Corrections Commissioner Tyrone Oliver to a joint hearing of Georgia House and Senate appropriations committee members Tuesday. They follow on the heels of two reports: one by a private consulting firm paid for by the governor’s office and an earlier one from the federal Department of Justice Civil Rights Division.
Though GDC has not released the state’s full report, the presentation of recommendations suggest that at the absolute most basic level, both it and the DOJ report came to the same conclusion: Georgia prisons have too few correctional officers on the job to be run safely.
Oliver said there is currently a staffing shortage of 2,600 correctional officers. Records kept by the Governor’s Office of Data Analytics show 3,326 correctional officers employed by the Georgia Department of Corrections in the 2025 fiscal year.
That suggests GDC has barely more than half the correctional officers it considers ideal.
Oliver described that as a ratio of about 1 officer for every 14 incarcerated people. He told legislators his goal, at least in the near term, is to improve that ratio to 1 per 11.
Critics of Georgia prisons, including the Department of Justice, identify that gulf between the number of correctional officers and the number of incarcerated people as the main driver of prison homicides, which hit an all-time high in 2024.
That’s even when only counting the homicides verified through public health records after GDC’s curtailing of details in their mortality reports in 2024. Almost half of 2024 Georgia prison deaths remain without an official cause in records kept by GPB, suggesting the 24 verified homicides likely reflect an undercount.
To begin working narrowing the gulf, Oliver said he would like between $41 million and $42 million new funds for things like an across-the-board 4% salary increase for correctional officers, establishing yearly “step wise” pay hikes for officers to incentivize staying on the job, and for funding an additional 330 correctional officer positions.
The 4% increase would bring the average salary of the lowest-ranking Georgia correctional officer to just under $47,000 a year. For the highest-ranking officer physically patrolling a prison, it would rise to about $61,000.
The recommendations include adding 446 private prison beds to be used on a rotating basis to empty out portions of existing state prisons so that they can be renovated up to what GDC calls modern standards.
“GDC houses the most violent offender population that we have seen in previous decades,” Oliver said. “Facilities were not designed or constructed, from a security perspective, to house this population.”
Georgia prison officials have said that for many incarcerated people, prison is the first place they will have ever received mental health care. Oliver would like more money to increase the number of behavioral health workers from its current system-wide level of 350.
After the requested 4% salary hike, the average annual salary for behavioral health counselor positions within GDC, many of which require a master’s degree, would sit just below $49,000.
“I guess maybe that's where my concern would be, is if we're requiring somebody to have a bachelor's — and in many cases a master's degree — that's a pretty low salary,” Republican Senate Public Safety Committee Chair John Albers said.
The use of cellphones to coordinate delivery of contraband and even to run criminal enterprises has also been an increasing problem. The governor’s recommendations include an extra $36 million to nearly double, up to 27 facilities total, the number of installed cellphone-blocking technologies in Georgia prisons.
The recommendations also include allocating $40 million for designing a long-sought-after state-of-the-art prison.
