The General Assembly’s Joint Appropriations Subcommittee held a meeting in early January to address state prisons’ budget. Governor Brian Kemp proposed nearly $600 million in additional funding to address the state’s growing prison crisis.
Managing the use of contrabands in state prisons was an important focus in the Georgia Department of Correction (GDC) 2025 and 2026 budget proposal. Other priorities for increased funding include staff salaries and retention, modernizing officer records with tablets and prisoner education programs.
According to a 2022 U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) report, one of the leading types of contraband found in prisons are cell phones, which are used to “communicate with criminals and organize illicit activity inside and outside correctional facilities.” Contraband is defined as “any material or item that is unauthorized by the prison or jail and poses a threat to the safety, security, or good of an institution” according to the DOJ report.
GDC Commissioner Tyrone Oliver told the joint appropriations committee the budget proposal includes almost $50 million in additional monies allocated through fiscal year 2026 to strengthen computer systems and other measures to prevent the use of contrabands.
Oliver emphasized the need for additional funds to help strengthen staff retention.
“We lose most of our staff within the first six months to the first two years and we see a drastic reduction of our workforce in entry level positions,” Oliver said.
The proposed budget changes include more than $49 million in staff hires and salary increases help with recruitment and retention of both security and non-security staff through the end of fiscal year 2026. $10,432,000 would be allocated in the current fiscal year to hire more prison staff with an additional $20,000,000 for more staff in 2026.
Rep. Al Williams (D) from Liberty County said there was still room to improve prison staff retention.
“If I can start at $45,000 [as a teacher] in a public school system, why would I take a $7,000 hit to work [as a counselor] here?” Williams said. “It seems like to me it would impede your recruitment if you’re not competitive with the system.”
Commissioner Oliver said he thinks lack of retention is due to the nature of working at a correctional facility. “It takes a special type of person to provide those services behind the wire,” he said.
State legislators also raised concerns on whether increasing funding for staff salaries and providing tablets would help solve the problem of job retention.
Oliver says he believes more tablets for prison guards will lead to a “huge bonus in retention” among correctional officers.
“We are seeing an increase in productivity when it comes to officer tablets. As you know, we were using antiquated law books to write down all of the activities that the correctional officers were doing,” Oliver said. “Now, they are able to carry a tablet around instead.”
There are 23 state prisons utilizing tablets. According to Oliver, the plan is to add officer tablets in one additional facility per month until all 35 state prisons house them by the end of fiscal year 2025 at an estimated cost of $2.5 million.
Other prison spending proposals include prisoner healthcare, educational training for inmates and expanded bed capacity. More than $100 million would be spent to increase prisoner capacity across the state.
