This past week, the U.S. Justice Department launched an investigation into Georgia’s prisons. Forty-four people were murdered in prisons in Georgia since 2020, including a murder at Hays State Prison here in Chattooga County in June.
Investigators with the Justice Department are looking into to the circumstances surrounding those murders along with the high rate of violence towards some minorities and the spread of COVID-19 in the prison system.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said this week, “Dramatic staffing shortages have spread across the state’s prisons since the pandemic began. The coronavirus tore through the prisons, where social distancing can be difficult, and people held by the Department of Corrections repeatedly accused the agency of violating COVID-19 protocols. Guards got sick along with the men and women they watched over. Some guards found the stress too much and quit. Other grew too afraid.”
The state says 93 prisoners and four staffers have died of COVID-19, though critics say those numbers are low.
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