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The Department of Justice on Tuesday released the findings of its probe into the conditions of prisons in the state of Georgia, which it said were "inhumane" and in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.
“Our findings report lays bare the horrific and inhumane conditions that people are confined to inside Georgia’s state prison system,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in the statement.
“Our statewide investigation exposes long-standing, systemic violations stemming from complete indifference and disregard to the safety and security of people Georgia holds in its prisons."
Clarke added the department is "committed to using its authority to bring about humane conditions of confinement that are consistent with contemporary standards of decency and respect for basic human dignity."
Georgia has the fourth highest state prison population in the U.S. According to the nearly 100-page report, the state violates incarcerated peoples' rights by failing to protect those in medium- and close-security facilities from "widespread physical violence and subjecting incarcerated persons to unreasonable risk of harm from sexual abuse across its facilities."
The report specifically notes that it fails to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex individuals from sexual violence or abuse.
The report said that from 2018 to 2023, 142 people have been killed in the state's prisons. There were seven homicides in the prison system in 2018, 13 in 2019 and more than 20 every year since, according to the probe.
Within the first five months of this year, there were 18 confirmed or suspected homicides in the state's prisons, the DOJ's report said.
The national average homicide rate in state prisons in 2019 was 12 per 100,000 people, the report said. In Georgia's state prisons, the rate was more than double that year, at 34 per 100,000 people, the investigation noted.
The investigation also found that in nearly all of the interviews conducted at Georgia's state prisons in 2022 and 2023 — 16 of the 17 total — incarcerated individuals had "consistently reported that they have witnessed life-threatening violence" and that weapons are "widespread."
The DOJ noted that it believes that "many violent incidents often go unreported when they occur in unsupervised housing units or other areas with inadequate staff supervision."
The Hill has contacted the Georgia Department of Corrections for comment.
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