MACON, Ga. — Correctional officers seized thousands of pieces of contraband in a series of unannounced shakedowns in five Georgia prisons, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections on Friday. Those include two here in Central Georgia -- Central State Prison in Macon and Dooly State Prison in Unadilla.
Alcohol, tobacco, around three pounds of marijuana, meth, and hundreds of cell phones were confiscated during the contraband sweeps.
The Georgia Department of Corrections say they found nearly 650 weapons inside the facility.
This is as the U.S. Department of Justice investigates violence, including the several murders in Georgia prisons.
An investigation by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution found 29 prisoners were killed in 2020 and 28 in 2021.
Friday’s announcement by the Georgia Department of Corrections on the sheer number of weapons seized highlighted concerns of violence and unsafe conditions inside the prisons.
“If they only got 650 out of five prisons, they didn’t get nothing,” said Timothy Cole, who was just released from Johnson State Prison in June. Cole served 10 months of his sentence in the Wrightsville facility for aggravated assault with the intent to rape. “They’re just scratching the surface to get some exposure.”
Cole described his time in prison as a “day-to-day, minute-to-minute, life-or-death battle.” “You never know what’s going to happen around you,” Cole said.
Cole says he would see many prisoners carrying weapons oftentimes made of materials found in the facility.
“...Taking metal off walls. taking little pieces off the fence. Sharpening with the floors and the concrete walls,” Cole said.
He says every once in a while, the tactical squad would confiscate the weapons.
“They’d take them away, put them in roll buggies, leave them there on the dock so prisoners could go get them out and take them back,” Cole said.
He says every day, you would see contraband in the hands of prisoners and violence breaking out.
“I mean, I would be sitting on the phone talking with a family member, and a fight would just break out there immediately right around me, or you would be trying to sleep and two bunks over, two guys decide to start fighting or whatnot,” Cole said.
He says he believes that understaffing and a lack of supervision in the prisons allow the violence to continue.
These concerns of violence and understaffed prisons were echoed in a recent lawsuit filed last week.
It alleges Macon State prisoner Bobby Edward Lee Jr. was strangled to death by an inmate because of gang violence, inhumane conditions, and understaffing in the prison. The suit goes on to describe conditions at Macon State Prison in the first half of 2020 including "nearly weekly inmate-on-inmate stabbings and assaults."
It claims many inmates openly carried handmade "shanks" or "shivs,” and cell doors didn't lock.
Meanwhile, the suit says, Macon State was "grossly understaffed," with an officer vacancy rate of 47 percent.
The suit claims Lee was one of six prisoners murdered in the span of six months in Macon State Prison.
The Georgia Department of Corrections say they plan to do more sweeps throughout Georgia prisons. The department says contraband in the hands of inmates create an “unsafe environment.”