By Grant Blankenship
The Macon Telegraph
ATLANTA — The people who manage Georgia prisons are still struggling to keep enough guards for a prison population that will keep growing for the foreseeable future.
Meanwhile, the Georgia Department of Corrections is clamoring for permission to ground unmanned aircraft — drones — which officials say are dropping drugs, cellphones and other contraband over prison walls with relative ease.
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“We’ve confiscated drones that are large enough to lift up to 225 pounds,” GDC Commissioner Tyrone Oliver told a state House of Representatives appropriations subcommittee Monday.
Oliver told legislators that currently over 50,000 people are incarcerated by the state. That’s a 15-year high. GDC director of data and research Cliff Hogan told lawmakers the numbers are likely to go higher.
“Through 2030, that projection is showing an increase up to over 55,000 offenders,” Hogan said.
He blamed the increase on a years-long trend in tougher, longer sentences which are seldom shortened by parole.
“We’re seeing them come in younger and staying longer, especially those ‘life without parolers’,” Hogan said. “We know they’re going to be with us for the rest of their natural lives.”
Meanwhile, payroll data curated by the state run Georgia Data Analytics Center suggests the number of correctional officers is at a 15-year low. That’s even amidst a push led by Gov. Brian Kemp to add over $600 million into GDC across two fiscal years.
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“We don’t have a problem with recruiting,” Oliver told lawmakers. “We have a problem with the retention piece.”
Oliver said about 75% of people in GDC facilities were convicted of crimes either violent or sexual in nature. According to state data, the average annual salary for a GDC correctional officer is just above $54,000.
Oliver said GDC continues to lobby for permission to tackle its other major challenge: stopping the flow of drone-delivered contraband into prisons. He said most of the time the drones drop their loads on prison rooftops. Some older prisons provide other avenues.
“[The pilots] would deliver them straight to the windows,” Oliver said. “And [inmates] reach out, grab their contraband out of their cell windows and break it out and then bring them in.”
Oliver said there is technology available to “mitigate” the drones, but for now even a state prison system would run afoul of both the Federal Aviation Administration’s and the Federal Communications Commission’s rules if it did so.
He said he’s optimistic the Trump administration’s current FCC and FAA could change that.
“A few years ago, they weren’t listening,” Oliver said of the agencies. “Now, I went to the White House and met with the president’s task force and we started meeting with some key people that can make some things happen.”
In Louisiana, the state legislature gave up waiting for the federal government and passed its own state law allowing prisons to intercept drones.
The methods for making that happen still aren’t clear but will likely be limited to using radio jamming equipment to land unmanned aircraft.
Oliver said vendors have been unwilling to sell Georgia prisons that sort of equipment before federal regulators give the OK.
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