Georgia prisons chief tells state lawmakers drones are smuggling deadly contraband into prisons

August 29th, 2024

Georgia Department of Corrections Director Tyrone Oliver testified at two Senate committees in August about the impact that understaffing, aging facilities, and a more dangerous inmate population is having on a rash of violent incidents at state prisons. (Stanley Dunlap/Georgia Recorder)

The Georgia Department of Corrections continues to struggle with an onslaught of drones that are being used to deliver contraband, such as drugs, cell phones, and potentially even the firearm used by an inmate of Smith State Prison to kill a food service worker in June.

Department of Corrections Director Tyrone Oliver told a state Senate panel Wednesday information obtained during the ongoing investigation into the June 16 murder-suicide indicates that someone flew a drone to deliver the gun used by Jaydrekus Hart to kill 24-year-old Aramark employee Aureon Grace while she was working in the prison kitchen.

Georgia’s state prison officials spent several hours Wednesday testifying before the Georgia Senate’s Department of Corrections Facilities Study Committee, which is tasked with making recommendations on how to deal with troubles arising from overcrowded and outdated detention facilities.

According to the corrections department, Hart and Grace had a personal relationship and that Hart left a suicide note. Hart had been serving a 20-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter and aggravated battery committed in 2013 in Carroll County.

In Georgia’s state prisons, drones are increasingly used to smuggle contraband, resulting in more violence against inmates, correctional officers and other staff.

The study committee’s hearing on Wednesday also delved into the potential role that aging prisons in disrepair, understaffing and other issues are contributing to the rash of violence in facilities like Smith State Prison, which houses about 1,500 of the state’s most dangerous inmates.

During a year-long stretch that ended in June, the Georgia corrections department arrested 69 staff members, 204 inmates and 554 civilians and tallied over 430 reports of drones.

The vast number of arrests made for staff members and the general public is tied to attempts to bring illegal contraband into prisons. Nearly 15,000 cell phones were confiscated from June 2023 to June 2024 inside Georgia prisons, double the number from 2019, according to the DOC.

Oliver said that even if there was full staffing inside prisons, inmates often use methods such as causing a disturbance to distract officers in order to sneak in contraband.

Oliver said that the rise in problems has correlated to an increase in the number of inmates sentenced for violent offenses.

“Whenever we built the prisons back then, it was conducive to the population that we were potentially housing then, not now, so that’s one of the reasons why we have to harden it,” Oliver said. “And then it’s ongoing maintenance. They’re constantly finding ways to get to the infrastructure, to make any type of weapons, to get on the roof, to whatever.”

A $17.5 million increase in this year’s budget for capital maintenance is helping pay for some much needed repairs and upgrades to prison infrastructure, Oliver said.

“The majority of our contraband that gets retrieved is due to our aging infrastructure,” he said. “Sometimes they pop out of the locks, they go through the pipe chases, get up on the roof of the prison and retrieve the contraband.”

A greater emphasis has also been placed on prison officials conducting random searches for contraband inside prisons. The number of “jail shakedowns” has increased significantly from 70 in 2019 to 287 this year, Oliver said.

“It’s just a constant battle that we’re fighting. Most of the inmates now, they’re not trying to compromise with the as many staff as possible because they say they can get anything they want via the sky or via drone,” Oliver.

Sen. Kim Jackson, a Democrat from Stone Mountain, said that while there is much discussion about the need to repair aging and deteriorating facilities, she wondered why correction department officials didn’t flag staffing levels as a larger factor.

“Maybe we’ve never been fully staffed in our prisons, perhaps I’m wrong” Jackson said. “How does the crime and the problems with contraband today compare with a time and a season in which we were more fully staffed?”

Sen. Randy Roberson, a Cataula Republican, said that it’s a sad situation that part of the blame for weapons, drugs and cell phones other contraband being smuggled inside prisons is because inmates are able to use the subpar building conditions to access the contraband.

“When I start thinking about people having to use the infrastructure of the building to get up to the roof, this sounds very much Shawshank kind of fantasy,” Robertson said, referring to the 1994 movie “The Shawshank Redemption.” “That we would still have to worry about people using our own buildings against us to bring in stuff, especially now, when we have an incident where they brought in a deadly weapon and used it against an employee, that’s concerning.”

This story was provided by WABE content partner Georgia Recorder.