Twelve prisoners were charged with murder and other crimes for a deadly fight at a Georgia state prison in January, Georgia corrections officials said Monday, describing a confrontation that left four inmates dead and a dozen injured. The fight broke out Jan. 11 in an outdoor area of Washington State Prison, a medium-security facility in Davisboro about 130 miles southeast of Atlanta, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections.
The Department of Corrections said guards used non-lethal weapons to quell the fighting and brought the situation under control in about 90 minutes. The department previously described the Jan. 11 incident as an episode that erupted quickly and was ended by staff intervention.
In a Monday statement, Department of Corrections spokesperson Joan Heath said the 12 charged prisoners face murder charges as well as additional allegations that included aggravated assault, gang participation and unlawful acts of violence in a penal institution. Heath said she did not provide further details and that the investigation remains active.
The charges come less than two years after a 2024 report by the U.S. Department of Justice concluded that Georgia prison officials were “deliberately indifferent” to violence that investigators said went unchecked at state lockups, along with what the report described as widespread drug use, extortion and sexual abuse. The U.S. Justice Department report followed a civil rights investigation into conditions in Georgia’s prisons.
That DOJ report said sophisticated gangs ran prison black markets that trafficked in drugs, weapons and electronic devices including drones and smartphones. Investigators also cited an increase in homicides inside Georgia prisons, which they said rose from seven in 2018 to 35 in 2023.
Georgia state officials denied at the time that they were violating inmates’ constitutional rights described in the DOJ report. However, corrections leaders have acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to a staffing crisis after many prison guards resigned.
Georgia has since increased spending on the Department of Corrections, injecting more than $600 million in recent years to hire additional staff. Still, Corrections Commissioner Tyrone Oliver told lawmakers in December that the state remained short about 1,000 guards of recommended staffing levels.