ATLANTA — At a budget presentation on Monday, members of the Georgia Department of Corrections told lawmakers that drone and contraband incidents were on the rise.
In 2025, GDOC said they’ve already handled nearly 400 incidents of using drones to transport contraband at state prisons.
According to Tyrone Oliver, the GDOC Commissioner, some of the drones confiscated during prison interceptions have been able to lift hundreds of pounds at a time.
“Actually, we have, we’ve confiscated drones that are large enough to lift up 220, 225 pounds,” Oliver said Monday. “We got one earlier today that’s, again, that can lift about 80 pounds or 90 pounds.”
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For perspective, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the average weight of an adult man in the United States is about 199 pounds, though there are differences dependent on age.
GDOC leaders told lawmakers during the presentation that in the previous fiscal year, 16,633 contraband devices were smuggled into state prisons or were intercepted on the way.
For the 2025 fiscal year, that number rose past 18,600. In the current FY2026, GDOC’s Matthew Wolfe, who heads the Office of Professional Standards, said the department has already received nearly 7,000 devices, spanning categories from cell phones to tablets to even drone controller storage devices.
On top of concern over the use of drones being so frequent, GDOC staff also told members of the Georgia House of Representatives that they’re worried about how the “counties are having to foot the bills” to store captured drones.
Of the 373 drone-related incidents reported at Georgia prisons this year, GDOC data showed the largest portion had happened at Valdosta State Prison.
The number of drone incidents per month also rose.
In January, there were only 17 incidents across Georgia, but by June, the numbers rose past 30 per month. There were 63 incidents in each of September and October.
Last October, there were 39 drone incidents reported.
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As for how contraband is getting into prisons in Georgia, it goes beyond drones and packages.
“They take black masking tape or duct tape and make football-sized packages to throw over the fence,” Wolfe told lawmakers Monday. “So, I just wanted you to all see the sheer size of the drops we’re dealing with. It’s not a small package, it’s a bundle of stuff.”
As part of the budget request, highlighting the contraband issues, GDOC staff asked for funding adjustments so they could address ratios of prisoners to guard staff.
GDOC told lawmakers it was currently sitting at a 1:14 ratio of staff to prisoners, but the goal for staffing levels is 1:11. While GDOC has gotten “over 900 applicants each month...a lot of those get disapproved because they can’t meet our background requirements.”
Other applicants withdraw applications, don’t respond or don’t show up for interviews, impacting the ability to hire more staff.
But the contraband issues at state prisons go beyond drones and packages thrown over walls, including losing staff while trying to hire.
According to the GDOC report, there were 48 prison staff arrested related to contraband incidents.
That’s in addition to 120 inmates who received additional charges and 362 civilians arrested in the 2025 fiscal year, making nearly 700 cases generated from contraband-related incidents.
Still, general turnover rates for prison staff are reported to be 23% to 24%, though those numbers are expected to shrink as they continue recruitment efforts and salary increases. GDOC said one of the larger issues with staffing was still retention, not just hiring.
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