Dean Poling

I wouldn’t spend another night in Valdosta State Prison.

Not now. Not if I didn’t have to.

But I did.

Twenty-five years ago, for a newspaper story, I spent the night in a Valdosta State Prison cell, in a cell block populated with inmates.

At the time, under the leadership of warden Leland Linahan, Valdosta State Prison had won an award for being the best correctional facility in the nation.

Linahan had established a program that was similar to military boot camp instruction for inmates.

The program instilled the ideas of personal discipline and growth, of individual achievement and team work to accomplish tasks.

Inmates worked as a team and performed drills in the prison yard. They were assigned jobs inside the prison.

The program garnered statewide, nationwide and international attention. Corrections officials from other areas regularly toured Valdosta State Prison and reviewed its programs. Australia sent a correctional official to visit Valdosta State Prison.

Media organizations expressed interest in doing stories on Valdosta State Prison. When an Atlanta television station wanted to spend 24 hours in the prison, Linahan agreed and invited me to do the same as a Valdosta Daily Times reporter.

Sleeping in a cell overnight was a stunt, really. It wasn’t the meat and potatoes of the reporting. It was intended to add a dash of the sensational to reporting on life in the prison.

Hearing the cell door clang shut and lock behind me was jarring but I knew I would be out come morning.

The bed was not comfortable but I would be back in my bed the next night.

Correctional officers flashing on the lights every hour to check on me disrupted my sleep but it was also comforting.

Still, the mind races, locked in a cell, wondering what might happen, what could happen, what led to the people sleeping in neighboring cells to spend every night for years in prison.

How a misstep in my life could have led to similar circumstances. How even without a misstep, at least for one night, we were all in the same place, sleeping in the same conditions.

Still, I felt safe spending the night in a cell on a populated prison block. I felt confident everything would be OK, based on past reporting and public transparency on how the prison operated.

It’s been a few years, but I’ve entered the prison on a few occasions since and would probably do so again for a newspaper story.

But I wouldn’t spend the night there.

Not now.

In recent years, numerous deaths have been reported inside Valdosta State Prison. In the past, state Department of Corrections officials released information when those deaths occurred.

Now, deaths still occur inside the prison but the DOC does not release a statement regarding the deaths. Correctional officials will release information if asked but you have to know when inmates die in prison to get information about their deaths in prison.

Late last year, Valdosta State Prison was one of 35 Georgia prisons named in a U.S. Department of Justice investigation.

In the past few years, reporting has shown that inmates died after fights, by suspected suicide, after being found unresponsive in their cells.

Prison shouldn’t be easy. Some missteps demand hard consequences.

But prison officials should be open about what happens behind bars.

Their job is to keep inmates from the general public not withholding information from the general public.

Families should know what happens to their relatives who are incarcerated. The public should know what’s happening inside the prison across town.

I wouldn’t spend the night in Valdosta State Prison again … not if I didn’t have to.

But not knowing what’s happening there … that should be enough to keep anyone awake at night.

Dean Poling is an editor with The Valdosta Daily Times and editor of The Tifton Gazette.