'Persistent overcrowding': Fulton County Jail issues spark debate, search for answers

An overcrowded, deteriorating jail spurred a heated debate between Atlanta officials Wednesday about whether to send incarcerated people to other facilities, even as some experts say more beds won’t solve the real crisis.

Conditions at the Fulton County Jail are at the epicenter of a polarizing national debate about jail and prison overcrowding. The U.S. Department of Justice launched a civil probe earlier this year to determine whether people in the Georgia jail are subjected to a pattern of constitutional abuse.

Many experts point to the Fulton jail problems as a microcosm of the larger problems across the nation. The United States ranks among the highest worldwide in its dependence on incarceration, according to a 2023 study by The Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C.-based research and advocacy center that seeks to address racial disparities in the criminal justice system.

Fulton County Jail is more than 300 people over capacity, officials said at a Fulton County Board of Commissioners meeting Wednesday. State leaders in August approved a $4 million settlement for the family of a man who died at the jail in August after being found unresponsive and covered in bug bites.

Sheriff Pat Labat proposed sending some people from Fulton County Jail to another Georgia facility about four hours away, or to a Tutwiler, Mississippi facility more than six hours away. 

Both options come with hefty price tags: officials said the Mississippi jail would cost Fulton County $2.5 million per month for up to 500 inmates, while the Folkston, Georgia facility would cost $75-80 a day “per diem”, in addition to costs for transportation and other necessities.

“I am sad today that in the civil rights cradle we're talking about shipping individuals to Mississippi,” commissioner Khadijah Abdur-Rahman said at the meeting Wednesday.

Commissioners and other local officials blamed a myriad of reasons for overcrowding, including widespread staffing issues, a backlog of cases at the court and logistical problems.

Not enough staff to run jails at full capacity

Labat and commissioners debated about widespread staffing issues in Fulton County Jail and beyond.

“For the better part of a year, we’ve allowed persistent overcrowding to exist at the main jail facility while we had open beds at facilities that we control and have access to,” vice chair Bob Ellis said.

Commissioners worked with the Atlanta City Detention Center and other facilities close by to hold people from Fulton County Jail. However, even facilities with the space to hold more people don’t have the staffing to operate at 100% capacity.

Fulton County has tried to incentivize people to work at the jail through signing bonuses, pay raises and double time, Labat said. But even as the initiatives have helped get staff in the door, the county is running into retention issues, he added.

Hundreds jailed without indictment or bond for months

Officials also spoke about delays in court proceedings, which can cause longer jail stays as people wait for their hearings.

Georgia law asserts that anyone arrested and denied bond is entitled to a grand jury process within 90 days of confinement. Absent of a hearing within that time period, judicial standards determine a person has a right to have bail set, Ellis noted in the meeting Wednesday.

However, Fulton County Jail has held 521 unindicted people for more than 90 days, data presented Wednesday shows, 60 of which have been held more than a year.

“If that’s not pretty disturbing data… I really don’t know what is,” Ellis said.

ACLU: More beds not the answer

Benjamin Lynde, policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties of Union of Georgia, told USA TODAY Wednesday that Fulton County Jail has been overcrowded for the entirety of his lifetime.

“I've never found a place that was struggling to fill a capacity of their jail,” Lynde noted.

Finding more beds ignores the root causes of overcrowding, Lynde said.

The ACLU published a report last September that examined Fulton County Jail’s overcrowding crisis. The organization determined that a four-pronged approach would solve the longstanding issue: to stop jailing people because of inability to pay bond, release most people charges only with misdemeanors, indict in a timely manner, and incentivize law enforcement to make use of diversion programs at the time or arrest that address mental health issues, poverty and other problems.

Lynde also said the number of deaths at Fulton County Jail is unlike anything he’s seen proportionally across the nation's jails. The Fulton County Sheriff's Office has reported 10 deaths of people incarcerated at Fulton County Jail so far this year.

Fulton County Jail part of ongoing probe

The U.S. Department of Justice's civil probe will examine living conditions, access to medical care and mental health care, use of excessive force by staff and conditions that may give rise to violence between people incarcerated at the facility, as well as whether the jail discriminates against incarcerated people with psychiatric conditions.

The investigation was launched nearly a year after a man incarcerated at Fulton County Jail was found unresponsive in a bed-bug infested cell. LaShawn Thompson, 35, died due to “severe neglect” from jail staff, an independent autopsy later determined.

Sheriff Labat remarked on the jail's deteriorating conditions Wednesday, noting it as reason to move 800-1,000 people to other facilities.

"This overcrowding, among other things, has exacerbated the Rice Street facility’s physical condition, contributes to unsanitary conditions and is shockingly unsafe for both inmates and Sheriff’s Office staff," Labat said in a statement Wednesday to the Board of Commissioners