For years, Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat and other local officials have pitched a new $1.7 billion jail as an antidote to the tide of deaths and dysfunction within the current county jail.
But federal investigators with the U.S. Department of Justice reached a different conclusion in a scathing 105-page report released last month, highlighting what criminal justice advocates and critics have argued for more than a year: The “unconstitutional” conditions in the jail are rooted in failures in management and leadership at the county level.
While acknowledging the dilapidated state of the jail, the yearlong federal investigation into the facility found it woefully understaffed and dominated by a culture of violence perpetrated by guards and detainees alike.
The report said physical conditions at the facility, which houses approximately 1,700 inmates, will not improve until the sheriff and county leaders solve systemic operational problems that have persisted for years. The DOJ listed more than 100 recommendations that would bring the facility into minimum compliance with the law, a new jail is not among them.
Still, in public meetings since the report came out, some Fulton County commissioners continued to express the need for a new jail. The county also reaffirmed its desire to secure more jail space by taking over the Atlanta City Detention Center from the City of Atlanta.
“You cannot read the report, as I hope you’ve all done, and conclude that the solution to the problem we have is a new facility,” Michael Collins, an Atlanta-based senior director of government affairs for the national legal advocacy group Color of Change, told commissioners at a Wednesday meeting.
“It’s not going to fix the staffing issues we have, it’s not going to fix the culture.”
Law professor Stephen Bright, who brought several lawsuits against the jail when he led the Southern Center for Human Rights, agrees, adding the conditions portrayed in the DOJ report are worse than when the jail was brought under the supervision of a federal court roughly two decades ago.
“The jail is horrendous by several orders of magnitude from what it used to be,” Bright said. “It speaks to competency and leadership.”
In a statement released on Dec. 9 by Fulton County Sheriff spokeswoman Natalie Ammons, the sheriff’s office acknowledged the role understaffing plays in compounding the “unrest and vandalism” in the jail and said it looks forward to working with the DOJ and others to address the report’s findings.
The statement also said the jail continues to deteriorate and that conditions in the facility only worsen the issues highlighted in the report.
“A modernized facility is not just about adding space—it’s about creating a culture designed to improve mental health care, provide enhanced medical services, introduce practical programming, and ensure humane conditions,” the statement said.
The DOJ launched its investigation following the 2022 death of Lashawn Thompson, who died in a filthy cell infested with lice and bedbugs. Fulton County officials explored the construction of a new $1.7 billion jail before opting this year on a $350 million overhaul of the current facility. In the meantime, the county over the past year launched a $13 million jail “blitz” effort to renovate all 11 of the Rice Street jail’s housing units.
More than half the housing units have been renovated, county officials said at a Nov. 20 meeting. Fulton expects nine of the 11 areas will be finished by the end of the year. But federal investigators are skeptical.
The blitz renovations aim to help suppress violence stemming from the ubiquity of man-made weapons in the jail. These crude weapons are often fashioned from materials pulled out of the building itself, such as metal light switch plates. Jail officials confiscated more than 2,100 man-made, sharpened weapons in 2023, according to the DOJ report. In January of this year, 139 man-made weapons were confiscated.
The DOJ argued, though, that the fast-tracked renovations won’t ultimately succeed in addressing the jail’s poor physical condition so long as understaffing and gaps in supervision continue. The report noted that just six weeks after one of the housing units was renovated, the unit already showed signs of fresh damage. Some 39 light switches had been broken and an electrical plate was missing from the wall.
“Before the repair blitz, there was no concerted effort to remedy poor conditions in the Jail, and until supervision in the Jail improves, it is likely to remain in a state of disrepair that fosters violence,” the report reads.
The report found staffing at the jail is well below safe staffing levels, with guards sometimes left alone to manage a floor with 150 to 250 detainees. Jail staff are often undertrained and unaware of accepted use-of-force standards and reports of physical and sexual violence too often go without investigation, the DOJ said.
Between August 2023 and June 2024, the jail received 39 new allegations of sexual misconduct, including 28 allegations of sexual abuse and 11 allegations of sexual harassment. As of August, 24 of the cases remained unresolved. Of the 15 that had been closed, none of the allegations had been substantiated.
“[T]he Jail has poor processes for reporting, identifying, and tracking sexual abuse allegations,” investigators wrote. “In most cases we reviewed with a sexual abuse allegation, the Jail failed to conduct a sexual abuse investigation, or if it did conduct one, failed to do so properly or made no findings.”
In a news conference following the Nov. 14 release of the report, Labat and Fulton County Commission Chair Robb Pitts said the review covers a snapshot of time and many of the issues highlighted by federal investigators are already being addressed.
And in the first Fulton Commission meeting since the report’s release, there still appeared to be some appetite for a new jail.
“I am of the opinion we need a new facility,” Commissioner Marvin Arrington Jr. said at the Nov. 20 meeting.
The relationship between other commissioners and the sheriff, though, is fraught. Labat has frequently clashed with the commission over the past year, mostly over contracts and spending some commissioners believe to be irresponsible. In August, jail contractor Strategic Security Corp. told the roughly 80 guards it contracted out to the Fulton sheriff to not report to the jail and accused Labat of owing the company $1 million.
Two weeks later, LeoTech, another jail contractor, said the sheriff’s office had $600,000 in unpaid bills. The report also mentions a $2.1 million contract with Talitrix, a software company that uses proprietary wristbands to perform biometric monitoring of inmates. That contract was later rescinded by the county commissioners when they discovered months after allocating the funds, only 15 or so wristbands were in use. Talitrix blamed the problem on the slow place of cleaning and repairs in the jail.
It is unclear how the DOJ and the county will continue moving forward. The DOJ threatened to sue the county if the problems identified in the report are not remedied within 49 days, but Bright said the federal government could enter into a consent agreement with the county that could give Fulton more time to comply.
“Lashawn Thompson’s horrific death was symptomatic of a pattern of dangerous and dehumanizing conditions in the Fulton County Jail,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a press release that accompanied the report. “The Justice Department’s report concluded that Fulton County and the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office allowed unsafe and unsanitary conditions at the Jail.”
Editor’s Note: This story was updated on Monday, Dec. 9 to include a statement from the Fulton County sheriff’s department. The department had previously declined to comment for this story.
Our Reporting
This story is the latest on the problems at the Fulton County Jail. For years, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has relied on numerous sources and thousands of pages of public records to deliver stories about the violence and dysfunction of the Rice Street jail.
AJC reporting has exposed bad contracts, chronicled the life and death of Fulton detainees and analyzed the often acrimonious battles between the sheriff and other local officials. We will continue to report on the jail and future developments as the county responds to the scathing report released by the U.S. Department of Justice in November. If you have news tips or comments, reach out to investigative reporter Dylan Jackson at Dylan.Jackson@ajc.com.
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