Vanguard News Desk Editor
WASHINGTON, DC – Conditions at Atlanta’s Fulton County Jail violate the 8th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the Americans with Disabilities Act and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the U.S. Justice Dept. announced Thursday.
In its findings, DOJ released final details of its “comprehensive investigation of the Jail, funded and operated by Fulton County and the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office,” that houses about 2,000 people in the main Atlanta jail and annex facilities in Marietta, Alpharetta and Union City.
DOJ also revealed its Civil Rights Division has opened new investigations into prisons and jails in Tennessee, California, South Carolina, and juvenile justice facilities across Kentucky. The division also issued findings in its investigations of Mississippi prisons, Texas juvenile justice system’s facilities, and the Georgia Department of Corrections, and is suing Alabama’s prisons for men.
“The unconstitutional and unlawful conditions at the Fulton County Jail have persisted for far too long,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland in a DOJ statement.
Garland added, “The Justice Department’s report concluded that Fulton County and the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office allowed unsafe and unsanitary conditions…people incarcerated in the Fulton County Jail suffered harms from pest infestation and malnourishment and were put at substantial risk of serious harm from violence by other incarcerated people — including homicides, stabbings and sexual abuse.”
DOJ charged the “Fulton County and the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office routinely violate the rights of people incarcerated at the Jail,” noting the jail “Fails to protect people from the substantial risk of serious harm from violence by other incarcerated people, including homicides, stabbings, and sexual abuse,” and “Houses incarcerated people in unconstitutional living conditions that are unsanitary and dangerous.”
The jail, added DOJ, also “Fails to provide adequate medical and mental health services to incarcerated people,” and “Uses solitary confinement in discriminatory and unconstitutional ways that exposes incarcerated people, including 17-year-old children and those with mental health disabilities, to substantial harm” and “Fails to provide special education services to 17-year-old boys and girls who are entitled to those services while they are incarcerated at the Jail.”
DOJ said it found the “unlawful and dangerous practices identified in the report are long-standing and have contributed to multiple deaths and other serious harm,” citing six people have died, since 2022, from jail violence.
And, DOJ added, in 2023, “there were more than 300 stabbings in the Jail which involved uncontrolled contraband and makeshift weapons. There have been four deaths from suicide in the past four years, including as recently as April.”
“We cannot turn a blind eye to the inhumane, violent, and hazardous conditions that people are subjected to inside the Fulton County Jail,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
Clarke added, “Detention in the Fulton County Jail has amounted to a death sentence for dozens of people who have been murdered or who died as a result of the atrocious conditions inside the facility. It’s not just adults but also children who are subjected to conditions and treatment that violate the constitution and defy federal law.
“Many people held in jails in our country have not been convicted — they are awaiting hearings, trial dates or are serving short sentences for misdemeanors…people do not abandon their civil and constitutional rights at the jailhouse door. Jails and prisons across the country must protect people from the kind of gross violations and unconstitutional conditions that we have uncovered here.”
“In Fulton County, people in custody awaiting formal charges or trials frequently must protect themselves from brutal physical attacks, endure frequent excessive force, manage their wellbeing with inadequate food and unsanitary living conditions, and hope they can find access to a strained medical and mental health care program. This is unacceptable,” said U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan for the Northern District of Georgia.
“Our Constitution requires humane conditions while incarcerated that, at a minimum, ensure people in custody are safe. The findings regarding the Fulton County Jail reveal grave and diffuse failures to safeguard the men and women housed in its facilities, including a disturbing frequency of deaths among incarcerated people,” Buchanan added.
