According to an Atlanta Voice report, Fulton County’s jail is going under federal oversight for the second time in 20 years to address the jail’s deadly, unsanitary and unconstitutional conditions.
The improvements are being made following the DOJ’s civil rights investigation after the death in 2022 of Lashawn Thompson, a prisoner at the Fulton jail found dead covered in bed bugs and insects.
“The proposed consent decree is a critical step toward correcting the dangerous and dehumanizing conditions that have persisted in the Fulton County Jail for far too long,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said. “We are encouraged that local officials have agreed to a plan that will begin to address the inhumane, unconstitutional conditions that were reflected in Lashawn Thompson’s horrific death.”
“Our findings regarding the Fulton County Jail identified serious and life-threatening violations of the Constitution and other laws,” added Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “Detention in the Fulton County Jail amounted to a death sentence for dozens of people who have been murdered or who died as a result of inhumane conditions inside the facility.”
From The Atlanta Voice:
The consent decree, which still must be approved by the court, requires the county to develop plans to keep incarcerated people safe from violence, including a pest management system to keep the jail clean, sanitary and free of pests.
The agreement also calls for improving jail supervision and staffing, protecting prisoners from risk of suicide, providing adequate medical and mental health care, and ending the practice of housing vulnerable people in isolation.
The consent decree also provides for an independent monitor to keep track of the required improvements. The monitor will issue public reports on the jail’s progress every six months.
Fulton County Jail (“Rice Street”) opened in 1989. It currently holds approximately 1,500 inmates. In 2024, the US Department of Justice found that conditions at the jail were unconstitutionally “inhumane, violent and hazardous”
