Georgia lawmakers say the top solution to jail problems is for officials to work together

ATLANTA (AP) — A Georgia Senate committee says more cooperation among county officials would improve conditions in Fulton County’s jail, but it also called on the city of Atlanta to hand over all of its former jail to the county to house prisoners.

The committee was formed last year to examine conditions in the jail after an already overcrowded population soared and a string of inmate deaths drew an unwanted spotlight. The U.S. Department of Justice opened a civil rights investigation last year over longstanding problems.

The Justice Department cited violence, filthy conditions and the September 2022 death of Lashawn Thompson, one of dozens of people who has died in county custody during the past few years. Thompson, 35, died in a bedbug-infested cell in the jail’s psychiatric wing.

In August 2023, former President Donald Trump went to the Fulton County Jail to be booked and to sit for the first-ever mug shot of a former president after he was indicted on charges related to efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.

The number of inmates locked in the main jail has fallen from nearly 2,600 a year ago to just over 1,600 today, although the county’s overall jail population has fallen by less, as it now houses about 400 prisoners a day in part of the Atlanta City Detention Center.

Such study committees typically aim to formulate legislation, but it’s not clear that will happen in this case.

“Most of the things that you will see in this report are operational things that can be done by folks working together, and getting things done in the normal run of business,” Senate Public Safety Committee Chairman John Albers, a Roswell Republican, told reporters at a news conference. “I think it’s a bit too early to tell how we’re going to come up to the 2025 legislative session.”

Instead, Albers and subcommittee chair Randy Robertson, a Republican senator from Cataula, called on Fulton County’s sheriff, commissioners, district attorney and judges to do more to work together to take care of the jail and speed up trials.

Robertson said judges were not hearing enough cases and District Attorney Fani Willis’ office wasn’t doing enough to speed up trials. The report also highlighted conflicts between Sheriff Pat Labat and county commissioners, saying their relationship was “tenuous, unprofessional, and not the conduct citizens should expect.”

Conflicts between sheriffs and county commissioners are common in Georgia, with commissioners often refusing to spend as much money as a sheriff wants, while commissioners argue sheriffs resist oversight of spending.

In Fulton County, that conflict has centered on Labat’s push for a $1.7 billion new jail, to replace the worn-out main jail on Rice Street. On Thursday, Labat said a new building could provide more beds to treat mental and physical illness and improve conditions for all inmates, saying the county needs “a new building that is structured to change the culture of how we treat people.”

County commissioners, though, voted 4-3 in July for a $300 million project to renovate the existing jail and build a new building to house inmates with special needs. Paying for an entirely new jail would likely require a property tax increase, and three county commissioners face reelection this year.

The city voted in 2019 to close its detention center and transform it into a “Center for Equity” with education and reentry programs. Although the county has sought to buy the city’s jail, the city has refused to allot more than the 450 beds housing county prisoners now.

Albers said said conveying the jail to the county “is certainly part of the right answer.”

“Anyone that thinks that’s going to become a community center one day I think is seriously on the wrong track right now,” Albers said. “It was designed and built to be a jail.”

But Labat said he doesn’t expect Atlanta to convey its 1,300-bed jail to Fulton County.

“They’ve said that’s not for sale,” Labat said. “And so I believe the mayor when he says that.”

Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts said that in addition to the city jail, more judges and more facilities to care for people with mental illness would help. He said he’s ready to work with lawmakers.