Georgia’s Fulton County Jail subjects inmates to ‘inhumane, violent’ conditions that threaten their safety, DOJ finds

By Ashley R. Williams, CNN

(CNN) — The Fulton County Jail in Atlanta unconstitutionally subjects inmates to “inhumane, violent and hazardous conditions” that threaten their safety, a US Justice Department official said Thursday, announcing the results of a 16-month investigation.

Housing units flooded by broken toilets; infestations of roaches and rodents; exposed wiring; a lack of food, medical and mental health care; and staff resorting to force – including Tasers – without justification are among the problems at the jail, Justice Department officials said in a news conference in Atlanta.

The jail also does not adequately protect inmates from violence by other inmates, “such as stabbings, sexual abuse or even murder,” Kristen Clarke, assistant US attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said while announcing the department’s report on the probe.

The conditions violate the US Constitution’s Eighth and 14th Amendments, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, according to the Justice Department.

The department’s civil rights investigation into the jail’s conditions, announced in 2023, was sparked in part by the 2022 death of Lashawn Thompson, an incarcerated man who died in a cell in the jail’s mental health unit covered in lice and filth, the department has said.

“Our investigation finds longstanding, unconstitutional, unlawful and dangerous conditions that jeopardize the lives and wellbeing of the people held there,” Clarke said Thursday.

“We cannot turn a blind eye to the inhumane, violent and hazardous conditions that people are subjected to inside the Fulton County Jail,” Clarke said. “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.”

Within weeks of the investigation’s July 2023 launch, six men had died at the jail, including one who died during a series of violent assaults that left at least seven people stabbed across five jail units in 24 hours, according to the report.

The report lays out what it calls minimum remedial measures to address issues including inmate safety, protection against excessive force, environmental hazards, health care and other issues.

“We can fix these problems and we are pleased that Fulton County has pledged to cooperate with us in doing so in the road ahead,” Clarke said.

The US attorney general could file a lawsuit to correct the issues if state officials don’t address the concerns within 49 days, the report says.

The investigation into the jail’s conditions “has at its basic level revealed that the men and women, (and) young people who find themselves housed at the jail are often left to wonder whether their humanity remained intact once they cross the threshold of the jail facilities,” Ryan Buchanan, US attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, at said at Thursday’s news conference.

“The most obvious casualties of the civil rights violations occurring in the jail are those who leave the jail in body bags,” Buchanan said.

The Fulton County Board of Commissioners has approved around $300 million “to fully address the facility needs,” which includes renovations, board chairman Robb Pitts said at a separate Thursday news conference. The Justice Department’s report described the jail’s housing areas as “hazardous” and “in a state of disrepair.”

Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat joined Pitts at the separate news conference. A reporter asked Labat whether he was calling for a new jail as he had in the past.

“We are going to work with the facility we have,” Labat said. “We have to have a replacement facility at some point in the future … but ultimately, a $300 million renovation is a huge step forward.”

CNN has reached out to Thompson’s family for comment on the Justice Department’s report.

The deaths of Thompson and other inmates in the mental health unit

The 105-page report lays out examples of the problems it alleges, including the treatment of inmates with mental health challenges. One of the inmates it mentions is Thompson, who went to the jail on a misdemeanor assault charge in June 2022, according to his family’s attorney.

Thompson, 35, was housed in the jail’s psychiatric unit because he suffered from mental health issues, one of his family’s attorneys, Michael Harper, has said. Thompson lost more than 30 pounds in three months while incarcerated, according to the Justice Department report.

In September 2022, staff found Thompson dead in his cell, which was bug-infested and “not fit for a diseased animal,” Harper told CNN last year.

A medical review commissioned by attorneys for Thompson’s family found his mental illness had not been treated at the time of his death, his family’s attorneys said. The review cited a lack of medication in his system as evidence he had gone untreated.

The medical review commissioned by the attorneys asserted the manner of his death was homicide, and listed “untreated decompensated schizophrenia” as a contributing cause of death. Dehydration, malnutrition and severe body insect infestation, including lice and bed bugs, were also listed as “significant conditions.”

The Fulton County medical examiner’s office listed Thompson’s manner and cause of death as undetermined, according to a document sent to CNN in 2023. The report listed schizoaffective disorder, bipolar and acute exacerbation as “other conditions.”

At least three officials at the jail stepped down amid an investigation into Thompson’s death. Thompson’s family reached a $4 million settlement with Fulton County in August 2023.

Thompson was just one of four Black men dealing with serious mental health needs to die in the jail’s mental health unit in under a year, according to the Justice Department report.

Three months before Thompson’s September 2022 death, an unhoused man with a reported serious mental illness was arrested and taken to the jail’s mental health unit after breaking into a building to find warmth and shelter, according to the report.

The man had stopped taking his medications and was found unresponsive after a possible seizure, according to the report. He died a month later in hospice care, the Justice Department said.

Two weeks after Thompson’s death, two more men – also with serious mental health concerns – died in the same unit as Thompson, according to the report. “Both were killed by their cellmates, and both were found with their feet bound,” the report states. “One of them was wrapped up in bedding ‘like a mummy.’”

Around 62% of people entering the jail have been identified as having mental health issues or substance use disorder needs, according to the Justice Department report, which cites the sheriff.

Meanwhile, around 75% of the people who have died at the jail since 2021 had a mental health diagnosis or history of mental illness, Buchanan said.

“Someone dies in the jail, there’s little to no effort by the jail to determine … the root cause of their death,” he said Thursday.

Assaults and stabbings outpace those at other jails, official says

More than 1,000 assaults and more than 300 stabbings were reported at the jail in 2023, Buchanan said. That outpaced the rate of similar assaults at jails in other major cities nearly 2-to-1, he said.

“The Fulton County Jail had as many stabbings in a single month as the Miami-Dade County Jail had all year, and that’s a facility with one-and-a-half times more people,” Clarke said.

The report also found “a substantial risk” of inmates being sexually abused by other inmates in part due to poor supervision, weapons inside the jail and a lack of effective classification practices that allow extremely violent people and gang members to be housed with vulnerable, low-risk people.

The jail’s practices for reporting and responding to sexual violence have long been inadequate, according to the report.

Its vulnerable inmates, including gay or transgender people and people with mental or medical health needs, are among those most impacted by the poor conditions, the report states.

Among the jail’s vulnerable population are its youngest – 17-year-old boys and girls – who aren’t receiving any educational services and face a lack of health care access, risks of violence from other inmates and suicide while in isolation, according to Buchanan.

The average stay for someone entering the jail at 17 is 392 days, according to the report. During a Justice Department team’s tour of the jail’s South Annex in Union City, it learned the boys were frequently held in their cells for 22 hours or more, Buchanan said.

“These young people deserve better,” Buchanan said.

Evidence of malnourishment, report says

The Justice Department’s report said the jail does not provide enough food, and the meals it does supply do “not meet nutritional standards.” It found “substantial evidence that people in the jail are malnourished,” without saying how much of the overall population might be in that condition.

In September 2022 – the month Thompson died – the jail’s medical staff reported 90% of people living in the same mental health housing unit as Thompson suffered from significant malnourishment “with obvious muscle wasting,” according to the report.

“Medical records show that other people in the jail have suffered from malnutrition and hunger,” the report reads. “Incarcerated people we spoke with described experiencing hunger.”

Food extortion in the jail is common due to low food supply, according to the department.

“In one case, an incarcerated person who (had a Taser used on him) after he took an extra lunch sack explained that he did so because he has diabetes and was hungry,” the report states.

The food also is prepared in unsanitary conditions, according to the report.

Investigators observed rodent and cockroach infestations in the kitchen along with bird droppings near the loading dock’s food racks, the report said.

This story has been updated with additional information.

CNN’s Ryan Young, Nick Valencia, Hannah Rabinowitz and Dakin Andone contributed to this report.

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