“It’s about safety first and foremost,” Sheriff Pat Labat said of the plan to ease overcrowding at the Fulton County Jail. On Wednesday, Oct. 25 400 prisoners had been successfully moved from the dilapidated and dangerously overcrowded facility to the City of Atlanta City Detention Center along with facilities in Cobb and Forsythe counties.
“When we took office, we had nearly 600 people sleeping on the floor. As of yesterday, we had 54 people sleeping on floor,” Sheriff Patrick Labat said.
The sheriff also said they’ve worked with criminal justice partners to move people through the system.
The facility has been at the center of an outpouring of concerns regarding concerns about the health and well-being of people being housed at the facility, Even with the current reduction in the jail’s population at 1,125 remaining prisoners the Rice Street facility is at twice it’s housing capacity.
At a meeting in September, Labat had inmates tell commissioners just how bad conditions are at the jail to explain why he needed around $30 million in funding for the move.
“The walls are crumbling down and inmates are creating shanks out of the wall. So, you can go inside of the wall and get you a knife. You can go into your light and fix yourself up something to stab somebody next to you,” the inmate explained.
Plans to reduce the jail’s population by 1,000 inmates include moving hundreds of those incarcerated to the Atlanta City Jail as well as facilities in South Georgia and Mississippi. However, opponents of the controversial move filed an amended emergency petition on Monday in Fulton County Superior Court in hopes of preventing Sheriff Pat Labat from shipping hundreds of detainees out of state.
The horror stories emanating from detainees and visitors to the Rice Street facility continue to surface amid a string of inmate deaths. In a five-week span, there have been a reported six deaths – the last being a 24-year-old inmate…
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