“It’s about safety first and foremost,” Sheriff Pat Labat said of the plan to ease overcrowding at the Fulton County Jail.
Fulton County Commissioners last month met with Atlanta City Council to develop a plan to alleviate overcrowding at the Fulton County Jail. 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.
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 who was found unresponsive in his cell on Aug. 31.
Following the nationally publicized death of an inmate, LaShawn Thompson, who was apparently eaten alive by bed bugs, legislators and civic organizations have lobbied to improve conditions at the jail and reduce the number of people in detention.
A number of local officials have repeatedly called for an investigation into the jails conditions and several have recommended closing the facility altogether due to inhumane treatment of…
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