DOJ finds Fulton County Jail in violation of federal law in probe of inmate’s death
The Justice Department (DOJ) issued a 105-page report Thursday outlining the inhumane conditions in the Fulton County Jail in Georgia.
The DOJ found the jail managed by the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office violated the Eighth and 14th amendments of the U.S. Constitution, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Last year, the jail reported 1,054 assaults and 314 stabbings as well as examples of sexual assault and “unsanitary conditions.”
The department began the investigation after 35-year-old Lashawn Thompson was found dead in a cell infested with bed bugs.
“Lashawn Thompson’s horrific death was symptomatic of a pattern of dangerous and dehumanizing conditions in the Fulton County Jail,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
After Thompson’s death in 2022, 10 additional Black men held in Fulton County’s facilities were pronounced dead, four were diagnosed with serious mental health needs. Officials also said guards have a history of placing 17-year-old boys in isolation for extended periods of time for punishment, causing a substantial increase in suicide attempts.
In 2023, then-former President Trump was arrested, booked and quickly released from the facility after taking his viral mug shot for felony charges.
Famed rapper, Jeffery Lamar Williams Jr., widely known professionally as Young Thug, was held at the Fulton County Jail throughout his high-profile court case. He frequently complained of unbearable conditions and signed a plea deal ensuring his immediate release last month, so he could see doctors who could address “health concerns” related to the jail’s conditions, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The DOJ cited studies from the National Commission on Correctional Health Care warning against this treatment in the report alongside a memo describing areas for improvement for the jailhouse.
The letter shared that if the DOJ is unable to reach a resolution regarding its findings within 49 days, the attorney general is authorized to initiate a lawsuit. Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat will be responsible for implementing new changes. He was originally elected to the post in 2021 and reelected last week.
Labat has previously raised concerns about overcrowding, dilapidated infrastructure and staffing shortages at county lockups.
“At the end of the day, people do not abandon their civil and constitutional rights at the jailhouse door. Jails and prisons across the country must protect people from the kind of gross violations and unconstitutional conditions that we have uncovered here,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in Thursday’s report.
“We hope our findings report sounds an alarm that will prompt Fulton County officials to work with the Justice Department to implement the reforms necessary to ensure constitutional conditions going forward,” she added.
Labat responded to the report during a Thursday news conference, emphasizing the local agency’s willingness to work with the DOJ.
“We have ongoing conversations daily with our command staff in terms of what it looks like for us to move forward after the incident, use of force and recording, we have revamped that process and we have revamped some training as we have gone on with the last few months,” he said. “We’re committed to working with the Bureau of Justice’s specific program and the National Institute of Corrections when it comes to what going through these legal efforts.”
—Updated at 5:20 p.m.
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