The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia have announced that the department has entered into a court-enforceable agreement to resolve the department’s findings that conditions of confinement at the Fulton County Jail in Georgia violate the 8th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, Americans with Disabilities Act, and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
The department filed a complaint and a proposed consent decree with Fulton County and the Fulton County Sheriff in federal court.
The proposed consent decree, which the court must still approve, would resolve the department’s claims that the jail engages in a pattern or practice of violating the rights of people incarcerated there.
Under the proposed consent decree, the jail will, among other things, develop plans and policies to keep incarcerated people safe from violence, improve supervision and staffing, keep doors and locks in working order, require any use of force by staff to comply with constitutional standards; take steps to protect incarcerated people at risk of suicide and to afford incarcerated people adequate medical and mental health care; and develop and implement a comprehensive housekeeping plan and pest management system to keep the Jail clean, sanitary, and free of pests.
Others are to stop housing vulnerable people in isolation when they are at substantial risk of self-harm or other negative mental health outcomes absent specific and significant protections and facilitate the provision of adequate special education services to children with disabilities in the jail.
The proposed consent decree provides for an independent monitor to assess the jail’s implementation of the decree’s requirements. The monitor will issue public reports on the Jail’s progress every six months, and members of the public can share information with the monitor regarding the implementation of the decree and Jail conditions.
“This proposed consent decree is a critical step toward correcting the dangerous and dehumanising conditions that have persisted in the Fulton County Jail for far too long,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.
“Our findings regarding the Fulton County Jail identified serious and life-threatening violations of the Constitution and other laws,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “Detention in the Fulton County Jail amounted to a death sentence for dozens of people who have been murdered or who died as a result of inhumane conditions inside the facility.”
“Our report from an investigation of Fulton County and the Fulton County Jail concluded that the Constitutional rights of incarcerated persons are being violated,” said U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan for the Northern District of Georgia.
The Justice Department initiated its investigation of the Fulton County Jail in July 2023. The Department’s investigation proceeded under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (CRIPA), Americans with Disabilities Act, and Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which prohibits law enforcement officers from engaging in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of rights protected by the Constitution or federal law.
These statutes authorize the Attorney General to file a lawsuit in federal court to seek court-ordered remedies to eliminate a pattern or practice of unlawful conduct. The Department provided Fulton County and the Fulton County Sheriff with written notice of its findings, supporting facts, and the minimum remedial measures necessary to address the violations.
The proposed consent decree seeks to address and resolve those violations.
The Civil Rights Division said it “continues to prioritise unconstitutional conditions and violations” of federal law in correctional and juvenile justice facilities. It opened new investigations into prisons and jails in Tennessee, California, South Carolina, and juvenile justice facilities across Kentucky.
The division also issued findings in its investigations of Mississippi prisons, Texas juvenile justice system’s facilities, the Georgia Department of Corrections, and San Luis Obispo County, California, Jail. The division entered into agreements, including consent decrees, regarding the Cumberland County, New Jersey, Jail, the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey, the Broad River Road Complex in South Carolina, the Manson Youth Institution in Connecticut, and the Massachusetts Department of Correction.
The division is also litigating matters related to the constitutionality of conditions in Alabama’s prisons for men and the incarceration of people beyond their release dates in Louisiana prisons.
