The Justice Department has found that egregious jail conditions in Georgia’s Fulton County — including pest infestation, malnourishment, a lack of adequate medical care and rampant violence that contributed to multiple deaths — violate the constitutional rights of people in custody.
The department on Thursday announced its findings from a civil rights investigation that had opened in July 2023 into conditions of Fulton County Jail in Georgia.
It found that Georgia officials violated the rights of those incarcerated by failing to protect them from violence, failing to provide humane living conditions, neglecting adequate medical and mental health care, having a pattern of excessive force and confining detainees in “dangerous restrictive housing conditions without due process.”
The investigation came after the death of Lashawn Thompson, 35, in September 2022, that sparked public outrage. His body was found malnourished in a bedbug-infested cell in the jail’s psychiatric wing, and a private autopsy found he was neglected to death.
The 105-page report details the serious conditions found at the jail —described as long-standing, filthy and dangerous — as well as remedial measures that Fulton County officials should implement.
Fulton County and the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment Thursday.
Fulton County Jail: Home to stabbings, assaults, pests and a lack of care
The lengthy report presented a staggering portrait of violence and death at the Fulton County Jail.
From 2022 to the present, six incarcerated people have died in violent attacks at the jail, the report said. Over 300 stabbings involving contraband and makeshift weapons were also reported at the jail in 2023. Four deaths by suicide have also been reported in the past four years, including as recently as April, according to the report.
The report found that Fulton County Jail failed to protect detainees from the risk of harm from violence and sexual violence. Assaults are carried out in the jail using makeshift weapons and the jail has inadequate practices for reporting and responding to sexual violence.
The report said that killings, stabbing and assaults are common at the jail. In less than 24 hours in August 2023, at least seven people were stabbed and one was killed at the jail in an outburst of violence that spanned five units and three floors, it noted.
Further, Fulton County Jail deputies and detention officers use force against incarcerated people without adequate justification, including deploying Tasers without reasonable cause, the document said.
The facilities were found to be in a state of “serious disrepair” and living conditions are “hazardous and unsanitary.”
Housing units are flooded with water from broken toilets and sinks, there are cockroaches, rodents and other pests, and the jail took “insufficient steps to control infestations.” Cells are described as “filthy and unhygienic with dangerous exposed wires.”
The jail also failed to provide enough food, food preparation and service are not sanitary, and detainees have suffered from malnourishment and pest infestation.
The report found that medical and mental health care also did not meet constitutional standards: there were gaps in medication administration, there’s a lack of security staff and when medical emergencies happen the jail fails to provide appropriate care,
And the jail fails to adequately treat serious mental health needs and prevent a risk of suicide. It’s a dire situation, the report found, as those with mental health needs are “overrepresented” in the jail population, yet the jail environment “exacerbates symptoms of mental illness.
Georgia’s Fulton County Jail violates rights of detainees with violence and filth, feds say
