Fulton County Commissioner Dana Barrett publicly apologized to fellow commissioners Wednesday, saying she should have told them sooner that the county’s justice leaders had formed a new council designed to improve cooperation, streamline the justice system and reduce the time some detainees spend in jail.
Barrett said she wished she could go back in time and bring her colleagues into the conversation sooner. Then she asked them to support the new Criminal Justice Coordinating Council and allow for county staff to participate. She emphasized the importance of improving the justice system to help alleviate jail overcrowding, especially in light of the recent release of a withering report on the Fulton County Jail from the U.S. Department of Justice that found deplorable and unconstitutional conditions.
Barrett’s mea culpa was not enough.
“I can’t support this because I felt, even to this day, disrespected about the way you did it,” said Vice-Chair Khadijah Abdur-Rahman. “Even today it disrespected me as though I owe you an affirmative vote.”
Abdur-Rahman suggested Barrett was playing politics and implied that the new justice council would be a bad use of county staff and resources. Commissioners Bridget Thorne and Bob Ellis also voiced opposition, as did Chairman Robb Pitts.
On Thursday, the day that participants were supposed to officially create the council, they decided against moving forward for now, Barrett said. The group had been meeting informally for the past nine months.
“They recognized that the board is not going to see any of the work that comes out of that group as favorable,” Barrett said. “So they’re going to find other ways to come together collaboratively as elected leaders.”
Participants had hoped their efforts to improve efficiencies in the justice system could lessen crowding at the Fulton County Jail, where the DOJ concluded the county is violating the civil rights of inmates by allowing “abhorrent, unconstitutional” conditions.
“I’m just deeply disappointed that we were trying to do something that’s in the best interests of the citizens of Fulton County and the justice system and people who are justice-involved,” Barrett said Thursday. “And because of petty politics, we’re being forced to sort of switch gears and find other ways to work together. It’s very unfortunate. It’s a nationally established set of guidelines that are supported by the DOJ.”
Barrett spearheaded the creation of the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council. Active members of its working group included District Attorney Fani Willis, Public Defender Maurice Kenner, Sheriff Patrick Labat, Superior Court Chief Judge Ural Glanville and State Court Chief Judge Wes Tailor, among others.
The National Institute of Corrections, part of the DOJ, and the Justice Management Institute, a nonprofit based in Virginia, helped Fulton County’s senior criminal justice officials in working to form the council. Criminal justice coordinating councils exist in at least 22 states and Washington, D.C., according to a survey published in 2022 by the National Institute of Corrections.
Ché Alexander, clerk of Fulton’s superior and magistrate courts, was co-chair of the justice council’s working group, along with Barrett. On July 29, Alexander emailed commissioners saying she wanted to share information about the council’s work with them and ask for commissioners’ insight.
Chairman Pitts replied in a letter dated Aug. 6 that Barrett’s participation should not be seen as “an official position” of the Board of Commissioners. He wrote “this is the first time most commissioners have heard of this effort.”
At Wednesday’s board meeting, Commissioner Ellis said that if Barrett were to suggest that county staff should be allowed to participate in the council, those staffers would feel forced to do so, “and it’s going to consume their time and resources.”
“We’ve done a lot of great things in terms of coordination with justice partners absent any sort of outside structures,” he said, adding: “I think we know what our issues are, we’ve been working well to address them, and quite frankly I think we should continue within that fashion.”
He said the county’s justice partners need to work together independent of commissioners to explore solutions to issues “within their span of control.”
“How the sheriff does things operationally at the jail, I don’t see how this (CJCC) benefits that at all,” Ellis said. “The stuff we’re talking about that emanates out of the DOJ report, I don’t see how they’re going to have any engagement in that at all.”
