Detainees are spending nearly 10 times the amount of time they should be held in the Fulton County Jail, officials told a Georgia Senate panel Thursday.
People who have been arrested are spending an average of 295 days in jail, Amelia Joiner, general counsel for the Fulton County Jail, told a Senate committee tasked with investigating issues at the facility. The average number of days experts say a detainee should be kept in jail is about 30.
The panel was created last month in response to news that a 10th person died this year while being held at the jail.
Arrestees are kept in jail for long periods for many reasons, Joiner said, such as being charged with crimes that don’t allow a judge to set a bond — such as murder — or they don’t have enough money to pay a bond and be released.
Joiner said the jail houses inmates from all of the county’s municipalities, the Georgia State Patrol, MARTA police and, sometimes, Grady Memorial Hospital.
“Because of that we’ve come to realize that the Fulton County Jail is its own city,” she said, adding that the jail currently has about 3,000 in custody. “It is not a mere building or set of buildings. It is a microcosm of the community.”
Senate Public Safety Chairman John Albers, R-Roswell, said it was important to remember that many people being held in jails have not been found guilty.
“A lot of people have lost their lives and we can’t ever have that happen,” he said. “We will make sure that process of criminal justice, from beginning to end, is working properly.”
When Albers asked what the jail would need to alleviate its problems, Joiner said it could use a new building, more staff and more funding. The main jail facility, on Rice Street in Atlanta, is 33 years old. The jail is funded and operated by Fulton County.
Joiner said the jail can be a dangerous place. Of the 10 deaths, she said, two were homicides. Four deaths were due to natural causes, three were caused by overdoses and one more death is thought to be caused by an overdose.
Of the inmates in the jail as of Thursday, Joiner said there were 435 people who’d been charged with murder and 1,016 charged with aggravated assault. She said 114 had been charged with misdemeanor offenses.
“While this all seems insurmountable, our team continues efforts and we recognize that we did not cause our population and we can’t fix the systemic problems with the criminal justice system,” Joiner said. “We work on (efforts) to decrease the population and to provide as safe as possible conditions for the detainees within our care in our custody.”
Georgia senators also got a crash course in the mechanisms and operations of jails, hearing from representatives from the Georgia Sheriff’s Association and the National Institute for Jail Operations.
Officials from both groups and the Fulton jail said that housing people who should be under psychological care for mental health problems is a huge issue.
The creation of the Senate panel came as some Republicans have sought to punish Fulton District Attorney Fani Willis for initiating a wide-ranging election interference investigation that led to indictments against former President Donald Trump and 18 others.
Their colleague, state Sen. Shawn Still, a first-term Republican from Norcross, was charged with taking part in a pro-Trump slate of electors in an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who was at the announcement, could also face criminal charges involving his role as a Republican elector.
Senate Majority Whip Randy Robertson, a Cataula Republican and former major with the Muskogee County Sheriff’s Office, pushed back on the notion that the investigation was political.
“This will not be a political podium for anyone to come and speak about what their beliefs are,” he said at the beginning of the hearing. “My intent is for this to be an educational process (for other senators) so that all of us on this committee have a better understanding.”
