After seven meetings across nine months investigating overcrowding, a backlog of cases and dangerous conditions at the Fulton County Jail, a Senate panel is urging county agencies to work better together.
Republicans pushed for creation of the panel in October in response to news that a 10th person died in 2023 while being held at the jail. As of April 10, three more detainees have died in custody.
The creation of the Senate panel also came as some Republicans sought to punish Fulton County 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 Senate colleague, state Sen. Shawn Still, a first-term Republican from Norcross, was charged with taking part in a slate of electors for Trump in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a former senator, could also face criminal charges involving his role as a Republican elector.
In the end, the Senate panel didn’t lay the blame for Fulton’s problems solely on Willis.
Among the recommendations, revealed at a news conference on Friday, the panel suggested the Fulton district attorney’s office and the public defender office create a policy to expedite nonviolent and nonsexual offenses, that the County Commission establish a jail advisory board, and that the commission and jail hold weekly meetings to improve the way the two groups work together.
“One of the recommendations, which I believe is perhaps the most important, is the relationship, the professionalism and the teamwork between the four areas that will ultimately solve this problem, which is the County Commission, the district attorney, the judges and the sheriff, working together in concert,” said Senate Public Safety Chairman John Albers, a Roswell Republican.
The committee also recommended that the city of Atlanta transfer its detention center to Fulton County and that the Atlanta Police Department provide all criminal evidence to the district attorney’s office without the need of an open records request. Officials with the district attorney’s office testified that they had to wait for city police to respond to open records requests before they could begin building cases against those who’ve been arrested.
Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat told reporters he did not expect the city to hand over its detention center, but he did hope to improve his office’s relationship with the County Commission.
“There is dysfunction between anybody that does business with the Board of Commissioners,” Labat said. “We as a sheriff’s office have been very transparent from day one. And so we offer, and have offered, several olive branches. We will continue to do that. That is the right thing to do for our community, and we’ll stay focused on that.”
State Sen. Randy Robertson, a Cataula Republican who served as chair of the study committee, credited the panel’s work with spurring the decrease in the number of detainees being held at the jail.
In April 2023, the facility held 3,221 detainees. That number was down to 1,575 in June, with 911 held at other facilities. The U.S. Department of Justice opened a civil investigation into the facility on July 13, 2023.
“The reason there is a reduction right now, I would argue, is because the system has started getting more efficient,” Robertson said. “Because during the testimony in this committee, it became very apparent early on that there was dysfunction in the systems that were being driven by personalities and not by software or anything else. And people started actually focusing more on doing their jobs.”
Robertson, who is a former Muscogee County sheriff’s deputy, said at the panel’s first meeting last year that senators would collect information and determine how the state could assist Fulton County in getting control of issues at the jail. None of the recommendations shared on Friday would involve state government.
For example, prosecutors and public defenders suggested an additional superior court judge could help reduce the backlog of cases, potentially easing overcrowding at the county jail. The Legislature has the authority to increase the number of judges that serve on a superior court. It has no authority to enact changes at the county level.
The same day the panel released its recommendations for the jail, it began a new committee set to study state prisons, which have also had major problems for years. Robertson is chair of that committee.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, in a series of stories last year, exposed extensive corruption among prison employees, widespread drug use and drug dealing inside prisons, massive officer vacancies, record homicides and large criminal enterprises that operate inside state prisons — and victimize people on the outside — with the help of contraband cellphones.
