The Justice Department mentioned on Thursday that it was investigating the situations at a jail in Fulton County, Ga., citing experiences of violence, deteriorating environment and the dying final 12 months of an inmate who was lined in lice and feces.
The civil investigation, a part of a broader effort by the division to scrutinize situations at jails and prisons throughout the nation, will even look at whether or not officers used extreme drive, the supply of medical care and the therapy of mentally unwell prisoners.
“Detention or incarceration in jail should not include exposure to unconstitutional living conditions that place lives in jeopardy or risk of serious harm from assaults,” Kristen Clarke, an assistant lawyer normal who leads the company’s civil rights division, mentioned in saying the investigation. “Jail facilities must provide constitutional and humane conditions, in which all people can live safely while they go through the criminal process.”
The Fulton County authorities and sheriff’s workplace mentioned in a joint assertion that they deliberate to cooperate absolutely.
Conditions at Fulton County Jail have been the topic of criticism for years. The jail was below federal supervision from 2006 to 2015 after a courtroom discovered that the detention advanced was overcrowded, understaffed and harmful. Exceedingly cramped situations in 2020 led an professional on infectious illnesses to warn of a mass outbreak of the coronavirus on the jail until it drastically decreased its inhabitants measurement.
In her announcement, Ms. Clarke mentioned there was “significant justification” to open the inquiry, together with acknowledgment from native regulation enforcement of the jail’s dilapidated state and a “deeply concerning” degree of violence the place the jail averaged multiple stabbing per day at one level final 12 months. Inmates on the jail are sometimes individuals of shade, she added, saying that 87 % had been Black.
She additionally pointed to the dying of an inmate, LaShawn Thompson, 35, in September. Mr. Thompson, who had been arrested on a battery cost, was saved in a grimy cell within the jail’s psychiatric ward and died after weeks of extreme neglect, a personal post-mortem performed on behalf of his household mentioned.
The medical expert discovered that Mr. Thompson was malnourished and dehydrated, had misplaced 32 kilos in lower than 90 days, and had matted hair, soiled nails and “innumerable” bugs throughout his physique. The examiner additionally wrote that Mr. Thompson, who had schizophrenia, had not obtained treatment for his situation for over a month.
Advocacy teams welcomed news of the Justice Department’s investigation.
Fallon McClure, the deputy director of coverage and advocacy on the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, mentioned in an interview that the Georgia department had beneficial that the jail scale back its detainee inhabitants in a September report.
Ms. McClure pointed to steps taken at a jail in neighboring Cobb County, the place a smaller inhabitants allowed for cell blocks to be renovated. “It’s a lot easier to make the conditions better if you’re not overcrowded,” she mentioned.
The Southern Center for Human Rights, a nonprofit public curiosity authorized agency that wrote to the Justice Department in April about Mr. Thompson’s case, described the investigation as a step ahead.
Its govt director, Terrica Ganzy, referred to as the inquiry “a significant step toward a reckoning for the lives tragically and senselessly lost, and for the many people who continue to suffer rampant indignity and abuse in Fulton jails.”
At least 4 officers on the jail have been arrested or fired for misconduct this 12 months. One case concerned a detention officer who now faces felony prices of aggravated assault and cruelty to inmates.
The jail additionally opened its doorways to the native news media this spring to spotlight the poor situations, together with sections that had been unusable, bedding shortages, water leaks and plumbing points, rusting cell doorways, massive holes within the partitions and staffing shortages.
In May, an inmate on the jail tunneled by way of a wall to an adjoining cell block to stab one other prisoner, jail officers mentioned, prompting a search of each cells and the seizures of weapons, together with “shanks made from parts of the dilapidated building infrastructure.”
Source: www.nytimes.com