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Nov. 14 (UPI) -- A proposed $300 million upgrade to Georgia's Fulton County Jail system would greatly improve conditions and address many issues raised by the Department of Justice, local officials said on Thursday. A DOJ report says the Fulton County Jail violates detainees' constitutional rights and federal law by subjecting them to "dangerous and dehumanizing conditions."
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"Fulton County and the Fulton County Sheriff's Office allowed unsafe and unsanitary conditions at the jail," Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a news release.
The unsafe and unsanitary conditions caused people held in the Fulton County Jail to suffer "harms from pest infestation and malnourishment" and put them at a "substantial risk of serious harm from violence by other incarcerated people," Garland said.
He said those harms and violent acts include homicides, stabbings and sexual abuse.
Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat and Chairman Robb Pitts addressed the DOJ's report during a 10-minute news conference at 4 p.m. EST Thursday.
Labat said the report includes 109 suggestions on needed improvements and local officials have been working to remedy the problems.
"That facility was built to warehouse people," Labat said of the aging Fulton County Jail and its annexes. "A $300 million renovation is a huge step forward."
Labat said the jail system had a population of 3,700, including 600 who slept on the floor, when he became sheriff in 2020.
"The population has decreased partly because we have formed an inmate advocacy unit that has gone through and combed through over 30,000 records, worked with the DA's office, worked with the public defender's office, worked with the judges on consent decrees and released nearly 1,400 people that were considered non-violent," Labat said.
He said technology and system improvements can make it more efficient to process and categorize inmates and detainees to prevent overcrowding and stop non-violent people from being locked up with violent felons.
"The first thing we have to do is change the culture of how we get people processed through courts," he said. "Could you imagine if we had a thousand less people than we have today?"
Labat said the county jail system needs more than additional staffing to fix.
The county needs a replacement facility "at some point in the future" to improve conditions for inmates and detainees, he said.
Pitts spoke briefly during the press event and said he is "encouraged about where we are."
"We've made a lot of changes and adjustments so far," Pitts said, adding there are many things yet to be accomplished to improve conditions at the jail.
"Today is a time of us looking forward and not backwards [at] how we accomplish some of the things pointed out in the study," Pitts said. "We look forward to working with the Department of Justice as we move forward and, more importantly, working with our sheriff to make sure we abide by what's in the report.
"We share the concerns that are outlined and are working jointly and cooperatively to address them."
The DOJ on Thursday released its report on the Fulton County Jail, including the main jail in Atlanta and annex facilities in Atlanta, Alpharetta and Union City.
The report indicates the jail fails to protect detainees from substantial risk of serious harm by other detainees and houses them in unsanitary and dangerous living conditions.
The report also says the jail system fails to provide adequate medical and mental health services, imposes solitary confinement in a discriminatory manner that exposes detainees to substantial harm and does not provide special education services to teens who are entitled to them while held at the jail.
The conditions and practices at the jail system are "longstanding" and contributed to six deaths caused by violence since 2022 and more than 300 stabbings in 2023.
Another four detainees died by suicide over the past four years, including one in April.
The conditions at the jail system violate detainees' 8th Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishments and 14th Amendment guarantee of due process, according to the DOJ report.
"We cannot turn a blind eye to the inhumane, violent and hazardous conditions that people are subjected to inside the Fulton County Jail," Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said.
Detention in the county jail "has amounted to a death sentence for dozens of people who have been murdered or who died as a result of atrocious conditions and treatment that violate the Constitution and defy federal law," Clarke said.
The death of detainee Lashawn Thompson, who died while jailed in 2022 and was found in what Clarke previously described as "covered in lice and filth," spurred the federal investigation into the Fulton County Jail system.
The DOJ report says inadequate staffing and overcrowding in the jail contribute to sexual assaults and violence committed by detainees and jail staff.
The Fulton County Jail system currently houses about 2,000 inmates.
