The U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division announced that conditions in Georgia’s Fulton County Jail violate the Constitution.
In a report, the DOJ said the jail’s conditions of confinement violated the Eighth Amendment, which protects against cruel and unusual punishment, and the 14th Amendment, which prohibits states from restricting citizens’ rights.
“Our Constitution requires humane conditions while incarcerated that, at a minimum, ensure people in custody are safe,” U.S. Attorney Ryan Buchanan for the Northern District of Georgia said in a press release. “The findings regarding the Fulton County Jail reveal grave and diffuse failures to safeguard the men and women housed in its facilities, including a disturbing frequency of deaths among incarcerated people.”
An autopsy report for Lashawn Thompson, a person who died while incarcerated at the jail last year, found that his cause of death was “severe neglect.” Untreated schizophrenia contributed to his passing, which happened while Thompson was suffering a severe insect infestation of his body, malnutrition and dehydration, according to the report.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thompson’s death was “symptomatic of a pattern of dangerous and dehumanizing conditions” at the jail.
“The Justice Department’s report concluded that Fulton County and the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office allowed unsafe and unsanitary conditions at the jail,” Garland noted.
“As a result, people incarcerated in the Fulton County Jail suffered harms from pest infestation and malnourishment and were put at substantial risk of serious harm from violence by other incarcerated people – including homicides, stabbings and sexual abuse,” he continued.
The DOJ found that six people have died at the jail since 2022. Last year, there were more than 300 stabbings there, according to the report, which noted that sexual assaults readily occur.
“At the end of the day, people do not abandon their civil and constitutional rights at the jailhouse door,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division said. “Jails and prisons across the country must protect people from the kind of gross violations and unconstitutional conditions that we have uncovered here.”
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