Fulton County, sheriff nine months late on required jail implementation plan
When the U.S. Department of Justice, Fulton County and Sheriff Patrick Labat signed a legally binding agreement just after the New Year to improve miserable conditions at the Fulton County Jail, the county and sheriff’s office were ordered to create an “implementation plan” within 30 days that would set a schedule for policy changes and trainings.
The 68-page agreement, known as a consent decree, lists hundreds of specific mandates for jail improvements but leaves most of the deadlines to the implementation plan.
Nine months past the deadline, the implementation plan is still being developed, according to a spokesperson for Fulton County government.
But neither the county spokesperson, nor one for the sheriff’s office, responded to questions about the reasons for the missed deadline or when the plan would be finished.
“We continue to work consistently and collaboratively with the monitor, monitoring team, county administration, and the Fulton County Board of Commissioners regarding the consent decree,” sheriff’s office spokesperson Natalie Ammons said in a statement.
The consent decree stipulated the first implementation plan would lay out the timetable for the first year, then requires the county and sheriff’s office to create new implementation plans every six months.
The consent decree also requires the county and the sheriff’s office to create more than a dozen plans or policy revisions “by dates set in the Implementation Plan” to address problems in the jail, which a DOJ investigation found houses inmates in “unconstitutional living conditions that are unsanitary and dangerous.”
New policies and procedures must be developed for subject areas such as medical and mental health care, environmental health and nutrition, among others. The implementation plan will set deadlines for the county and sheriff’s office to complete a classification and housing plan, staffing analysis, contraband plan and gang violence prevention plan.
A federal judge and independent court-appointed monitor must approve all implementation plans.
Civil litigation in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia has been on hold since the federal government shutdown began Oct. 1, delaying the judge’s approval until it’s over — but the county and sheriff’s office declined to say whether they had submitted a draft for approval.
Implementation plans are a common cornerstone of federal consent decrees, said Adrienne Johnson, a former DeKalb County public defender and now senior counsel at the Wren Collective, a criminal justice reform group. She is also a member of the Community Over Cages Coalition, which advocates for reduced incarceration and jail improvements in Fulton County.
“The absence of an implementation plan nine months after it should have originally been in place is concerning for several reasons,” Johnson said in an email. “First, and most importantly, incarcerated people continue to die in Fulton County custody.
“The lack of an implementation plan undermines public accountability. Implementation plans provide for public monitoring of the county’s progress toward the consent decree goals, and right now, it is difficult to know what, if any, progress has been made.”
The County Commission recently approved a $1.2 billion jail maintenance plan, but that fails to address some critical components of the consent decree, Johnson said.
“A consent decree is a floor, not a ceiling,” she added. “Repairing the jail and addressing patterns and practices of abuse is meaningless if we don’t also address the things that led to its overcrowding — like policing poverty, criminalizing those with mental health diagnoses, failing to use diversion tools, and ignoring community-based health and treatment options.”
The judge overseeing the consent decree, Leigh Martin May, appointed Kathleen Kenney on Feb. 21 as the lead monitor. According to the consent decree, Kenney had a maximum of 120 days from her appointment to create a monitoring tool that measures compliance, with input from Labat and county officials.
In response to a request from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution under the Georgia Open Records Act, the county said the monitoring tool was also still under development — meaning that deadline has been missed by four months.
In an August report, Kenney did not mention the delayed implementation plan. Some policies have been updated, but a severe staffing shortage has hampered training on the changes, the report said.
“The Monitoring Team intends to collaborate with the County and United States to develop a strategy and timeline for policy revisions that is realistic and achievable,” the report said. “The Monitor expects the pace of policy updates and training to substantially increase once the staffing crisis has been ameliorated.”
Jail staffing, and funds for jailer overtime, has been one of several issues over which the sheriff and County Commission publicly sparred this year.
A staffing analysis was expected to be finished in October, according to the report. Fulton County did not respond to an inquiry this week about the status of the analysis.
Kenney did not respond to messages from the AJC seeking comment.
The consent decree was the result of a federal investigation that found conditions at the jail were “abhorrent” and unconstitutional. That probe began after Lashawn Thompson, a homeless schizophrenic man, died in the jail of “severe neglect” in 2022, according to a private autopsy. Thompson lost 32 pounds during three months before dying in a psychiatric wing cell filled with garbage and infested with so many bedbugs and lice he could have developed anemia, records stated.
The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office has reported four jail deaths this year so far. Two were suicides and one was the result of a medical emergency, according to the sheriff’s office. The cause of the fourth death has not been released, though the sheriff’s office said foul play was not suspected.
A fifth inmate died after falling and hitting his head, the radio station WABE reported in October, citing an autopsy report from the Fulton County Medical Examiner. The sheriff’s office has not publicly addressed that incident.
Four inmates died last year, including one who was killed by another inmate, the sheriff’s office said. Last month, the sheriff’s office said a 20-year-old woman was beaten and choked in her cell by an inmate, landing her on life support.
Among the provisions in the consent decree are mandates related to emergency response, suicide prevention, sanitation, pest control and food. The sheriff’s office, county government or both must revise policies and procedures to comply with those mandates by dates to be set in the implementation plan.
In her August report, Kenney said emergency response procedures remained unclear. The report did not address the rest.
The consent decree mandates that sheriff’s office procedures include “suicide resistant housing” for inmates expressing suicidality and constant monitoring of those who are actively suicidal. Kenney reported jail residents on suicide watch are not consistently placed in safe cells or monitored frequently enough.
In terms of sanitation, the monitoring team found the main jail on Rice Street and the South Annex in Union City “generally in unacceptable condition,” the report said. Pest problems and trash handling have improved, but staff and residents continued to report parasites such as bedbugs and lice, especially in mental health units, the report said.
Residents in some units “described constant problems and little experience seeing exterminators,” according to the report.
The kitchen in the main jail is understaffed, equipment was inoperable and unlabeled food was sitting out at room temperature during the monitoring team’s visit, the report said.
“In focus groups, residents indicated that the food is generally bad, that portion size varies across trays, and that breakfast in most housing units is served between 1-3 a.m., which is not a best practice,” the report said.
The monitoring team, the county and the sheriff’s office are now focusing on inmate classification; staffing and supervision; fixing the heating, air conditioning and fire alarm systems; and suicide prevention, according to the report.
According to the consent decree, the county and sheriff’s office must address those recommendations in implementation plans. But without a team of staffers dedicated to implementing the consent decree, the sheriff’s office “does not have the bandwidth to focus on daily operations and project management,” the report said.
The jail is the subject of a long-standing rift between Labat and the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. Kenney’s report concludes by saying the county government and sheriff’s office must work collaboratively to implement the consent decree.
“It is the Monitoring Team’s collective experience that achieving compliance requires a whole-of-government approach,” Kenney said.
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