Divided Atlanta City Council approves plan to sell city detention center

After months of haggling, negotiations and debate, a sharply divided Atlanta City Council signed off on the mayor’s plan to sell the city detention center to Fulton County for $68 million.

Council members approved the controversial resolution by a narrow vote of 8-7 late Monday, authorizing Mayor Andre Dickens and his administration to sell the Atlanta City Detention Center. City and county leaders hope the move will help Fulton County its court-ordered mandate to improve conditions at the county jail.

The vote followed a lengthy discussion by council members who debated whether selling the detention center was in the best interest of Atlanta, its residents or the detainees who would be held behind bars.

And when the measure narrowly passed, the Council’s longest-serving member sought to extend the vote until the next meeting by evoking an obscure parliamentary procedure — but Michael Julian Bond was outnumbered by his colleagues, who voted a second time to authorize the sale.

“I think we need to do something bigger and better than this,” Bond told his colleagues as he implored them to reconsider.

Community advocates have long pushed for the 17-story, 471,000-square-foot facility along Peachtree Street to be repurposed as a community center. It was something Dickens himself supported during his time on the City Council, and opponents of the sale haven’t let him forget it.

While key details of the transaction are still being ironed out, city leaders say they plan to keep a reduced corrections staff in place so Atlanta can continue housing its own detainees on one floor of the facility.

The proposed agreement would allow the city to lease space inside the facility for $1 a year. Under that proposal, the city would be responsible for feeding and providing medical care for its own detainees.

An intergovernmental agreement with Fulton County would still need to be approved by council members before the sale is finalized, city staff said.

Atlanta currently spends about $30 million a year on corrections, the city’s chief financial officer, Mohamed Balla, told Council members. But by selling the jail, city leaders estimate they can save as much as $20 million annually.

Community advocates have blasted the plan for weeks, arguing that selling the detention center would do little to reduce incarceration rates or improve conditions for those caught up in the criminal justice system.

Others have noted the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office is already vastly understaffed, and raised concerns that conditions within the Atlanta City Detention Center would quickly deteriorate when ownership changes hands.

Instead of selling the detention center, advocates have long argued more resources should go toward diverting criminal cases and keeping people out of jail altogether.

“More jail beds is not going to be a solution to the crisis in Fulton County,” said Michael Collins of the local advocacy coalition Play Fair ATL. “The diversion center is working, but it needs to be expanded. By providing more beds, you’re taking away the need for alternatives.”

The Southern Center for Human Rights and the local Communities Over Cages coalition have been among the most vocal groups opposed to the sale.

Several Southern Center attorneys spoke ahead of Monday’s vote about the deplorable conditions faced by those held behind bars.

Tiffany Roberts, the director of the Southern Center’s Public Policy Unit, called plans to sell the jail “rushed” and “haphazard”

She also noted the lack of staffing and the “culture of human rights abuses” within Fulton’s main jail on Rice Street.

“If you don’t have the number of people to do the job, it doesn’t matter what building you’re in,” Roberts told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ahead of Monday’s vote. “Nobody is going to be safer.”

Roberts pointed to the ongoing issues at the Rice Street jail, with which the county remains under a federal legal agreement, known as a “consent decree,” to improve. And she cautioned council members to be mindful about “simply doing the mayor’s bidding.”

Atlanta Council Member Wayne Martin, who supported the measure, said selling the detention center would give Fulton an opportunity to alleviate the “horrendous conditions” at Rice Street.

On Monday, the Southern Center filed a lawsuit against Atlanta’s CFO and an unnamed employee, alleging the finance department is withholding certain records in violation of Georgia’s Open Records Act.