Fulton County commissioners, still facing the ire of a federal judge over rampant jail overcrowding, are eyeing a list of short-term strategies to lower the daily population at the Rice Street lockup.
Among them: spending up to $500,000 for a consultant to devise a jail capacity plan.
Any of the options will require finding funds at a time when the county manager has ordered 6 percent budget cuts.
What hasn't been broached, however, is what the judge's monitor says must ultimately be done to come into compliance with a 2006 consent order: building a new jail, preferably on the campus of the current one, and with estimated costs ranging from $150 million to $250 million depending on size and design.
Attorney Emmet Bondurant, who chaired a blue ribbon commission that studied the county's criminal justice system in 2006, questioned hiring outside experts who might just restate the obvious.
"I'm not sure someone who's taken Algebra 101 can't figure out that having a jail built almost 30 years ago, and built for 1,400 people, is vastly too small," Bondurant said in an interview Thursday. "We need a larger jail."
Commission Chairman John Eaves said he doesn't know when the conversation about building a new jail will start. For now, he said, the panel is looking for ways to alleviate overcrowding until more cells can be built, which is what Senior U.S. District Judge Marvin Shoob told them to focus on. He expects a report by Dec. 1.
The commission spent an hour and a half Wednesday meeting with Superior Court Chief Judge Cynthia Wright, State Court Chief Judge Patsy Porter, District Attorney Paul Howard, Public Defender Vernon Pitts, Sheriff Ted Jackson and other heads of the criminal justice system, who presented a list of options for decreasing inmate numbers. Among their suggestions:
- Paying for home-based electronic monitoring, which poor and indigent defendants can't afford.
- Expanding the drug, mental health and DUI courts, diversion programs that keep offenders out of jail if behavior improves.
- Outsourcing inmates serving sentences in the county jail to outside jails.
- Lobbying for a new law allowing Fulton to opt out of the statewide indigent defense program, which is underfunded and slows cases when attorneys can't be found to try them.
"This is such a bleak picture, that I don't know what you address that we're not already addressing," Commissioner Tom Lowe said. "We're not gaining on the problem. As the days roll by and years roll by, it's getting worse."
At least one commissioner, Liz Hausmann, also questioned why the county should hire a consultant when other studies have already been paid for. In one of his orders, Shoob blasted the county for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for plans that "are now sitting on a shelf somewhere gathering dust."
Bondurant's panel strongly recommended buying or leasing the Atlanta city jail, but negotiations between the city and county broke down.
Shoob, livid after hearing of inmates still sleeping on floors, has threatened to hold commissioners in contempt -- and even lock them up in a federal penitentiary -- if they don't come up with a solution. The judge is enforcing the county's compliance with a consent order stemming from a lawsuit that documented filthy, dangerous and overcrowded conditions in the Rice Street jail.
Under the order, the jail's population is capped at 2,500. The county had 2,957 on Wednesday, the sheriff said, about 400 of them outsourced to other jails. Studies estimate Fulton will need about 4,300 beds by 2016 and 5,000 by 2026.
The judge's threat came as Fulton, like other governments, is coping with falling tax revenue and trying to plug a projected 2012 deficit of $22.1 million. Eaves asked the judges and prosecutors to come back with hard dollar figures by the end of October, giving them a formula as to how much they could invest in jail alternatives, how much that would reduce population and how much it would save in incarceration costs.
Several officials expressed frustration with the request, especially amid the call for budget cuts. Porter said that will force her to shed temporary positions that were filled to work on overcrowding issues.
"Commissioner Eaves, we feel you," Howard said. "But right now, we're working on 6 percent."
"Give us something," Eaves replied, referring to figures.
"I guess we're saying the same thing," Howard said. "Give us something."
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