Fulton County Jail population is now decreasing, sheriff says

ATLANTA - The population at the troubled Fulton County Jail is decreasing. This comes after the Department of Justice opened an investigation into conditions at the Rice Street facility for months.

Sheriff Patrick Labat said the decrease is due to people moving through the system as well as the transfer of inmates to other facilities throughout the area.

Ten people have died at the Fulton County Jail this year, which advocates say is due in part to overcrowding. But the sheriff said the population is going down. In January 2021, the facility held 3,069 inmates. That number is now down to 2,077.

The sheriff’s office transferred about 400 inmates to the Atlanta City Detention Center and more were sent to facilities in Cobb, Oconee, and Forsyth counties, as well as their other jail locations.

"When we took office, we had nearly 600 people sleeping on the floor. As of yesterday, we had 54 people sleeping on floor," Sheriff Patrick Labat said.

The sheriff also said they’ve worked with criminal justice partners to move people through the system.

"The solicitor’s office, the DA’s office, and even the public defenders, have really come together and worked on a mechanism to look at how long people have been in jail, what the opportunities are for them to get consent bonds, and things of that nature," Sheriff Labat explained.

"We found out we had two or three people that have been in jail over 10 years. We have to do a better job of partnering with our mental health partners across the state trying to figure out how to get mental health beds, what does that look like," he added.

But the current numbers are still nearly double the 1,125 capacity for which the building was originally built.

"We’ve been overcrowded since the day we opened almost 30 years ago the infrastructure continues to crumble and continues to be decimated by those who are living in those conditions, and so we want to create a more safe environment, and this is part of that," Sheriff Labat explained.