Millions of people around the world watched on Thursday as former president Donald Trump surrendered to the Fulton County jail, and then promptly left the building on $200,000 bond. Local activists and attorneys say it’s a starkly different experience from what the more than 1,500 inmates who are booked into the facility each month typically face in the overcrowded jail, which has been the subject of ongoing reports of horrific conditions and has seen a spate of recent deaths.
Along with 18 co-defendants, Trump was indicted last week on racketeering charges related to his alleged efforts to overturn the Georgia presidential election results in 2020.
The local and national media have been camping outside the Fulton county jail – often called the Rice Street jail in reference to the street on which it is located – all week in anticipation of Trump and his allies voluntarily surrendering there, coinciding with a time of increased security for the jail and sheriff’s office.
In July, the Department of Justice opened an investigation into the conditions of the jail, citing a number of reports that allege “an incarcerated person died covered in insects and filth, that the Fulton County Jail is structurally unsafe, that prevalent violence has resulted in serious injuries and homicides, and that officers are being prosecuted for using excessive force”.
The announcement referenced the death of Lashawn Thompson, a 35-year-old homeless man who died in September while being held in a mental health wing of the jail. He died covered in bedbugs and other insects. Fulton County reached a $4m settlement with Thompson’s family earlier this month but did not specify if any changes would be made inside the jail, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“We launched this investigation into the Fulton County Jail based on serious allegations of unsafe, unsanitary living conditions at the jail, excessive force and violence within the jail, discrimination against incarcerated individuals with mental health issues, and failure to provide adequate medical care to incarcerated individuals,” the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, said in a press release announcing the investigation. Garland said the justice department would determine whether the jail was engaged in systemic violations of federal laws.
Thompson’s was just one of the recent deaths in the overcrowded Fulton county jail to garner local and national media attention. An investigation into the jail by Atlanta magazine showed that more than half of the people detained there have a mental health condition and about 75% of them have drugs in their system when booked. An 18-year-old woman, Noni Battiste-Kosoko, was found dead inside a cell of the nearby Atlanta city detention center in July.
There were 15 deaths inside the Fulton county jail in 2022. This year, seven people have died in the facility, including three people this month.
Atteeyah Hollie, deputy director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, said Thompson’s death and the justice department’s announcement highlight what local activists and defense attorneys have long been saying.
Thompson’s death is “Fulton county jail at its worse, but there are daily horrors that are happening in that jail”, she said. “There are people who are being stabbed when there are no guards on duty. There are people who aren’t able to get access to basic medical and mental healthcare. There are people sleeping on the floor.”
Last year, Hollie and others with the Southern Center for Human Rights served as consultants on a report about the Fulton county jail from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The report, which analyzed data about people who were detained in the facility on a day in September, was created in response to Atlanta’s city council approving Fulton county’s use of the existing Atlanta city detention center (ACDC) as an additional facility to hold people pre-trial in an effort to address overcrowding.
“The current plan to lease ACDC does not address the policies and practices that drive overcrowding at the Jail,” the report states. “This current approach only ensures that the Jail population will continue to rise and that Fulton County will again face poor conditions and overcrowding – but this time, with even more incarceration.”
The ACLU report blamed the practice of jailing people who cannot afford bond, lengthy indictment processes and more for overcrowding.
Hollie said she did not expect the increased attention on the Fulton county jail this week would lead to any meaningful change, especially because defendants such as Trump and Rudy Giuliani are not likely to be exposed to the conditions or legal processes that are the subject of locals’ complaints.
“Even the fact that people from this group of 19 or so people are being booked in and immediately released, that has not historically been the experience of the typical Atlantan going into that jail,” she said.
