ATLANTA — An Atlanta city council committee heard bitter opposition Monday to a proposal to lease space to relieve overcrowding at the Fulton County Jail.
The city council seems to agree that the county jail is seriously overcrowded; the question is whether moving prisoners from one jail to another represents a solution.
The Atlanta City Detention Center is mostly vacant, but that's not the case in Fulton County. Mayor Andre Dickens is behind a proposal to relieve overcrowding by moving inmates from there into the unused space at the city jail – and told the city council’s public safety committee why.
"We’re confronted with hundreds of men sleeping on the floor throughout the hallways," Dickens said. "The humanitarian response to that is to do something."
Activists paint another picture.
They said the Fulton County's jail on Rice Street is overcrowded because too many people arrested are too poor to make bond – or because post-pandemic justice is achingly slow, keeping people in jail who might normally be out by now.
"They want to paint this narrative that Rice Street is full of violent people. It’s over 650 people who are in for charges such as shoplifting, misdemeanor cases, possession drugs less than a gram," said Devin Franklin of the Southern Center for Human Rights during a rally that preceded the meeting of the city council's public safety committee.
They want the city to make good on a promise made by former mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms to turn the detention center into a diversion center designed to keep at-risk people out of jail. Dickens said he still supports that – but sees the city jail as an interim solution for county jail overcrowding.
"In four years, once we cut off this process of having inmates in ACDC, then we turn ourselves into what the next future is, which is not with us being in the jailing business," Dickens told the committee.
Details of the four-year leasing agreement show the county would utilize 700 beds at the ACDC and pay $50 per detainee a day. Atlanta City Council leaders said it costs about $85 to house an inmate daily.