The U.S. Justice Department announced Friday that it has entered into a court-enforceable agreement with Georgia’s most populous county after finding that violence and filthy conditions in county lockups violated the constitutional rights of people held in jail.
The proposed consent decree must still be approved by a judge but would resolve problems found by Justice Department investigators, the agency said in a news release.
The Justice Department in July 2023 opened a civil rights investigation into jail conditions in Fulton County, citing violence, filthy living quarters and the in-custody death of a man whose body was found covered in insects. That investigation found that jail officials failed to protect detainees from violence, used excessive force and held them in “unconstitutional and illegal conditions.”
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