Atlanta Jail Boasts Improvements Since Consent Decree, Reports from Monitor and ACLU Are More Critical
by Chuck Sharman
In a report issued on February 20, 2026, Geogia’s Fulton County and Sheriff Pat Labatt touted improvements made at the County lockup in Atlanta since entering a consent decree a year earlier with the federal Department of Justice (DOJ). The claims were issued in response to the second annual report from the Monitor appointed to oversee that decree, as well as criticism leveled in a January 2026 report from the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
As PLN reported, the ACLU identified “a crisis with a cascade of public health and safety problems” at the aging jail—beginning with an overreliance on cash bail in the County court system keeping the jail’s population near capacity. The courts have a risk assessment tool, but it was used to set bail in just 10% of criminal cases. The share of detainees held over 90 days on low bail amounts of $5,000 or less persistently tops 25%, representing a failure to conduct ability-to-pay analyses, the ACLU declared. Another 34% were being held without charges—a quarter of them for over 90 days. Misdemeanor detentions jumped more than five-fold in just two years, coming to account for over 15% of the jail’s population. Fulton County and Atlanta cops were also called out for underutilizing pretrial diversion programs. [See: PLN, Mar. 2025, p.23.]
The report that County officials issued the following month didn’t address these concerns but focused on improvements at the jail, especially $12.8 million spent in 2025 on “security, staffing, facilities updates and detainee healthcare.” Included in this were replacements of jail fire alarms, as well as kitchen and laundry equipment. “Blitz” updates to 11 housing units were completed, and the jail’s work order backlog fell by 36%. Jailer pay was improved, and a “specialty recruitment firm” was retained to “address detention staffing gaps.” There were also “[e]nhancements to [the] detainee healthcare contract” with NaphCare, Inc., whose latest $45.1 million annual agreement was signed in December 2025. See: Fulton Cty. Jail Consent Decree One-Year Investment Update, Fulton Cty. (Feb. 2026).
The DOJ issued a scathing report on jail conditions in late 2024, as PLN also reported. [See: PLN, Apr. 2025, p.40.] That led to the consent decree with the County that the DOJ entered on January 6, 2025, in the last days under former Attorney General Merrick Garland. Monitor Kathleen Kenney was appointed, and her second report was issued on the same day that the County’s report came out in February 2026. Kenney applauded the jail for improving sanitation—an admittedly low bar in a lockup where a detainee was literally eaten alive by vermin, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, May 2023, p.16.] She also noted that the number of detainees waiting inside the intake area “holding tanks” had declined to 13 from over 100 a year earlier. But the jail’s staffing crisis had only worsened, falling another 10%; as a result, just 50% of “mandatory minimum posts” were filled at her October 2025 visit.
“Current staffing levels are insufficient to safely and effectively manage the jail population,” the Monitor’s report concluded. By way of example, it noted that “[w]eapons are frequently used in assaults, and incarcerated people have discovered ways to cut through perimeter windows, enabling airborne drones to hover outside and deliver narcotics, cell phones, and weapon components directly into areas that should be secured.” Moreover, gang activity “is pervasive and continues to shape daily operations in profound and dangerous ways.”
The pressures of short-staffing also showed up in use-of-force reports that betrayed “inadequate[] train[ing] in de-escalation techniques.” Because guards “lacked adequate supervision or backup,” they frequently resorted to “unprofessional communication and the use of unauthorized or improper force techniques.” As a result, “substantial improvements are needed in force training, review procedures, custody force policies, tracking mechanisms, and documentation forms.” The jail also needed to develop a policy for holding 17-year-old detainees in restrictive housing, since many of those held there reported they had no clue why. See: United States v. Fulton Cty., USDC (N.D. Ga.), Case No. 1:25-cv-00024.
Labatt continues to lobby for a new jail, criticizing the four County commissioners who torpedoed his $2 billion plan to construct a new lockup in 2024. “I could have the cure for cancer, and those four board members currently will not vote for it,” he told Capital B Atlanta.
Additional sources: The Bail Project, Capital B Atlanta
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Related legal case
United States v. Fulton Cty., USDC (N.D. Ga.)
| Year | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Cite | Case No. 1:25-cv-00024 |
| Level | District Court |