Atlanta Jail Begins Turning Away Misdemeanor Arrestees
by Chuck Sharman
Georgia’s Fulton County Jail in Atlanta stopped booking those arrested on most misdemeanor charges on July 1, 2026. Sheriff Pat Labatt announced the policy change in late May, shortly after the office of County Attorney So Joo issued an opinion Labatt had requested, and the Board of County Commissioners adopted a resolution calling for its immediate implementation.
But Labatt held off for a month to give his office time to advise police departments in the County that the jail was closed to intakes for anyone arrested on a misdemeanor charge, except those involving sexual assault, domestic violence or certain aggravated misdemeanor charges.
The jail’s crumbling infrastructure prompted the Sheriff to lobby for a new $2 billion replacement, but Commissioners voted that down in 2024, as PLN reported. A federal Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation then blasted Labatt for problems not only with infrastructure but also healthcare and low staffing levels, resulting in a consent decree entered in early 2025. Progress since has been incremental at best; in her second annual report filed in February 2026, appointed Monitor Kathleen Kenney told the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia that staffing levels remain “insufficient to safely and effectively manage the jail population.” [See: PLN, May 2026, p.15.]
The new misdemeanor arrest policy appeared unlikely to relieve pressure on remaining jail staffers. Labatt told WSB in Atlanta that the jail held only 109 people on misdemeanor charges as of late May, and none would have been turned away based on the new policy.
Just over six weeks later, felony arrestee Demetrius Burks escaped on August 13, remaining on the run nearly three hours until he was re-captured—barefoot and still wearing a jail gown—near a homeless shelter where he once lived.
Labatt offered no details on how Burks escaped, so it was unclear what role the jail’s troubled infrastructure might have played. A plague of broken cell door locks was among a list of dangerous conditions that resulted in an earlier consent decree which put the jail under the district court’s oversight for nearly a decade; that decree was terminated in May 2015, as PLN also reported. [See: PLN, Oct. 2016, p.49.]
Additional source: WSB
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