Super Jail: The proposed $2 billion jail for Fulton County - Part Two
Do the dollars make sense for a $ 2 billion jail
Welcome to my newsletter, King Williams. I am a documentary filmmaker, journalist, podcast host, and author in Atlanta, Georgia. This newsletter covers Atlanta's hidden connections and everything else.
This is the continuation of the previous newsletter. You can read part one here.
PART TWO: The limits of reform
1. Law & Order politics is back
In a post-2020 landscape, law and order policies, including a return to mass incarceration, are back, changing Atlanta's trajectory. Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, the city and county focused on implementing strategies more aligned with criminal justice reform. The county and city focused on recidivism, curbing juvenile delinquency, bail reform, and diversion.
As a result of the changing tide of culture wars starting in 2020 and aided by state-level lawmakers, the idea of becoming a more punitive culture became en-vogue by members of both political parties for differing reasons.
2020 changed the trajectory of the city
The costs of operating the city jail ran Atlanta’s budget into the red for years before its shutdown in 2018. Post-closure, the site’s purpose was up for debate from local politicos, op-ed writers, and those within the law enforcement community. Then 2020 happened.
TL/DR: In 2020 a rise of actual fears of anarchy and lawlessness prompted a response to abandon all efforts to address police brutality and misconduct by city lawmakers. Officers were given two bonus stipeneds, a round of political bootlicking, and the fast tracking of a new training facility, ‘Cop City.’ While state government began passing a series of laws aimed at stopping protests, punishing activists, and supporting dissent against law enforcement illegal.
While a prominent anti-Black Lives Matter account reshaped the media narrative of Atlanta by ‘Blackfishing’ as a Black social media account which propigated non-stop ‘crime porn’—the practice of showing only violence to audiences as a means to ellict fear. Then local media also pivoted into crime porn, fearmongering, and no persuing police accountability.
This has led to an increase in overal police and law enforemcent support but at the cost of accountability and valid scrutiny. These factors have alienated some parts of Atlanta, reinvigorated the dormant activist community, and been a part of an unspoken culture war between various subsets of people in Atlanta. Leading to a more favorable
For more on this, read my June 2021 newsletter: Atlanta Is Losing The Narrative
2020-23 saw a seesaw of conversations, news coverage, politics, and protests around law enforcement’s role in Atlanta. The one-two punch of ‘Cop City’ support from city and state-level leadership has greatly attempted to squash any counter efforts. From new laws to arrests and a general strong-armed effort to keep ‘Cop City’ mostly on schedule, attention is now being focused on the need for a new Fulton County Jail.
How 2020 changed the positions of the parties and opened up an opportunity for Super Jail
For Republicans
For Republicans, all state-level lawmakers, the idea to penalize protests, crackdown on activist groups, and push through more laws aimed at policing in primarily Democratic areas — all while scoring big voter base points. At the same time, moving forward year after year with more laws, longer sentences, and harsher penalties for existing rules. At the same time, giving more money to law enforcement agencies and supporting political opposition to Democrat District Attorneys, including Fulton County DA Fani Willis.
Aided by social media platforms and local media organizations fetishizing violence, crime, and lawlessness, the post-2020 landscape was an example of how perceptions versus reality shape public policy. A 20-year pivot into better policing and prison reforms went up in smoke.
For Democrats
For Democrats, primarily city and county-level politicians, the perception of rising crime aided in the need to pivot to a safety strategy. Switching from police and prison reform to a more pro-law enforcement grandstanding would calm the anxious voters and assuage local news media. Turning off a segment of 2020 voters, young people, and activists.
Mayor Dickens own legislation and the promises made during the racial reckoning of 2020 by the Atlanta City Council have now mostly been abandoned. Instead of being a leader in liberal and progressive policies, Atlanta, a Democratic stronghold city, took several steps back, a move echoed in other cities across the US. Ushering a new 1990s-esque wave of punitive law enforcement policies and posturing.
Please read my previous newsletter, A shift from 'the left' for Democrats on policing on the pivot of Democrats from progressive ideologies.
As a result, the Democratic base of ‘pivoting to the center’—a long-running political fallacy started by conservatives in the era of Truman and FDR—has led to the Democrats consistently adopting soft conservatism policies. As a result, both prison reforms moved off the table and, like ‘Cop City,’ allowed the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office to move in with leverage on a new facility.
2. The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office and Fani Willis
The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office manages the jail. Since its opening in 1989, the jail has been marked by overcrowding, costs, and eventual decay.
The Fulton County Jail (FCJ) is one of the two major jail facilities in the county, the other being the Atlanta City Detention Center (ACDC), also known as the ‘city jail.’ For the last decade, FCJ has been the main jailing facility for Atlanta and Fulton County.
This has been due to an overall drop in crime throughout the 2000s and continuing into the 2010s, alongside a greater emphasis on new policing strategies, bail reform, and new pre-trial and diversion programs—alongside an increase in the city's and county's overall population. Atlanta succeeded in reducing crime but not the people incarcerated.
Throughout the 2010s, overall crime in Atlanta continued to decline, leading to a reduced need for two jailing facilities, a move that would culminate in FCJ operating as the primary facility for the city and county. Despite this merging of jailing into a singular facility, the costs of maintaining the jail continued as lingering repairs persisted.
Sheriff Patrick Labat and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis have called for the jail to remain operational. Both have cited a spike in crime as the need to lock up more people and given the political pressures of Buckhead + the business community, it may happen. The mistakes of 2020 won’t happen again, providing more advantages in advocating for their needs.
Sheriff Patrick Labat
Patrick Labat is the current sheriff-elect. Labat, a 30-year law enforcement officer, won his election in 2020, ousting three-term incumbent Theodore ‘Ted’ Jackson, who held office from 2009 to 2021.
Since his ascendancy to the top spot, Labat has spent the better part of the last three years advocating for a new jail. This has included a more deft touch with local media, resulting in constant interviews, tours, and favorable press coverage. Until the 2023 debacle of 10 deaths of inmates in the Fulton County Jail, Labat and the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office have been primarily out of the ire and scrutiny of lawmakers. Since 2023, both national Democrats and state-level Republicans have begun to inquire into the management of the jail.
Labat faces hostility for the first time in his tenure as a recent funding measure has been rejected. This is combined with more state-level Republicans inquiring into the jail's expenditures and management. While US Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff has begun to flex his muscle on the issue, there have been no additional federal inquiries. Despite this, Labat has maintained message discipline in advocating for funds for a new jail.
Fani Willis
Fani Willis is the District Attorney for Fulton County. Willis won her seat in 2020, ousting incumbent DA Paul Howard. Willis has advocated for more funds to go to the jail and the DA’s office to address the pandemic-induced backlog of cases. These cases contain many inmates still awaiting trial at the Fulton County Jail.
For Willis, a new Fulton County Jail signals that the county has law enforcement’s back on their vision of crime and punishment in Atlanta. The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office has been under fire from conservative politicians since the charges against Donald Trump and his affiliates regarding election interference in the 2020 election. The office could use support after today’s recent ruling against the Fulton DA’s office.
4. Rice Street has been deteriorating for years, decades
As Atlanta, under three consecutive mayors, Franklin, Reed, and Bottoms, all saw overall violence and crime declines, the prison population mostly stayed the same at the Fulton County Jail.
Due to decades of neglected maintenance, lack of funds for upkeep, and overcrowding, Rice Street's lingering financial concerns have strained its operations. However, the current state of Rice Street includes flooding, mold, crumbling walls, and rodent and insect infestations—including an inmate who was eaten alive by insects and has gone on for too long for leaders to ignore.
While the current situation is not ideal, Rice Street's future is still uncertain, leading to the Atlanta City Jail (ACDC) re-opening. ACDC was supposed to be reinvented as part of a push toward criminal justice reform and adaptive reuse, but now those plans seem likely dead.
In the years before the pandemic, the jail spent money on facility maintenance and upgrades. Fulton County spent over 1 billion dollars over a decade to meet needs. After initial 2021 estimates stated that a new facility could range between $400-500 million, the county released its proposal for a new facility ranging between $1.65-$2.45 billion in 2023.
5. Super Jail
In 2023, the Fulton County Sheriff’s Department released its proposal and site renderings on a new $1.75 billion jail. If county officials and voters give the go-ahead, the facility will be built on the current Rice Street grounds.
Renderings of the facility would show a new 4,600-person facility, a 50% greater capacity than the current facility, which hovers between 2,900 and 3,200 inmates. Rice Street was built to house 1,125 people in 1989 and has been at and over capacity for decades. The new campus would include a 1,000-person women’s and stand-alone mental health facilities. It will keep the current Rice Street facility and add several new surface parking lots.
Under the new proposal, the Rice Street super jail would house roughly 10% of the state’s jailed population (based on 2020 estimates of 47,000*). It would also be the largest jail in the state by population and the second largest behind the 800,000 sq ft Gwinnett County Jail.
6. City jail reopens and reneges on revitalization idea
In 2022, by a 10-4 vote, the Atlanta City Council voted to relocate up to 700 inmates from the Fulton County Jail to the Atlanta City Detention Center (city jail) to alleviate overcrowding.
The deal
Under the agreement, Fulton County will pay the city of Atlanta to house the inmates at a rate of $50/per year for four years. Should the county need more time to house inmates, the rate triples to $150/per year. ACDC would get a maximum of no more than 1,000 inmates per the agreement.
What’s the issue?
The relocation of inmates reneges on former mayor Keshia Lance Bottoms’s 2019 efforts to repurpose the jail. Current mayor Andre Dickens also championed the move to close and repurpose the jail, introducing the legislation to close it in 2019.
From the AJC in 2019:
The city has operated a detention center since the 1950s. In 1995, the city opened the existing 254 Peachtree St. location — a $56 million facility with 1,300 beds. The jail’s population has steadily declined but maintained 360 employees and an operating budget of $33 million in the fiscal year 2018.
The declining local detained population incentivized the city to strike a lucrative deal with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to house undocumented immigrants. Despite the initial support, the agreement ended soon after the tenure of then-mayor Keshia Lance Bottoms (KLB), who, alongside other jails across the metro, ended its participation with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Once again, the jail went primarily unused for Atlanta and proved very costly. The project languished as her tenure reached its end. This current agreement is a stopgap to a more significant issue of facilities and management, bringing city leaders into direct conversations with county leaders on a joint problem.
The four-year deal is meant to be a reprieve from overcrowding on Rice Street as the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, Mayor Dickens, and the Atlanta City Council all finalize the terms of the deal. Should the plan be approved this year, the new facility could be ready by 2029. This would likely take an additional extension at the Atlanta City Jail beyond its 2027 lease end date.
What about the plans for the city jail?
Since this 2022 agreement, ACDC has been the site of concern regarding Atlanta's future. While numerous ideas over what could be done have remained, nothing has been concrete, except its reopening in 2023 to house Fulton County inmates.
The facility was supposed to be the home of the Center for Diversion Services, an organization that diverts people from jail, including the police alternative organization Policing Alternatives and Diversions (PAD).
The supposed launch of the Center for Diversion and Services at the city jail site has been its kerfuffle as the organization has openly criticized the Dickens administration for its handling of ‘Cop City.’ The site was also to be named after Congressman John Lewis, which, as of 2024, has not come to fruition.
Moving on from KLB’s initiatives
The move to open the jail up for detention is a direct pivot against the promise of the previous mayor of KLB and broader efforts for criminal justice reforms in the city. A move that has seen the former mayor publicly speak out on this issue, a rare move for a former mayor regarding a current problem.
It’s important to note that a significant contributing factor to overcrowding is people who can’t afford bail, as several hundred people are currently detained and cannot post bail. Bail reform, coincidentally one of the KLB initiatives, seems to have also gone by the wayside. So, it shouldn’t be surprising that KLB's current public appearance comes directly in response to a pivot away from her policies. The city council in 2021 already moved against KLB’s wishes shortly before she decided not to run again. This is a double down of that.
7. Jails can be repurposed into more viable facilities
ACDC could still be a site for adaptive reuse into a facility. But what does that facility look like? What is its function? Most importantly, its funding is all TBD. Should a (very likely) second-term Mayor Dickens decide to move on the facility in 2026, he will have a few options.
For the second term, Mayor Dickens, the reality of a new jail would hopefully already be decided upon. The mayor took a public and irl ‘L’ regarding ‘Cop City,’ a project that has taken three years of protests, altering his otherwise stellar image and track record. Dickens could use ACDC to step back into the criminal justice reform foray with some solutions that voters, the business community, and supporters could celebrate. Or he could do none of that.
Mayor Dickens has several options on what to do with ACDC. Here are a few:
Close the jail again
Fully re-open the jail again
Sell the property
Use as a mental health facility
Use as a homelessness facility
Use as a city-owned administration building and office facility
Use as a city-owned storage facility
Other scenarios
The mayor could extend the lease to Fulton County, likely until the completion of the new Rice Street super jail, and sell the site back to the Sheriff’s Office or Fulton County. Or he could do none of that.
Dicken’s could asses that the overall need for a new facility trumps any activist calls but also lean into some components of criminal justice reform. He could give the ACDC facility to PAD, the policing alternatives organization. Or he could make it a mental health facility outside of the criminal mental facility being built at the new Rice Street super jail.
Or the mayor could follow the model of some municipalities, which have repurposed jails into homeless facilities. According to some estimates, one in eight people in jail are currently homeless. Having a dedicated facility that can house 1,300 people is a start. With a retrofit to the building, even 600-900 people in a turnaround homeless facility would be a massive win for the city.
The Nordic model of reimaging prisons
For those not focused or interested in prison abolition, there have been other means to reimagine jails and prisons, many of which have taken place in Nordic countries that have remodeled prisons into homeless shelters, public housing, and mental health facilities.
Prison abolition
Reimagining prisons has long been a tenet of the prison abolition movement. While the movement gained wider notoriety in the summer of 2020, it has existed for over 50 years. While the name abolishing scares some, the movement has focused on eliminating the need for the current penal system, replacing the current state of policing, incarceration, and probation with a system based on personal, educational, and professional rehabilitation.
The prison abolition movement differs from the prison reform movement, which seeks to maintain the status quo but offers better conditions and care for prisoners. Prison reform is not concerned with pre-diversion initiatives or decarceration-the practice of reducing the number of people in community corrections (parole and probation), as well as under physical custody (jail/prison), or non-facility custodial supervision (e-monitoring, ex: ankle monitors).
While a hard sell, the mayor could lean into some tenets of the prison abolition and reform movement, continuing the efforts under the previous mayors, prosecutors, and sheriffs. A move that ultimately saved Atlanta tens of millions of dollars.
7. PAD, the policing reform org that’s in the crosshairs
Atlanta is one of the first cities in the country to offer the ability to call 3-1-1, a dedicated, non-emergency line formed for non-police responses. The 3-1-1 number is open to relieve 9-1-1 dispatchers from frivolous and non-police/fire/EMT-related calls. This includes calls for wellness checks, community issues, and mental health emergencies, leaving one of the few dedicated organizations, PAD, to field most of those calls.
PAD (Policing Alternatives & Diversion Initiative) is an alternative to police intervention for non-criminal calls to 9-1-1. The organization uses 3-1-1 information and 9-1-1 emergency numbers to field calls that do not require a police-based response. Since its start in 2013, PAD has quickly grown its presence in helping in non-emergency/criminal instances in Atlanta.
Starting with a single pilot program in 2016, expanding into a broader partnership with several precincts in 2019, and a fuller integration into the 3-1-1 dispatch system in 2021. The organization has grown to include a network of volunteers who aid in interventions and community events and serve as a connection for other wrap-around services. Despite this positive movement, the organization has seen itself on the wrong side of budget debates as 2022 saw funding potentially be removed.
2022 saw the organization have its funding removed by Fulton County after public criticisms over the plan to re-open ACDC. As of 2024, those problems seem publicly assuaged as the organization has not had another kerfuffle. The group is slated to open a newly renovated 24/7 facility later this year.
7. The politics of the Fulton County Jail
What happens next at the Fulton County Jail will likely reverberate across Atlanta's political and economic spectrum. There have been calls from state Republican lawmakers into the facility while a recent funding request has been denied. That denial of additional overtime pay for staff signals that post-2024 state legislative session, the most significant focus will be on the Fulton County Jail, Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, and Board of Commissioners.
The Fulton County Jail is the perfect 2024 political football
Post-2020, Atlanta is abandoning progressive values on criminal justice reform and policing for broken windows and mass incarceration ideologies. It still may not help.
In 2023 alone, ten inmates died while in custody at the jail, leading to an inquiry from Georgia’s Democratic US Senator Jon Ossoff in the spring of 2023, then followed by state Republican Senators in the fall of last year. While local news media throughout the previous year have been investigating what’s been happening at the Fulton County Jail.
Atlanta City leaders and the Sheriff’s office aren’t the only experts
The City Council and the Fulton County Sheriff have mostly avoided additional experts on the role of prisons and jails. Considering the city council is taking cues only from the Sheriff’s Department and the Fulton County District Attorney’s office, it would behoove them to talk to outside opinions. The Department of Criminal Justice at Georgia State has a variety of experts, including former officers, who could better aid in the facilitation of the new plans for the city and fairly critique these efforts.
The long-term play for the mayor and city council
The four-year lease agreement with the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office ensures that Dickens and the next city council will punt the issue for a future headache. The estimation would correctly guess that by 2025 and beyond, the issue of funding a new jail, despite the cost, will pass without much scrutiny.
This is anchored by Governor Kemp and the Republican-led state legislature’s efforts over the last four years, which have ensured more money and laws supporting law enforcement. The Sheriff’s Office, the mayor, and the city council have primarily been in lockstep regarding the need for a new facility, leading to less pushback and hatred compared to what’s happened with Cop City. Coupled with the immediate need for better facilities, there is less overall pushback on greenlighting the facility.
Similarities and differences between Super Jail and Cop City
Cop City has been the ongoing story in Atlanta for the last three years. While the local activist community almost exclusively focused on Cop City in the previous three years, minimal protests related to Super Jail have occurred. When there were at least critics who focused on the deal, Atlanta struck with Fulton County to re-open ACDC.
The other reason for efforts to build the jail could likely remain mute as the need for a new facility is visibly more present than APD’s rationale. This is also unlike Cop City, where APD had a chance to jointly build a facility in Fulton County away from Intrenchment Creek, the South River Forest, and Old Atlanta Prison Farm.
The Fulton County Jail in media
The presentation on Fulton County Jail rightfully focuses on its deplorable conditions. Still, it has not addressed additional questions related to costs, the long-term role of Atlanta City Jail, or any other facilities needed.
The facility was featured on the A&E Network reality show 60 Days In: Atlanta, as undercover officers are featured alongside inmates for the popular TV show. Seasons 3 and 4 were solely dedicated to the Fulton County Jail. Becoming a first-hand look at the jail's conditions for a national audience.
The revolving series has moved on from Fulton County, opting to travel in-metro to Henry County for Season 7, the same Henry County that has now had three inmate deaths this year.
Conclusion
Sheriff Labat, Mayor Dickens, the Atlanta City Council, or the Fulton County Board of Commissioners must act quickly to ensure that this project is greenlit and completed. All four entities must also move quickly to ensure this does not become ‘Cop City 2’, a lengthy, time-consuming, expensive, and politically divisive subject that sinks their leverage.
The best thing all four entities could do now regarding that project is to implement more oversight on its design and ensure some general concerns, such as a plan for homelessness and non-violent mental health citizens, how to reform bail policies to avoid overcrowding, and how to develop a better pre-trial detainment system to prevent backlogs.
The continued use of ACDC as a secondary facility is needed. It is currently the best option until a new Rice Street facility can be built. But it still has no plans; if PAD is given the building to operate from, would it have the same level of funding and resources as other APD or the Sheriff’s Office?
Should ACDC be turned into a homeless center, would the Sheriff’s Office and APD help filter out individuals who need help and relocation? Would an ACDC, as the city’s primary homeless processing and relocation center, work with PAD? Would ACDC, as the main homeless center, have a funding commitment?
Or would state-level Republicans, who’ve pivoted into punitive law enforcement strategies under Kemp, fund this effort by the jail?
But the biggest question remains: even if all things work, would the same situation emerge again? History says yes, but now is a great time to pivot into a new strategy to avoid repeating past mistakes.
What’s the solution—will Super Jail be something new or more of the same?
-KJW