Super Jail: The proposed $2 billion jail for Fulton County - Part One
The new Fulton County Jail would break all-time records and local politics
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.
A $2 billion jail proposed for Fulton County
The Fulton County Jail has made headlines over the last few years for a series of deaths, murders, deplorable conditions, and overcrowding, as well as an appearance by former president Donald Trump.
But after a rough year of headlines and a strong pivot away from the 2020 crescendo of focusing on anti-police brutality and prison reform efforts, it finally seems as if the tide has changed in favor of a new facility, ‘Super Jail.’
‘Super Jail’ like ‘Cop City’ are large ticket items meant to address the issues of crime and policing in Atlanta. Both are byproducts of decades of facility neglect that largely were delayed by each mayoral administration until the summer of 2020 and its aftermath. Providing an opportunity to seize the moment for new big-ticket law enforcement-related projects.
But after a year of unfavorable headlines, including the deaths of 10 prisoners and state lawmakers inquiring into the facility, it seems as if all eyes are on the Fulton County Jail. Even with this new focus, will voters, county officials, and city leaders be able to stomach the costs of a new billion-dollar facility?
2. Predecesors to the Fulton County and Atlanta Jails
The historic images in this section are from the Atlanta History Center, Georgia State University, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC). The contemporary images and additional sourcing of sites, maps and dates comes from a 2014 blog post by Atlanta Block Party.
Jails have existed in Atlanta and Fulton County since the 1800s. The history of how many facilities were used is murky due to the Civil War and lost record keeping. Most of the jails were directly inside the police stations or nearby. Due to a combination of factors, these facilities have still been partially verified.
Butler Street - Downtown/Old Fourth Ward - late 1800s-mid 1900s?
One of the likely predecessors to modern jails in Atlanta was the ‘modern’ APD Headquarters located on Decatur Street in the Old Fourth Ward of downtown Atlanta. The facility was from its former headquarters on Pryor Street downtown in 1878 before moving to its new facility in 1893.
It was believed to have been built in 1875 and demolished sometime in the early 1900s. The site was likely inside or directly adjacent to the Atlanta Police Headquarters on Decatur Street and Butler Street (current-day Jesse Hill Jr. Drive), in the heart of Atlanta's nightlife in the late 1890s and early 1900s.
The prison was likely an extension of the Atlanta Police Department building, located on the present-day parking lot of Grady Hospital on Decatur Street.
There was an APD facility on Butler Street/Decatur Street until the 1960s (above) when APD moved its headquarters from downtown. Grady Hospital tore down the facility to make room for its parking lot (below).
The old county jail - Fraser Street - Downtown - late 1800s?-1898
The original Fulton County Jail and the Fulton County Tower were located on Fraser Street, near the present-day Georgia State Capitol. The area was one of the many communities before developing I-75/85 N/S highways in the 1950s and 1960s, which bisected most of downtown.
The building’s official opening date and closing date are a bit of a mystery, with the last records being cited as 1898, the same year it closed. That closure was marked by a move of prisoners from the facility to a newer one nearby.
Citing overcrowding, the old county jail saw all 208 prisoners walking on foot to the new facility on nearby Fraser Street, a section of the city near the present-day State Capitol by the current-day Georgia State MARTA Station. The new facility doubled in capacity and contained a tower, becoming a downtown icon until its demolition in 1960.
“The Tower” - Pryor Street - Downtown - 1904-1960
Shortly after the closure of the original site at Fraser Street, the Fulton County Jail's new site would be located on Pryor Street in downtown Atlanta.
The Fulton County Jail was erected in 1904 on Pryor Street downtown. The 400-person facility served as one of the main jails in Atlanta until the ‘modern’ Atlanta City Jail was created in 1927. The Fulton County jail differed from the Atlanta Prison Farm in East Atlanta, designated for federal inmates nearly a decade earlier.
The site was demolished in 1960, and most of the grounds were used to develop the Georgia State MARTA Station alongside the Twin Towers next to it. Until then, the site was an Atlanta icon.
3. Convict Leasing and the development of the prison industrial complex in America
Convict leasing is a system where prisoners are sent to private businesses for free labor. From 1868 until 1908, convict leasing was the primary mode of jailing in the post-Civil War South, including Georgia.
The primary demographic of those who were jailed during that time were Black men. This population mostly did long-term sentencing through leased-out agreements from the city, county, or state to private businesses.
Podcast: Archive Atlanta: Chain Gang - 4/29/2022 - (Apple/Spotify)
The outgrowth of jails in Fulton County and the City of Atlanta is a result of the ending of Reconstruction, combined with a new set of laws meant to penalize Black Americans. This was not uncommon as several other states across the US did the same during this time, birthing the modern system of mass incarceration and prison labor.
These new laws around vagrancy, public indecency, and more significant penalties for things such as fighting aided in the increase in the incarcerated population. In this era, local police precincts contained on-site jailing facilities as the primary means of incarceration.
Convict Leasing In Atlanta
Several facilities emerged throughout the mid-to-late 1800s in Atlanta to house and use prisoners. The Atlanta Stockade in Grant Park was the biggest by land allocation. The then sprawling 147-acre facility was known for using labor to build the facilities on the site and its large rock quarry.
The other facility, the Chattahoochee Brick Company, became the largest by number of prisoners and most prominent in the first half of the 1900s. The 77-acre site was notable for the brutality of work and the lack of care for inmates. Both sites provided the free labor needed to rebuild post-Reconstruction Atlanta.
Podcast: Archive Atlanta: Chattahooche Brick - 2/19/2021 - (Apple/Spotify)
Convict leasing ends, but jails and prisons still expand
This system lasted until it was officially ended by the state in 1908 and nationally in 1941 by FDR alongside US Attorney General Francis Biddle in Circular No. 3591. Officially ended, the practice of using inmate labor remains in Georgia. Following this end of convict leasing, the role of chain gains grew in Georgia despite the official end of convict leasing.
Despite the end of the practice of convict leasing, the growth of jails, prisons, and labor has continued in Georgia for decades. The end of convict leasing saw the rise of chain gangs in Georgia. In Atlanta, the need for jails corresponds to a rising overall Black population, leading lawmakers and law enforcement to create more laws as punishments for them.
4. The other significant Atlanta historic jails
While the late 1800s and early 1900s were mainly known for smaller jails, often attached to local precincts, there were a few exceptions.
4b. The Atlanta Stockade - 1896 - present
The Atlanta Stockade near Grant Park may be the first official jail facility in the city. The site was a convict leasing facility that labored in quarry work. The site spanned 147 acres (for reference, Atlantic Station 138 acres + Woodruff Park 6 acres), crossing further south into the Grant Park neighborhood and north into current-day Memorial Drive. Today, only the remaining 4 acres include the Stockade, the Tower, and, until recently, the old Girl’s School.
The city of Atlanta first purchased the site in 1863 as a city cemetery, which was canceled. The site then became a pest house, an 1800s hospital for infectious people, before it became a rock quarry.
Podcast: Archive Atlanta: Behind Bars - 10/12/2018 - (Apple/Spotify)
The current day site
After the closure of the school, the site sat vacant for years. Due to its elevated height and heavy tree canopy, the site was primarily undisturbed.
The Stockade and its tower are located next to the current Glenwood Kroger shopping center, directly off of I-20, across from Maynard Jackson High (old Southside High), and within walking distance of the southeast segment of the Atlanta BeltLine.
Over the last 20 years, an area has become a center for a new life, including two nearby suburban shopping plazas, Glenwood Park immediately next door, and Madison Yards catacorner from it. The site is also within walking distance of Glenwood Park, an urbanized mixed-use residential property anchoring the older Grant Park neighborhood with the shopping plaza and Atlanta BeltLine.
The Stockade as a modern re-use residential development
Within the last ten years, new developments have happened at the site as the place has been chiefly used for locals to hang out and party promoters.
Despite the site's history, most of the area, including the old girl's school, has been torn down to make way for a new development of modern apartments and townhomes. That development, Glen Castle, is a mixed-use residential housing complex and adaptive reuse historic facility.
4c. The Atlanta Federal Penitentiary - 1902 - present
The Atlanta Federal Penitentiary is the oldest correctional facility that continues to operate.
A century later, the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, like the Fulton County Jail, is now best known for its poor conditions, inmate deaths, and potential renovation costs.
4d. The Old Atlanta Prison Farm - 1917-1995*
The Old Atlanta Prison Farm is a former 1800s slave plantation turned convict leasing facility in present-day East Atlanta on Key Road in the Constitution neighborhood. The site pre-dates the founding of DeKalb County and the city of Atlanta. Founded in 1822 as a farming plantation, the site would remain active for labor for decades.
After the Civil War, the facility became one of two most extensive convict leasing facilities in Atlanta, the other being the Chattahoochee Brick Works, located on the westside of the city near Bolton Road, Proctor Creek, and the Chattahoochee River. The prison farm operated as a federal prison from 1917 to 1965. For most of its existence, the prison was for agricultural labor. The prison farm was also known as an ‘honor farm,’ a facility meant for prisoner rehabilitation with a significant focus on free labor. The prison began transitioning away from a prison farm in the 1970s, fully closing in 1995.
The following 25 years of the site would be a dispute between the city of Atlanta and DeKalb County over land use until the summer of 2020 and the proposal of ‘Cop City,’ originally comprising a complete takeover of the prison farm as part of a 350-acre police training facility. The site has been in contention since 2021, with activists, the police, and residents opposing it.
4e. The Chattahoochee Brick Company - 1878 - 2011*
In Atlanta, convict leasing started with the Chattahoochee Brick Company, which opened in 1878, one year after the end of Reconstruction in the US. At the same time, other makeshift jailing facilities began to exist in Atlanta in the late 1800s, primarily near police precincts, with the biggest being in downtown Atlanta before formalization efforts in the early 1900s.
Even after the state of Georgia ended the practice officially in 1908 and the federal government in 1941, the facility kept its use for labor until
The city of Atlanta recently bought the site, and it will be repurposed into a community park and historical monument. The site was in a contentious land dispute with another corporation and real estate developers who wanted the area to be part of Atlanta's rebranded ‘Upper Westside’ district.
5. A tale of two jails: Rice Street and ACDC, ‘the city jail’
For over a century, jailing in Atlanta has been a series of new facilities alternating between the management of the county and the city. Since 1996, there have been two facilities:' the county jail’ on Rice Street on Marietta Street on the Westside and ‘the city jail’ on Peachtree Street in South Downtown. These two facilities' location and costs reflect a continuing history of Atlanta’s relationship to law enforcement and incarceration.
5b. Rice Street, the main jail of Atlanta and Fulton County
Rice Street is the current home of the Fulton County Jail. Operating as the central jail for both the city of Atlanta and Fulton County. Even before the 2019 closure of the city jail, the Rice Street jail has been the primary facility for Fulton County, Atlanta, and several other municipalities for 30 years.
This ‘modern’ jail opened in 1989 as a response to the decades of white flight, abandonment, rising crime, and homelessness, and just at the start of the crack epidemic. The facility was built for 1,125 people, but within a few short years, it began to see immediate capacity issues. These issues would expedite the creation of a second jail in Atlanta, eventually resulting in a new city jail on Peachtree Street near Garnett Street MARTA station.
5c. Atlanta Correctional Detention Center (ACDC), aka ‘City Jail’
The Atlanta Correctional Detention Center (ACDC), known as ‘the city jail,’ is located in downtown Atlanta, on the southernmost end of Peachtree Street. It is also part of the newly designated South Downtown district of Atlanta. ACDC was built in anticipation of the 1996 Summer Olympics. It opened in 1995 with a capacity of 1,300 people and relieved the Fulton County Jail on Rice Street, which opened six years earlier.
5d. ACDC, the jail the 1996 Olympics built
ACDC was built for the 1996 Olympics. ACDC used to house undesirable people in Atlanta—the homeless, sex workers, the mentally ill, vagrants, and any other people arrested for criminal activity ahead of the games. This was used in addition to an ongoing crackdown on vice and crime in Atlanta, starting in the 1980s under then-mayor Andy Young and continuing under re-elected Maynard Jackson. This period of heavy crackdowns in downtown Atlanta was also notable for its busing of homeless residents out of the city and heavy police presence.
Since the 1996 Olympics, the ACDC has become less populated with each passing year, with declining arrests, declining crime, and a shift toward the Fulton County jail becoming the hub for those detained in Atlanta. As a result, 22 years later, in 2018, then-mayor Keshia Lance Bottoms (KLB) decided to close the jail in hopes that it be repurposed. That was closure completed in 2019. Only to be re-opened three years later under new mayor Andre Dickens.
PART TWO: The limits of reform - Tomorrow
Do the dollars make sense when It comes to a new jail for Fulton County?
-KJW