Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat is applauding Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, a majority of the Atlanta City Council and the Fulton County Commission for finally approving a partnership with the Sheriff’s Office in order to provide more humane inmate housing and help address critical safety concerns for detainees and staff.
Specifically, the Council majority led by Councilman Michael Julian Bond— after acrimonious debate— narrowly voted to rent out Atlanta’s massive but virtually empty jail to help with overcrowding at the sheriff’s county jail. As Labat said, “the 700 available beds at the Atlanta City Detention Center are one element of the strategic and meaningful solutions needed in order to fully address the dangerous problem of (Fulton jail) overcrowding.”
“I know the decision was not an easy one,” the sheriff noted. After all, Dickens and the Council majority faced heavy criticism from a radical element who criticize the police and oppose what they claim is “mass incarceration.”
Labat and Dickens, though, argued that the agreement to relieve inmate overcrowding at the Fulton jail by housing them in the Atlanta facility was about providing humane conditions for inmates that both the city and the county are charged with caring for.
Labat also notes that “completing this transition will provide the opportunity for the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office to restart its groundbreaking re-entry program, ‘Preparing Adult Offenders to Transition Through Training & Therapy (PAT3.)’ The PAT3 program provides employment opportunities to non-violent detainees as they re-enter society,” he said. And the sheriff emphasized he is committed “to providing the resources, skills & tools needed to help reduce recidivism and give everyone who walks out of the jail access to a pathway for a better future.”
By the way, the Fulton County Jail has faced serious overcrowding since the day it opened over 30 years ago. Labat, since taking office in January 2021, has been preparing for building a new and bigger penal facility. In the meantime, as Bond and other Council members said, the rental agreement is a reasonable solution for the interim.
