The Community Over Cages coalition gathered Wednesday morning in downtown Atlanta for a press conference to share a new report that refutes the need for a new $2 billion jail in Fulton County.

The report, produced by Prison Policy Initiative (PPI), reviews the jail feasibility study that the Fulton County Board of Commissioners commissioned last year. The report concludes that a new jail would make the Fulton County jail crisis worse by increasing pretrial incarceration, taking mental health resources from the community, and ignoring major pathways to decarceration. The report also reveals that the “model jails” cited in the feasibility study are actually “prime examples” that newer, bigger jails do not remedy staffing shortages or prevent jail deaths. 

Proponents of the proposal to build the “most expensive jail this country has ever seen” say that the new jail is necessary to alleviate the suffering of incarcerated people in the main Fulton County Jail on Rice Street. In 2022, however, the ACLU released a report showing that Fulton County could alleviate overcrowding by simply complying with state law regarding setting bond amounts, indicting cases timely, not detaining individuals for misdemeanors, and diverting eligible detainees from custody and into programs. Since those recommendations were made, at least thirteen people have tragically died in custody while the Fulton County Board of Commissioners scrambles to find a way to pay for the $2 billion jail. 

District 3 Commissioner Dana Barrett, who represents all of Buckhead and parts of Midtown and Sandy Springs, recently introduced The Safe and Human Pre-trial Jail Act—a resolution to explore a regressive sales tax to raise capital for the $2 billion project. Last week, however, the Board of Commissioners declined to move forward Barrett’s resolution—leaving them with more questions than answers about how they will fund a capital project at this scale.  

Advocates from the Community Over Cages coalition were relieved to see Barrett’s resolution fail and are feeling more hopeful than ever that the Fulton County Board of Commissioners will explore the coalition’s research-based pathways to decarcerating the existing jail instead of spending $2 billion on a new one. 

“For at least two years now, Fulton County leaders have disregarded the alternatives that the ACLU of Georgia and other groups have offered as [alternatives] to building the new jail,” said ACLU of Georgia Deputy Policy and Advocacy Director Fallon McClure. “Now is the time for leaders to listen and study the information before them to address this problem and put an end to tragic and fatal outcomes at the Fulton County Jail.”