DOJ finds ‘dehumanizing’ filth and violence at Atlanta jail where man died covered in insects

Two years after a mentally ill man died malnourished and covered in bugs in Atlanta’s Fulton County Jail, a Justice Department investigation has found that the man’s death was just one of a series of fatalities caused by widespread unconstitutional conditions in prison.

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division released a notice report It concluded Thursday that the Fulton County Jail, which handles pretrial detention for most of Atlanta, subjects incarcerated people to teasing and malnutrition, excessive force from correctional officers, and fails to protect them from rampant violence and sexual assault by other prisoners. The report found that these conditions violate the Eighth and 14th Amendments, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

The Ministry of Justice initiated the civil rights investigation in the aftermath of Lashawn Thompson’s death in 2022. Thompson, a 35-year-old man with schizophrenia, had been held in the Fulton County Jail for three months on a battery charge when he was found dead in an extremely filthy cell. Thompson’s body was covered in lice, bed bugs and lesions. An independent autopsy stated his cause of death as “severe neglect”, noting that Thompson was suffering from a “severe insect infestation”.

In a press statementAttorney General Merrick Garland said Thompson’s “horrific death was symptomatic of a pattern of dangerous and inhumane conditions at the Fulton County Jail.”

“The Department of Justice report concluded that Fulton County and the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office allowed unsafe and unsanitary conditions at the jail,” Garland said. “As a result, people incarcerated in the Fulton County Jail suffered harm from vermin and malnutrition and were at significant risk of serious harm from violence by other incarcerated people – including murders, stabbings and sexual abuse.”

Department of Justice investigators reported widespread infestations of mice, cockroaches, bed bugs, lice and scabies.

The prison’s kitchen is not only unsanitary, but also fails to adequately feed the prisoners. The report notes that in 2022, prison medical staff determined that 90 percent of people in the mental health unit where Thompson died were “significantly malnourished with marked muscle wasting.”

Because Georgia is one of four states where the juvenile justice system ends at age 16, the Fulton County Jail routinely detains 17-year-olds and subjects them to the same conditions.

Minors and people with mental illness are held in solitary confinement for extended periods. Correctional officers use Tasers and pepper spray against mentally ill inmates and minors without justification.

The report also found that the prison failed to adequately investigate and report allegations of sexual assault, even though the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) is supposed to create a zero-tolerance policy for rape in jails and prisons. Justice Department investigators wrote that this negligence extended to the prison’s underage population:

Even a complaint about the sexual assault of a 17-year-old boy did not lead to clear action to tackle the violence. In June 2023, a 17-year-old filed an emergency complaint reporting that he had been anally penetrated and was bleeding. The complaints officer responded that she had transferred the complaint to the prison’s investigative unit, provided no other information and closed the complaint. Later that week, the same individual filed another emergency complaint from the same residential location, reporting being sexually harassed and forced to perform sexual acts, and requesting to be moved to another location. The complaints officer responded that she forwarded the complaint to the PREA investigator, again provided no other information, and closed the complaint. Despite a request, we have not received any incident reports or documents showing that anyone has investigated these complaints.

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), who urged the Justice Department to launch the investigation, said in a news release that Thursday’s report “confirms that the abuse at the Fulton County Jail has not only been heinous, but also unconstitutional. Perpetuating these conditions every day is a failure to uphold the human and constitutional rights of Georgians.”

But these conditions persist in prisons across the country, where negligence, apathy and cruelty result in hundreds of deaths every year. In a Texas prison, three people died of thirst over a period of two years.

The Justice Department report notes that so far in 2024, three men have died in the Fulton County Jail: one from a suspected drug overdose, one from stabbing and one from suicide.