The Atlanta City Council gave Mayor Andre Dickens the OK to move forward with plans to sell the city’s jail to Fulton County by a narrow 8-to-7 vote late Monday, though they still have to hammer out certain details to close the deal.
Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat has long said that acquiring the roughly 1,300-bed Atlanta City Detention Center (ACDC) will ease the dangerous conditions at the county jail on Rice Street and eventually end its federal consent decree. His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
But City Councilman Wayne Martin said he also thinks the sale could serve a “humanitarian purpose that I envision would be better for our neighbors and folks [who] are incarcerated.” He subsequently voted to send the legislation to the mayor posthaste.
Over the past four years, persistent staffing shortages at the sheriff’s office have left many of the approximately 700 county-leased beds at ACDC empty, so some question whether the change of hands will make a difference. That lease agreement was set to end in early December.
Roadmap to removing Atlanta from ‘jailing business’ pushed aside
One of the sale’s strongest opponents has been Senior Councilman Michael Julian Bond, who said the city should have taken the opportunity to do something “bigger and better” instead of making what seems like a quick $68 million.
“We’re hot potato-ing a building for a shorter vision,” Bond said. “We should recreate our criminal justice system here and our social service system here in a combined effort with the county through this vehicle.”
External view of the Atlanta City Detention Center located on Peachtree Street Southwest in South Downtown.
Other council members, residents and local activists also opposed the sale, citing previous promises from then-Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Dickens to get the city “out of the jailing business.”
Tiffany Roberts, public policy director at the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights, even served on a task force at one point to turn the city’s jail into a community center — work that now seems moot.
“It is an abdication of your duties to simply do the mayor’s bidding,” Roberts said. “It is intellectually dishonest to lift up humanitarianism and to lift this sale up to being responsive to the immediate needs of people. … Six years ago, you had a roadmap to alleviate some of the inequality that we see in this city, to get at mass incarceration, and that plan sat.”
Just before the city council meeting, SCHR filed a lawsuit against Atlanta Chief Financial Officer Mohamed Balla and an unnamed employee, accusing them of withholding public records that could help explain the finances behind the decision to sell ACDC.
Balla has told council members that Atlanta spends about $30 million a year on corrections but could save as much as $20 million annually by selling the jail.
What’s next?
Council members must approve an intergovernmental agreement with Fulton County before the sale is finalized. But already, a recommendation that the proceeds go to the mayor’s neighborhood reinvestment initiative (NRI) has drawn stiff criticism.
“I support the idea of investing in our communities that have been neglected for generations,” said activist Devin Barrington-Ward, “but you cannot call it neighborhood reinvestment if the money comes from expanding the infrastructure of mass incarceration. That is blood money. … Many of the very communities that the NRI is supposed to repair are communities that have borne the cost of over-policing, ‘broken windows’ policing, criminalization and mass incarceration for generations.”
In a statement, Fulton County Chairman Robb Pitts said he was “pleased” that discussions are continuing.
“We appreciate the city council’s review of the matter and their thoughtful discussion,” Pitts wrote. “Fulton County remains committed to humane treatment of detainees and purchase of ACDC will support our goal to improve conditions. We are also committed to ongoing investments in mental health and diversion services to help residents avoid incarceration whenever possible.”
The Fulton County Board of Commissioners meets on Wednesday.
