For two years, during the height of the pandemic, Nikita Thomas sat in a Fulton County jail cell in Union City trying to stay hopeful that she wouldn’t spend the rest of her life in prison.
“You tend to lose hope regardless of how much you pray,” Thomas told Capital B Atlanta. “You start to think, ‘OK, am I stuck here?’”
Thomas was being held on six charges, including felony murder and aggravated assault. At the time of her incarceration, between May 2020 and May 2022, the county jail system’s population fluctuated between 2,300 and 3,200 people, well over the 2,000 people it was designed to hold.
For most of those two years, Thomas was held without bail. It wasn’t until February 2022 that she finally had a bail amount set at $275,000.
“I didn’t know who they thought I was and where that money was going to come from,” she said.
Thomas said the bail bond company wanted $15,000 down just for her to begin a payment plan, so she sat in jail for a few months until her daughter told her about a local nonprofit called Barred Business. Founded in 2020 by two formerly incarcerated women, Bridgette Simpson and Denise Ruben, Barred Business, along with National Bail Out, helped Thomas to get released on bond while she awaited trial.
Even after the now-39-year-old mother was able to get out on bail, on the condition that she wear an ankle monitor, Thomas waited another two years to be found not guilty on the six charges she was facing.
Despite living four years of her life in legal limbo, Thomas considers herself lucky because she was able to pay for an attorney instead of having to rely on the public defender’s office.
“I met some young ladies that were there for six, seven years, waiting to go to trial, just there and with no court date in the future, or they did have a court date, but due to the overwhelming load of some of the public defenders and the court at that time, their court dates were continuously pushed back,” Thomas said.
Not enough public defenders
The COVID-19 pandemic did not create Fulton County’s case backlog and jail overcrowding problems, but it did exacerbate issues. In response, Fulton County launched Project ORCA in December 2021, allocating millions of dollars in federal pandemic relief funds to justice system agencies like the public defender, the state, superior and magistrate courts and the district attorney’s office.
By the end of 2024, all the pandemic era federal funds had officially been spent and the justice system agencies in Fulton County again found themselves in a situation where they are unable to manage their ever-growing case load.
According to the Georgia Public Defender Council, its lawyers handle 85% of all criminal cases in the state.
As of Oct. 27, Fulton County has 2,964 incarcerated people in a system with a maximum capacity of 2,254. In the county manager’s most recent report on the September 2025 numbers, the average jail stay was 51 days, three weeks longer than the county’s goal of 30 days.
Over the past few months, Fulton County Commissioner Mo Ivory has introduced legislation to allocate some of the county’s surplus funds to the two justice system agencies that are dealing with serious understaffing problems.
The funding legislation has failed to pass each time, getting support only from fellow commissioners Dana Barrett and Marvin Arrington Jr. Although her proposals have yet to win majority backing on the seven-person Board of Commissioners, Ivory said she’s not giving up.
“The magistrate [court] and the public defender just happened to be two offices that are directly tied to our jail population, which currently is around 3,000 people, with people sleeping on the floor as well. So we need to do whatever we can to deal with that most immediate problem that we have,” Ivory told Capital B Atlanta.
Since the conclusion of her case, Thomas has begun working with Barred Business, a local nonprofit dedicated to the political and economic empowerment of justice-impacted people.
Simpson, Barred Business’ co-founder, told Capital B Atlanta that the group originally began posting bail because public defenders were coming to them to ask for help because the case load for the numbers of clients they had sitting in jail was so high.
“Atlanta is arresting people like it’s a prize, like it’s some type of jackpot. I served some time with a woman that was serving five years behind a traffic ticket.”
Bridgette Simpson, Barred Business co-founder
All too familiar with the situation from her own experience, Simpson said that when she was incarcerated and going through pre-trial motions, she would meet with her public defender for only up to 15 minutes at a time — and she was just one of dozens of cases they were juggling.
“That was way back in 2005, 2006, and here it is in 2025 and the problem is only intensified,” Simpson said.
This year, the Fulton County Public Defender’s Office budget was $27.5 million. The district attorney’s office, which DA Fani Willis has said is also underfunded, had a budget of $39 million.
Simpson believes the problem lies in the fact that there are too many cases in the first place.
“Atlanta is arresting people like it’s a prize, like it’s some type of jackpot,” she said. “I served some time with a woman that was serving five years behind a traffic ticket.”
While the issue of overarresting is part of the conversation when it comes to the court system and jail overcrowding, it is rarely the central discussion — in part because the police are operated by the municipalities within Fulton County.
The courts and jail system are under the purview of the county commissioners, which is why Ivory has been so steadfast in her advocacy to increase their funding.
“I’ll continue to push for a people-centered budget, one that uses our surplus and our budget dollars to meet urgent needs, instead of letting those dollars just sit unused while our critical systems continue to struggle,” Ivory said.
Underfunded courts
Fulton County Chief Magistrate Judge Cassandra Kirk said her department’s financial constraints are creating a similarly untenable situation that is preventing them from operating at full capacity.
In the beginning of the year, she asked for an additional $611,000 to hire four judicial assistants, one administrative assistant, and one senior staff attorney. She amended her request in August for a pro-rated $178,000, but was again rejected.
Kirk describes the magistrate court as the people’s court because it handles the bulk of cases in the county, including evictions, marriages, foreclosures, and small claims on the civil side, and warrants, first appearances, and preliminary hearings on the criminal side.
“[We handle] about 75,000 cases every year. Next to us is the state court; they handle about 45,000 cases, and the superior court handles about 34,000 cases a year,” Kirk told Capital B Atlanta.
In the 2025 budget, the magistrate court received $5 million, the state court $15 million, and the superior court $27 million.
“Our team is stretched thin, but they keep coming to work every day because they are dedicated to the people of Fulton County and the oath we took to serve them,” she said.
Ivory said she will continue to advocate for what she considers to be critical funding for the justice system because it’s something her constituents are concerned about, and she considers it central to addressing the crisis at Fulton County Jail.
“I believe that there is a direct link between funding our court system and our judicial partners in reducing the inmate population at the jail. And, unfortunately, four people who hold a stronghold on the Fulton County Commission don’t agree with that,” Ivory said.
The commissioners who have voted no often cite fiscal responsibility and the desire to prioritize other initiatives. Those who have voted against are commissioners Robb Pitts, Bridget Thorne, and Bob Ellis, while Commissioner Khadijah Abdur-Rahman has frequently abstained from the votes.
As for Nikita Thomas, two years after she spent two years behind bars and was ultimately acquitted, she said she is working on repairing her relationship with her daughter, who was just about to turn 15 when Thomas was arrested.
“She was a little angry with me at the fact that I was gone, but she understood why,” Thomas said. “It still affects me, but she was strong, and she understood that me being in jail was not done out of malicious intent.”
Thomas has found a new purpose since her time incarcerated. In addition to her job at a collision shop, she volunteers with Barred Business to help out other justice-impacted people that are in similar situations to her own.
“I’ve seen some ladies since I’ve been home that we work with [who], unfortunately, were not as blessed, and it’s scary to know just how close I came to having that same fate,” Thomas said. “I am grateful [for] my outcome and the experiences that I went through while there, because they helped me want to do this type of work on the outside, to reach back and let people know that there are options.”
