Atlanta City Council cleared the way Monday for Fulton County to purchase the Atlanta City Detention Center for $68 million.
Debate on the benefits and harm of the sale of the city’s detention center carried the council well into the evening before it eventually passed, 8 to 7.
District 11 council member Wayne Martin, co-sponsor of the bill, said he sees the ACDC sale as a way for the city to reduce its corrections footprint and direct savings toward crime and violence prevention initiatives.
Joining Martin in support of the sale were Jason Winston, Alex Wan, Thomas Worthy, Mary Norwood, Dustin Hillis, Andrea Boone, and Matt Westmoreland. Council members Kelsea Bond, Byron Amos, Jason Dozier, Liliana Bakhtiari, Antonio Lewis, Michael Julian Bond, and Eshé Collins voted no.
Supporters presented the plan as a way to address overcrowding at Fulton County Jail. They also believe it’s an opportunity for the city to help the county comply with a federal mandate to improve conditions for incarcerated people. The U.S. Department of Justice has previously described the jail as inhumane and unconstitutional.
Elected officials and local advocates opposing the sale point to the lease agreement of the past four years that failed to prevent the current spike in overcrowding. The lease allowed the county to pay $50 per day for up to 700 beds in ACDC, but due to staffing issues in the sheriff’s office, that total was capped at 500 beds at any given time. Two people died in county custody at ACDC since the lease began.
“Increasing jail capacity will not increase safety,” Tiffany Roberts, public policy director at the Southern Center for Human Rights told City Council members earlier this month.
“If we’re having a conversation about the propriety of a financial decision, let’s have it,” Roberts said. “But we need for the community and all of our stakeholders to be clear that this is not a conversation about public safety, and this is not a conversation about the maintenance or the advancement of human rights.”
Roberts noted that Fulton County has not made significant progress in addressing conditions based on the reports of the monitor appointed by a federal judge.
“One of the most disturbing things that the monitor found was that many 17-year-olds were being held in up to 23-hours of perpetual darkness in solitary confinement,” Roberts said.
The monitor’s August report also mentioned issues that have worsened since her previous report in February like sanitation in housing areas and incarcerated people’s ability to access medical care.
Where does the money go?
Neither the money made from the ACDC sale, nor the savings made on yearly operations expenses, have been earmarked for a specific use yet. The $68 million will be put into a committed fund balance, according to the mayor’s chief of staff, Courtney English.
“Now whether or not we move it out of [the] committed fund balance into the [neighborhood reinvestment initiative] trust fund or the affordable housing trust fund, or any other fund, that would have to come before council anyway,” English said.
Bond, one of the most vocal opponents of the sale, questioned the financial burden for taxpayers. At a previous meeting, he said the sale would mean Atlanta taxpayers are paying for the same building twice: first through their city taxes that built the jail in 1995, and now through their county taxes to purchase the jail 30 years later.
Other council members, like Collins and Kelsea Bond, echoed sentiments that the sale does not properly address the overcrowding and humanitarian issues that the Fulton County jail is currently facing.
How did this become an option?
Fulton County officials have long been keen to purchase ACDC.
“We will need, at some point, to acquire the city jail. I’ve said from day one that I would write a check today if [Atlanta] would sell that jail to us,” Fulton County Board of Commissioners Chairman Robb Pitts told Capital B Atlanta in 2024.
Until recently however, the sale did not seem likely.
With a dwindling daily population, then-Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms signed legislation in 2019 to close the jail and repurpose the building into an equity center.
Her administration then convened a “Reimaging ACDC” task force to envision how the new center would reduce crime and recidivism rates by breaking the cycle of poverty. In May 2020, the taskforce’s final report included four possible options for the new equity center that would have connected residents with housing, employment, substance-abuse treatment, and mental health care.
When Mayor Andre Dickens took office in 2022, a sale still didn’t seem probable. Although Atlanta agreed to lease 700 beds in ACDC to help Fulton County address its jail overcrowding problem, the mayor’s office maintained that a sale of the facility wasn’t on the table.
In August, negotiations over terms of a potential sale became public through a series of leaked letters between Dickens and Pitts. A few weeks ago, Dickens accepted Fulton County’s $68 million offer to purchase the jail.
What happens next?
Fulton County also has to approve the purchase before the sale can be finalized
Dickens will now have to negotiate an intergovernmental agreement with the county so the city can continue to use a portion of the facility to detain people for municipal court charges.
A previous version of the legislation authorizing the mayor to enter into a 50-year lease for one floor of the facility at a rate of $1 per year was not approved by the council.
The agreement will then have to be approved by the City Council before Dickens can sign.
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