Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat is still failing to document the proper treatment of women with serious mental illnesses incarcerated in Fulton County, as is required by a 2022 settlement.
The agreement was the result of a class-action lawsuit filed in 2019 by the Georgia Advocacy Office, the Southern Center for Human Rights and Caplan Cobb LLC on behalf of women with serious mental illness who were being held in solitary confinement at the South Fulton Jail in Union City.
During the initial lawsuit, the Georgia Advocacy Office presented photographs from their inspections of the unsanitary jail cells the women were housed in for weeks at a time. The pictures showed cells that were covered in garbage, had standing toilet water, and walls stained with blood and fecal matter.
“[Labat] has not shown that it is impossible for him to comply, nor has he shown that he has in good faith made all reasonable efforts to comply,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Regina D. Cannon wrote in her order last month.
Read More: Federal Judge Rules Fulton Sheriff Did Not Comply With Court Settlement
Labat has appealed the order to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
“It is undisputed that the conditions for the female mental health inmates have improved. The federal judge has visited [the Atlanta City Detention Center] and confirmed that the conditions have not only improved, but are both constitutional and reflect best practices,” a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office wrote in a statement Wednesday to Capital B Atlanta.
“[The Georgia Advocacy Office’s] focus has been on documentation, which in our opinion is baseless. Our desired outcome is the decision be reversed.”
The judge found that the sheriff failed to maintain an accurate list of women with serious mental illnesses, provide access to reading material, track out-of-cell time, or comply with staffing, training, and supervision requirements listed in the settlement.
“This ruling is more than a finding in favor of the Plaintiffs — it is a reminder that the women inside that jail are human beings whose voices matter. For too long, they have reported poor and degrading conditions, and those reports have been ignored,” Devon Orland, litigation director at the Georgia Advocacy Office, wrote in a press statement.
Since this is the second time Labat has been found to be in material breach of the agreement, the U.S. District Court can decide to convert the agreement into a consent decree.
Read More: Two Deaths at Fulton Jail Raise More Questions about Safety and Oversight
While a settlement agreement is a legally binding contract, it is made between the two parties in a lawsuit and does not carry the weight of a court order. And unlike a consent decree, it does not automatically incur sanctions if one party is found to be in violation.
A consent decree is a formal court order, and parties who violate the agreement can be found in contempt of court.
If the U.S. District Court converts the settlement agreement, it will be the second consent decree Labat and Fulton County entered into this year to address the inhumane and unconstitutional conditions at the jail.
“Fulton County agreed to make meaningful changes in the lives of people with psychiatric disabilities, and it has failed to live up to its end of the bargain time after time,” Atteeyah Hollie, deputy director at the Southern Center for Human Rights, said in a statement to media following the judge’s ruling.
