Stanlecia Johnson is still dealing with the fallout of a brief stint in jail nearly six months ago, an ordeal that threw her life into disarray.
The grandmother of four was brought to Fulton County Jail after being arrested for aggravated assault in May.
Unable to post bail, she was held in jail for two weeks, and missed work, costing her her new job at Walmart.
“I lost my job, my bills had got behind,” said Johnson. “That’s why my internet not on now.”
Detention in Fulton County Jail, which predominantly houses Black inmates awaiting trial, routinely costs people their jobs — missing even a day of work can lead to termination. But most detainees — even those ultimately found not guilty — stay far longer than the national average, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, and end up suffering horrible consequences, sometimes including death.
The U.S. Department of Justice released a report in November saying that the jail violated the rights of detainees.
Cases move slowly through the county’s judicial system. Far more people are arrested than the system can handle, leading to overcrowding and extended detentions, sometimes of people who have not been formally charged with a crime.
Some worry that pending cases could bottleneck next year, as a federally funded program that helped speed up the processing of cases for the past three years comes to an end this month.
The initiative, called Project ORCA, was launched in 2021 to address a backlog of cases within Fulton County’s court system. Now, as the funding expires on Dec. 31, the program is slated to end.
“From my experience and what I deal with on a daily basis, we do not have enough judges, solicitors, DAs, public defenders, sheriff staff,” said Che Alexander, Fulton County’s clerk of Superior and Magistrate Courts, who helped create Project ORCA.
As the project comes to an end, Capital B spoke with county court officials, community members, and criminal justice organizations who said they fear the system will slow down again.
“We just need to make sure that all the system actors have the resources they need to be able to efficiently do what they are constitutionally mandated to do,” said Wade Askew, policy director at the Georgia Justice Project.
Conditions at Fulton County Jail
Confiscated contraband weapons at Fulton County Jail — made from pipes and pieces of the building — are displayed. A report from the U.S. Justice Department found that Fulton County Jail is housing detainees in unsanitary and dangerous conditions. (Madeline Thigpen/Capital B)
Extended stays at Fulton County Jail can be not only majorly disruptive, as in Johnson’s case, they can also be traumatic — or lethal. Despite ongoing repairs and renovation, the 35-year-old facility continues to struggle with providing humane detention, according to the Justice Department investigation that cited constitutional and statutory rights violations.
In September 2022, Lashawn Thompson was found unresponsive in his Fulton County Jail cell, his body riddled with bed bug bites. He was one of 15 people to die while in Fulton County custody that year, a number so high that it garnered national attention. Between 2009 and 2022, more than 60 people died in county custody, according to a lawsuit filed by the family of an inmate who was fatally stabbed.
The next summer, two days after 19-year-old Noni Battiste-Kosoko died in her cell at the Atlanta City Detention Center (ACDC), the Justice Department announced its investigation into Fulton County Jail. The investigation found that the county failed to provide adequate care to incarcerated people with mental health needs, like Thompson and Battiste-Kosoko, who were both diagnosed with schizophrenia. Since 2021, three out of every four deceased inmates had been diagnosed with a mental illness, according to the DOJ.
The Justice Department’s investigation also found that Fulton County Jail houses detainees in unsanitary and dangerous living conditions, does not provide adequate medical and mental health services, and fails to protect incarcerated people from violence.
How we got here
Fulton County adopted Project ORCA in 2021, after the COVID-19 pandemic caused the Fulton County Court system to shut down and, as a result, accumulate cases atop an existing backlog. The initiative is named for the massive whale species — a comparison to the enormity of the project’s goal, said Alton Adams, the county’s former chief operating officer of Justice, Public Safety, and Technology, and co-creator of the project.
When the project launched on Dec. 6, 2021, there were around 148,209 backed-up cases, which dated back to 2015. That number fell to about 17,000 as of last month.
During the project’s tenure, the once-cramped Fulton County Jail population dipped from 2,618 people in December 2021 to 1,642 in the second week of December — more than 500 people below capacity — according to Fulton County data.
The initiative used $75 million in federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act to staff 528 new employees and create additional courts for efficiency. As a result, the average length of stay in the jail for detainees decreased from 71 days in May 2023, when the county first began to track the metric, to 45 days in October 2024 — nearly a 37% reduction. The National Association of Counties hailed the investment as a success, celebrating it with a 2023 achievement award.
While the initiative hasn’t formally ended yet, its imminent shutdown has already slowed the workings of the court.
Fulton County began phasing out ORCA hires in June, telling Capital B Atlanta in an email that as of Oct. 1, 217 employees were discharged, 242 were transferred to permanent roles, and 69 added county employees remained. Chief Magistrate Judge Cassandra Kirk said that since her office has lost 15 of 25 ORCA hires, it has gone from clearing up to 400 cases per week to maxing out at 200.
“We don’t have enough clerks for the volume of cases that we deal with on a daily basis,” said Alexander, the clerk of courts. “We may be back at 148,000 cases in the next few years. … There’s been no word of any help or any relief in the near future.”
The cost of incarceration
Johnson’s incarceration stemmed from a horrific incident.
She went to police in May to report that she had been sexually assaulted. There, she was informed that there was a warrant for her arrest stemming from a September 2023 incident that she says she doesn’t recall. She was subsequently taken into custody.
Johnson has a grim recollection of her time in Atlanta City Detention Center, the facility she was transferred to three days after being brought into Fulton County Jail. She called the city jail a “disgusting place” where gangs call the shots, officers play favorites, and detainees’ basic needs are neglected.
“They don’t even give you underclothes … no drawers, no bras, no socks,” Johnson said. “You gotta take off your clothes to put on this uniform, no telling how many women have been in it.”
After having very little contact with her public defender, Johnson says she secured the services of Women on the Rise, a nonprofit that aids women who have been impacted by the criminal justice system, to help her post bail and manage her case. Without that assistance, Johnson’s life likely would’ve been uprooted for even longer than the 14 days she was jailed.
Askew, from the Georgia Justice Project, said Johnson’s situation is similar to that of many others whose lives are derailed after being roped into the justice system.
“The stakes have always included someone’s employment, their family stability, their housing … the stakes of someone’s life,” he said.
Askew added that having people sit in jail for extended periods of time can have more far-reaching impacts, leading to an increase in criminality.
“Pretrial detention is associated with a 30% increase in new felony charges and a 20% increase in new misdemeanor charges,” said Askew. “So if you hold someone for two to three days of pretrial detention, you’re statistically increasing the chances that that person will be arrested in the future than if they were released within 24 hours.”
District Attorney Fani Willis echoed these sentiments.
“By eliminating the ORCA grant, the county is jeopardizing the significant progress we’ve made in reducing violent crime, which ultimately puts the safety of our communities at risk,” Willis said in a statement to Capital B Atlanta.
Long wait times in jail can carry an economic cost for taxpayers, too. Tiffany Williams Roberts, public policy director at the Southern Center for Human Rights, said it’s expensive to run an overcrowded jail system, pointing to the numerous leasing agreements Fulton County has with other facilities in metro Atlanta to help house inmates as particularly pricey.
Fulton County spent $19.1 million to lease 1,310 beds to house incarcerated people in jails across metro Atlanta this year, according to the county’s 2024 budget. The largest of these contracts is with the city of Atlanta, which leased 700 beds in ACDC to Fulton County in 2022 to address overcrowding that forced detainees to sleep on portable bunks called boats.
Roberts adds that taxpayers are also on the hook for any lawsuits related to detainee harm, deaths, or rights violations.
“It is a catastrophic event in the life of a family to lose a loved one in jail,” said Roberts. “It’s a catastrophic event for a loved one to be incarcerated, period. But then on top of that, you’re paying out the settlement dollars because of Fulton County’s dysfunctional nature.”
Fulton commissioners explore alternatives
With the sunsetting of Project ORCA, Fulton County has proposed other solutions to prevent jail overcrowding and a pileup of unresolved cases.
Jessica Corbitt-Dominguez, the county’s director of external affairs, said the county is pursuing “innovative justice solutions,” such as increased ankle monitoring and the recent opening of a new diversion facility.
Michael O’Connor, deputy chief of staff for Fulton County Commissioner Rob Pitts, says the county plans to ask Georgia’s General Assembly for additional judges and legislation that allows superior courts to hear lower-level cases.
“Those are aimed at processing people through the system quicker,” said O’Connor.
Aside from ORCA, Pitts credits a reduction in arrests for minor offenses like public urination for reducing the jail’s population. He said one long-term solution for capacity issues is purchasing the Atlanta City Detention Center. The county already leases beds from ACDC to ease overcrowding.
But obtaining ACDC would have its own challenges. Michael Smith, press secretary for Mayor Andre Dickens, said Atlanta has “no plans” to sell the facility to the county and that they encourage “Fulton County leadership to explore alternatives to alleviate this humanitarian crisis.”
Even if Fulton County were to obtain ACDC, the county would need to address understaffing at the sheriff’s office to run the facility effectively. As of now, the county has the staffing capacity to only use 456 of the 700 beds in the detention center, according to Fulton County data.
Corbitt-Dominguez said budgeting for 2025 will be finalized by the end of January; until then, the county’s Board of Commissioners will evaluate input and requests from each department, including justice agencies. “That process is underway,” she said.
As for Johnson, she continues trying to get back on her feet following her detainment. She says she’s been meeting with her case manager weekly since her release and is seeking employment while awaiting her court date — and is thankful to be doing so beyond the walls of a jail cell.
“[I’m] still trying to deal with being incarcerated … trying to just deal with life in general,” said Johnson. “I’m really still trying to pick up the pieces.”
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