The Fulton County Commission wants an audit of an “Inmate Welfare Fund” after seeing a list of expenditures for promotional events, giveaways, photo booths, jugglers, and more than $1 million for Fulton Sheriff’s office vehicles.
The fund is supposed to be used for items like clothing and toiletries for inmates. The funds mainly come from the jail commissary and jail phone calls.
The controversy is the latest centered around the jail, which has problems with overcrowding, 10 inmate deaths so far in 2023, and deteriorating conditions at the Rice Street facility.
Commissioners Bob Ellis and Marvin Arrington Jr. asked Sheriff Pat Labatt to provide the board with a report on spending from the fund on Oct. 9. The report was received on Oct. 30, but only in paper form.
The Inmate Welfare Fund had grown to $12.93 million in 2021. Expenditures also increased to $3.05 million. Ellis said he was told by a source other than the sheriff that the fund balance will drop in 2023 as expenditures jump to $9.18 million.
“The sheriff needs to take ownership and accountability for this. This was a fund that he’s had sole responsibility for monitoring and making disbursements out of and we need to get to the bottom of what we’re seeing right here,” Ellis said.
Commissioner Khadijah Abdur-Rahman wants accountability from the sheriff and asked that he put some of the money back into the Inmate Welfare Fund.
“When we have funds that are allegedly being used for gift cards, for giveaways for flowers, for personal – come on, you all. It does not take a rocket scientist to know the difference between right and wrong,” she said.
Arrington said a policy exists regarding the Inmate Welfare Fund. A committee comprised of the sheriff, the chief jailer, and the commission chairman was supposed to meet and approve the expenditures.
Chairman Robb Pitts said that was the first he heard of that committee. He wanted to find out who had approved and signed the checks for the expenditures and called for a forensic audit of the fund.
Arrington said he didn’t think they should spend more money by hiring an outside firm to learn how money was misspent. Instead, the county’s internal auditor should be used.
Labatt has already come under fire by commissioners for spending $2.1 million on health-monitoring wristbands from an Alpharetta startup company called Talitrix. The board voted in October to rescind funding after Labat failed to disclose agreements made with Talitrix in 2021, according to a report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Labatt’s plan to move some inmates out of state to relieve overcrowding was another controversy involving the jail.
In late October Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee rejected an emergency petition filed by Atlanta Judicial Circuit Public Defender Maurice Kenner to stop Labatt’s plan to send up to 1,000 inmates to a private prison in Mississippi or an immigration detention center in south Georgia, according to a report by WABE.
But McAfee said Georgia law prohibits the move and only allows transfers due to unsafe conditions to the “nearest county” with a secure jail.
Fulton County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Natalie Ammons told WABE that although a top priority of the agency is to relieve overcrowding within the jail, no out-of-state movement of inmates had been underway or imminent.
Labatt told 11Alive that Fulton County has moved inmates to facilities in Cobb, Forsyth, and Oconee counties. Others were moved to Alpharetta’s and South Fulton’s jails.
The 34-year-old Fulton County Jail was built with a capacity for 1,125 inmates, though its current population is almost double that amount, 11Alive reported. When it was most crowded during the pandemic, Labatt said 560 inmates were forced to sleep on floor mattresses. In recent weeks that dropped to 51.
The Georgia State Senate launched an investigation into conditions at the Fulton Jail, while the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice announced its own “comprehensive investigation” back in July.
