A contentious work session over the City of Atlanta’s plan to sell the Atlanta City Detention Center to Fulton County ended in a shouting match on Sept. 23.
Community advocates and agencies, Atlanta and Fulton County police, and elected officials presented history and present-day issues facing Atlanta jails, including overcrowding, unsafe conditions, and understaffing.
Still under review by the City’s Public Safety committee, Mayor Andre Dickens and city council members are getting close to voting on the sale of ACDC, a 1,300-person-capacity jail built in 1995. The sale has been under negotiation for months, finally settling at $68 million, although the building was appraised at $144 million.
Each interest group at the meeting expressed reasons for and against the sale of ACDC, blaming each other for poor jail conditions including the 2025 deaths of two inmates, lack of medical staff to address illness, and outdated practices like solitary confinement.
In 2019, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms created a multi-million dollar task force to lead the conversion of ACDC into a resource center. Through her advocacy with Community Over Cages, Tiffany Roberts worked closely with then-city council member Andre Dickens to examine the repurposing of ACDC. Since becoming mayor, Dickens has not revisited the plan according to Roberts, who serves as public policy director at the Southern Center for Human Rights.
If Fulton County acquires the ACDC, erects a special use facility, and renovates Rice Street jail, Atlanta will have one of the largest carceral footprints of its peer cities, said Roberts. The group has a history of suing the City of Atlanta over the poor treatment of inmates’ physical and mental health. Rice Street is under a federal consent decree prompted by a Southern Center for Human Rights investigation.
“Increasing jail capacity does not resolve underlying issues like staffing shortages or human rights violations,” Roberts said, directing her comments to Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat.
While Roberts claimed that Fulton County’s Rice Street jail is staffed at only 54% of required levels, Labat reported a 10% upward trend in hiring including 141 new employees in 2026.
Still, security, operations, medical and mental health staff are low, said NAACP legal fellow Ashley Conyers.
“Why would Atlanta facilitate the expansion of a jail system that is still struggling to meet its existing obligations under federal consent decree,” Conyers asked. “If we can’t facilitate staffing right now in Fulton County, how will we do that with a new 1,300 bed facility?”
Other speakers suggested pre-arrest diversion for low-level offenses, like traffic violations or liquor license issues.
Councilmember Michael Julian Bond argued against selling city assets and suggested creating a joint authority between the city and county, similar to their water and sewer partnership.
“To sell this building to you all is outrageous. We should give you a $1 per year lease plus expenses, or create an authority to run it jointly,” Bond said. “You don’t need to be given the $68 million.”
A passionate exchange between Fulton County Commission Vice Chair Khadijah Abdur-Rahman and Atlanta City Council member Liliana Bakhtiari ended the meeting.
Bakhtiari said the city spends between $30 to 40 million on homelessness, housing, food insecurity, animal control, Grady Hospital, and other human services to make up for Fulton County.
“We clearly are carrying a lot of the water for you. There [are] ways to prevent people from going to jail, and it’s not creating more carceral space. It is doing things like having a co-responder program, like having after-school services, providing mental health care,” Bakhtiari said.
Abdur-Rahman called Bahktiari “ill-informed.”
“Fulton County and City of Atlanta is going to take a black eye if we do not come together and do what’s best for this situation in 10 to 20 years,” Abdur-Rahman said.
The Public Safety committee will next meet at 1 p.m. on Sept. 28 to decide what comes next for ACDC.
