Fulton County’s new sheriff has announced he wants to buy Atlanta’s mostly empty jail and begin housing more inmates there.
It’s a proposal that would upend promises by Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and a notable departure from the momentum that’s been building for years to close Atlanta’s City Detention Center.
“This is an opportunity for the city to get out of the jail business and the sheriff’s office to do what we do,” Sheriff Patrick Labat, who ran Atlanta’s jail for the last ten years, told WABE.
He was a member of a task force Mayor Bottoms asked to come up with recommendations on the future of the jail.