What happened

Georgia’s Fulton County is incarcerating people in “abhorrent, unconstitutional” conditions, violating their civil rights, the Justice Department said Thursday in a highly critical report. The DOJ began investigating the Atlanta County arrest in 2023 after the 2022 death of Lashawn Thompson, a 35-year-old inmate found malnourished and covered in lice in a trash-filled cell. A coroner ruled he had been “neglected to death.”

Who said what

The 16 months federal investigation found that poorly trained and understaffed Fulton County jail guards had a “practice of using excessive force” against inmates for even minor offenses, punished teenagers with isolation and fueled a “violence crisis” by housing highly violent inmates alongside vulnerable and low-risk inmates. Assaults and stabbings are “a feature of life” at the prison, the report added, and cells are vermin-infested, flooded with overflowing toilets and lined with dangerous exposed wires.