Overcrowding in America’s Prisons Violates the 8th Amendment Ban on “Cruel and Unusual Punishment”
The Justice Department has just released a scathing 96-page report accusing the Fulton County jail in Atlanta, GA of engaging in “cruel and unusual punishment” in the September 2022 death of a mentally disabled inmate, LeShawn Thompson, who was found lying face down dead in his cell, his body covered with lice and bedbugs. The Department seized upon Thompson’s death as an egregious example of conditions in the Atlanta facility – including cells flooded with water and human waste, unchecked vermin, exposed wiring and sexual assaults and attacks – conditions that the DOJ described as “inhumane,” “illegal” and “atrocious.” The Department has given the jail’s superintendent 50 days to remedy conditions in the facility, or risk being slapped with a DOJ lawsuit that could result in fines and criminal prosecution.
This is not the first time the Fulton County jail, which some have dubbed “America’s GITMO,” has been found lax in providing legally required safe and healthy conditions for its inmates. But in accusing the prison of violating the 8th Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, the DOJ has raised the stakes of the battle, invoking Constitutional safeguards that are rarely used to sanction unlawful prison management.
