GEORGIA: Atlanta Prison Sale Solves Crowding Problem Keisha Lance Bottoms Perpetuated
As mayor, Lance Bottoms prioritized dreamy activist policies over basic human decency, failing to solve overcrowding at Fulton County Prison.
With former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms out of office, the city has finally struck a deal with Georgia's Fulton County to purchase the 1,300-bed Atlanta City Detention Center (ACDC) for $68 million. The Sept. 8 agreement solves a long-time overcrowding problem at Fulton County Jail.
Lance Bottoms served as mayor from 2018-2022. Now she is campaigning as Georgia's Democratic gubernatorial candidate against Republican Rick Jackson, the Georgia billionaire raised in foster care, who founded the healthcare staffing company Jackson Healthcare.
Lance Bottoms' Reimagined Common Sense
Lance Bottoms went so soft on crime during her single, tumultuous term as Atlanta's mayor, that by May 2020, ACDC's daily population averaged fewer than 30 people per night in a facility built to hold 1,300. She decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana, imposed a pre-arrest diversion initiative that replaces policing with social work, relaxed rules surrounding municipal cash bail, and ended a long-term contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that had provided a holding place for non-citizens who committed crimes in the U.S. and may be deported.
While the city's ACDC sat nearly empty, Fulton County's 2,500-bed jail was under federal oversight for 11 years due to overcrowding, flooding of raw sewage into the cells, and bum locks that allowed inmates to wander around the facility, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported in 2021. A 2023 U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation still found poor living conditions. The county made improvements, reducing the jail population from 3,500 in 2023, to 2,400 in 2024, and assigning each inmate a bed instead of making some crash on "portable sleeping devices," according to a 2025 DOJ consent decree.
Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat asked to buy ACDC from the city of Atlanta in 2021, at which point the average daily population was down to 29 inmates. Mayor Lance Bottoms said "no." The county's overcrowding could have been solved years ago, if not for Lance Bottoms' delusional dream to shut down the ACDC and reimagine it as a Center for Equity.
Why was she hellbent on closing ACDC? The answer, of course, is politics.
'Center for Equity'
Voters considering Lance Bottoms for governor would be wise to look back at her failed plan to close the ACDC and repurpose the jail as an Equity Center—a place to redirect people who would otherwise be in prison.
Lance Bottoms announced plans in May 2019 to close and "reimagine" the ACDC. Although she never closed the prison, she studied the heck out of it, a creating a task force to study dismantling this "symbol of mass incarceration."
The project was led by five members of Designing Justice Designing + Spaces (DJDS), a Soros-funded, California based activist group describing itself as an "architecture and real estate development social enterprise working to end mass incarceration by building the infrastructure that addresses its root causes: poverty, racism, unequal access to resources, and the criminal justice system itself."
Lance Bottoms appointed more radical activists to the task force, including representatives from Georgia Detention Watch, a group that aims to "end immigration detention and instead redirect taxpayer dollars into education, housing for all income levels, climate resilient infrastructure and health care that supports our collective well-being." Also the Black Futurists Group that exists to "defund and dismantle" the Atlanta Police Department; Southerners On New Ground, an LGBTQ liberation group; and the Solutions Not Punishment Collaborative, a "Black Trans and Queer led organization …creating a powerful movement of people who are able to reimagine solutions other than police to build a safer, more inclusive . . . Atlanta."
It is not surprising that a task force led by anti-prison activists issued a June 2020 report recommending Atlanta close, demolish, and replace ACDC with the Center for Equity that would "forever change Atlanta and how we provide for our most marginalized populations." An outrageous suggestion considering that at the time of the report, the 471,000 square foot building was just 25 years old. The call for demolition and a rebuild would have been a massive spending boondoggle, not to mention the many tons of needless construction waste the project would have created. Apparently, the environment doesn't matter when equity and inclusion is on the line.
The task force suggested three designs for the Center for Equity, ranging in construction cost from $40 million to $108 million.
In place of the city prison, part of the old ACDC building footprint was to become a park, memorial, and urban farm or seed bank. Never mind that Atlanta already has more than 343 parks.
Changing the Rules
The most troubling aspect of the unelected task force was the policy workgroup that reviewed revery city and state rule that could result in criminal jail or prison and recommended weather each law should be retained, deleted, amended, or converted to civil. It's disturbing because voters elect representatives with local knowlage to study and shape the laws, not to appoint biased activists to write the laws.
The task force wanted to eliminate the need for jail by getting rid of crimes. Instead of changing criminal behavior, they simply reclassified crimes. It recommended repealing many city ordinances including discharging a firearm in the city, inhaling spray paint, open container (alcohol) on a sidewalk, marijuana use, animal control rules, and most traffic offenses.
The task force report suggested the Center for Equity would create housing opportunities like "sobering beds, shelter beds, safe-haven beds, or crisis intervention beds for people experiencing a behavioral health episode that does not require hospitalization." DJDS dreamed of a facility offering, "wellness and healing, skills-building, economic mobility, and crime prevention, for people, families, and communities impacted by a history of over-incarceration."
Out of the Way
The plan only works in Utopia if all of human nature is changed. Georgia voters living in reality should remember that while talking about ending prisons, Lance Bottoms allowed prisoners to suffer for years in crowded conditions. She handed political control over to activist groups, spent lots of money and accomplished nothing.
Fulton County did not get meaningful relief for overcrowding until Lance Bottoms was out of the way. After current Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens came into office, the Atlanta City Council approved his agreement to allow no more than 700 Fulton County Jail inmates to be temporarily housed at the ACDC for $50 a day per inmate. That rate was good for four years while the county was supposed to arrange a different inmate location or face a rate increase to $150 a day in 2026.
The recent purchase allows the county to avoid that cost increase, and it puts the county in charge of the 17-story ACDC. The agreement provides 1,150 additional county beds and reserves 150 beds for city use. The solution is quicker and cheaper than new construction and instantly solves a problem that caused inmates to suffer.
If Lance Bottoms had been on the Titanic, she would have been the one letting empty lifeboats float away while people drowned. She speaks of compassion for prisoners but allowed prisoners to suffer when an obvious solution to deplorable prison conditions was at her fingertips.
Learn more about Lance Bottoms' deplorable record at bottttomsforgov.com.
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