Atlanta City Jail Losing Money
A new corrections audit raises questions whether Atlanta GA should continue to operate a city jail, according to an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The report released Friday found that the city jail was over budget six of the last seven years —- despite two revenue-generating contracts to house prisoners for Fulton County and two federal agencies. For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2008, the department was about $4 million over budget, the audit found. Both deals, the audit found, actually cost Atlanta way more money than they generate. Atlanta houses inmates for Fulton County, the U.S. Marshals Service and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office at a rate of $68 per day —- a loss of about $20 a day, the auditors found.
Leslie Ward, Atlanta’s internal auditor, said the city relies far too much on overtime because of chronic absenteeism among jailers. She also found that some space inside the jail isn’t properly used. “I’m starting to wonder why we are in the jail business,” Ward said … About 1,044 inmates are housed in the Atlanta jail every day, two-thirds of them federal or Fulton County inmates, the audit found. “We need a holding cell, not a full-blown jail,” Councilman H. Lamar Willis said.
However,
Corrections Sgt. Ellis Williams, a leader of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees unit that represents corrections officials, criticized the audit, saying it was “willfully, deliberately and intentionally done” to encourage city leaders to close the jail.