The Justice Department has launched a federal civil rights investigation into Georgia's Fulton County Jail — a facility described by the sheriff's office as "dilapidated and rapidly eroding" and where one inmate died covered in insects and filth.
Investigators have received "credible allegations" that inmates of the jail, one of Georgia's largest, are housed in a facility considered "structurally unsafe," that correctional officers are using excessive force and that violence is widespread, resulting in serious injuries and even murders, according to the DOJ.
