Georgia Senate Subcommittee concludes hearings on Fulton County Jail

ATLANTA - The Georgia Senate Subcommittee on the Fulton County Jail held its final public hearing Friday and will now begin compiling a list of recommendations following months of testimony.

Senate Public Safety Committee Chairman John Albers formed the subcommittee to investigate issues at the jail after 10 inmates died in.

"Through these meetings, we've found different ways that there are breakdowns in the process, but we've also seen some great improvements," Sen. Albers told FOX 5's Deidra Dukes.

Those improvements include reducing the number of inmates currently housed at the Rice Street facility.

"There are less than 2,600-plus people in the prison when it was over 3,700 when we started this process," Albers explained. "Less folks in the jail itself is a huge improvement."

It gives the sheriff's office the opportunity to make necessary renovations to aging parts of the jail, as state and local leaders explore long-term solutions.

"The sheriff is just housing people," state Sen. Sonya Halpern told reporters. "He has no control over how quickly they move out of his facility and through the rest of the system, and that coordination is something I know we are going to be focused on."

Subcommittee Chair Sen. Randy Robertson said addressing dysfunction among agencies that slow down the criminal justice process and funding a new jail will be among his list of recommendations when the committee releases its report this summer.

"That will be one of my recommendations," said Robertson, "based on the numbers that I saw that building a new county jail is a third less expensive than maintaining the current county jail at Rice Street."

The committee will release its final report this summer.