The Fulton County Jail, processed it’s highest profile prisoner to date as former president Donald Trump surrendered to jail officials on Thursday, charged with crimes ranging from racketeering to conspiracy in relation to his effort to overturn the 2020 election.
The facility, better known as Rice Street to locals, is literally a hotbed of controversy surrounding allegedly inhumane conditions of incarceration and gross negligence for the hundreds of detainees waiting behind bars in the overcrowded outdated facility for their day in court.
But Trump who spent less than an hour at Rice Street, pre-posted the $20,000 cash payment, or 10 percent of his $200,000 bond did not get the full Rice Street experience, which has been described by inmates, visitors and penal experts as “horrific, inhumane and degrading.”
Seven people have died in the jail this year, including one male inmate who died covered in bed bug bites. People die in squalor regularly on Rice Street — four in the past six weeks — who were denied medical attention or whose calls for help were ignored by jail staff, until it was too late.
State and county officials have contemplated abandoning the current facility because of the dismal conditions and either moving inmates to other facilities and/or building a state-of-the-art detention center.
“I saw what most Fulton County citizens have never seen, and if they did, they would be horrified,” said Fulton County Commissioner Khadijah Abdur-Rahman following her first tour of the jail. “There are inmates sleeping on the floor because of overcrowding, and the living conditions are worse than what we see in third-world countries or war zones.”
Visitors to the jail say they have witnessed a makeshift communication system — made with string and bottles — that officers use to pass critical messages to each other from one floor to the next through a shoot. There is also a need for updated, working cameras which…
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