Georgia advocates sue Fulton County over women's jail confinement, citing exclusion from competency restoration and long hospital waits
The Georgia Advocacy Office, the state's protection and advocacy agency, and two women detained at the South Fulton Municipal Regional Jail filed suit on April 10, 2019, in the Northern District of Georgia. Most of the complaint concerns conditions: women with serious mental illness were held in specialized housing pods for roughly 23 hours a day. The two named plaintiffs, 20 and 26 years old, had been arrested on low-level trespassing-type charges.
The competency system figures in two ways. The complaint says there is a long waiting list for state hospital competency restoration, with typical waits of three to six months and some people waiting longer than a year, and that about 15 women were then waiting. It also says Fulton County has run a 16-bed jail-based competency restoration program since 2011 that serves men only, and it alleges that excluding women on the basis of sex is unlawful.
Because the case is mainly about confinement conditions, the competency material is one strand of a broader jail-conditions suit.
Source: Georgia Advocacy Office; M.J.; K.H. v. Theodore Jackson, et al. (Class Action Complaint, N.D. Ga., No. 1:19-CV-01634) — U.S. District Court, N.D. Ga. (complaint as hosted by Courthouse News Service), by Georgia Advocacy Office and Southern Center for Human Rights (plaintiffs' counsel)
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