A scathing U.S. Department of Justice civil rights investigation confirmed something people incarcerated in Georgia have long known: The state routinely hides the number of people killed inside its prisons.
A federally funded program called Project ORCA optimized the court processing system. As it concludes, some fear problems will return.
From changing policy to helping people get a shot at freedom, we’re proud of the vital work we published in 2024.
The spike in deaths coincides with multiple federal probes into prisons and jails across Georgia.
Policing Alternatives & Diversion Initiative is still waiting on Mayor Andre Dickens to approve the organization’s contract.
Advocates say Atlanta mayor is trying to sabotage the city’s contract with a diversion services provider—and the City Council is letting him.
The report comes after The Appeal and other news outlets spent years reporting on dangerous conditions inside the facility, leading to attacks on teenagers and LGBTQ+ people, malnutrition, and death.
Mayor Andre Dickens’s office initiated a secret bidding process for community responders—that left out the current beloved program.
At 15, Shane Kendall, an autistic child with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and intellectual impairment, allegedly fatally shot his mother. Despite Kendall’s disabilities, prosecutors charged him, as an adult, with murder. Before he turned 19, he died at the Fulton County Jail.
Georgia prosecutors have launched a first-of-its-kind racketeering case against 61 people, ranging from visitors arrested at a music festival to bail fund organizers. The mass-arraignment on November 6 showed just how much of an insane, unconscionable mess the case really is.
Georgia police killed Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán on Jan. 18 as Terán was protesting against Cop City, the massive police training facility under construction in Weelaunee Forest in Atlanta. But, now that prosecutors have mass-charged activists in an unprecedented use of racketeering statutes, those close to the case say the state has sunk to new lows by entering Terán’s personal diary into public evidence against defendants.
A horrific death and the high-profile booking of former President Donald Trump propelled Georgia’s Fulton County Jail into the national spotlight. But heightened scrutiny has done nothing to improve conditions.
Organizers with the movement say the charges are meant to “send the chilling message that any dissent to Cop City will be punished with the full power and violence of the government.”
Organizers say they’ve collected thousands of signatures for a referendum to put Cop City on the November ballot. But local officials seem intent on making sure it doesn’t reach a vote.
At least 42 people have been charged with “domestic terrorism” under the state’s wide-ranging statute. Legal experts are calling it a “sloppy” and unprecedented attack on constitutional rights to free speech and protest.
A wave of bills threatens to channel more people toward incarceration, mete out longer prison terms, and limit prosecutors’ discretion.
Organizers are calling on national support for their continued efforts to halt the construction of a police militarization facility in the Atlanta forest.
Deaths at the Fulton County Jail have quadrupled compared to last year. Despite this, county commissioners are threatening to cut funding to one of the Atlanta area’s main pre-arrest diversion initiatives.
Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat says the county needs more jail beds to fix the jail’s crisis. But a new ACLU report says that significant numbers of people in the jail can be released.
As Fulton County DA Fani Willis’s profile rises, the glossy coverage has largely ignored her crusade to incarcerate teachers accused of cheating on tests.
After the city council passed the ground lease for massive police facility known as “Cop City,” local opposition hasn’t ceased; it’s evolved.
Efforts by elected leaders in several states are making it harder to get to the polls and fomenting misinformation about the election amid a pandemic.
The 17-year-old, who his lawyers say was pushed off a fence by a police officer, survived the fall but suffered serious injuries.
The law, known as SB 402, eliminates the use of signature bonds for a number of felonies, putting poor people who might not be able to afford cash bail at a disadvantage.
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has asked for the budget increase amid ongoing local and national reports of police violence against protesters.
A number of people spent multiple days at the Atlanta City Detention Center for low-level offenses, including for driving while using a cell phone and for walking in the roadway.
Antonio May, a 32 year-old father of three, died in the Fulton County Jail in September after deputies pepper-sprayed and shot him with a Taser.