FILE PHOTO: A jail cell at the Chatham County Detention Center is pictured in Savannah, Georgia, U.S., February 21, 2019.REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
Lawmaker David Wilkerson said he and his colleagues intend to craft legislation requiring the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to examine every jail death across the state. Right now, the GBI only gets involved when asked by local sheriffs. He and fellow Democrats Sandra Scott and Kim Schofield heard from witnesses including Craig Owens, the newly elected sheriff of Cobb County. One Reuters report examined the case of Chinedu Efoagui, who died at the Cobb County Adult Detention Center in 2017 of a treatable medical condition after spending 512 days behind bars.
Georgia ranks among 17 state governments with no mechanism for oversight of local jails, according to research by Reuters and Michele Deitch, a corrections specialist at the University of Texas.James Woodall, the Georgia head of the NAACP, told the legislators the state should divert more mentally ill people from incarceration. “Jails are not a hospital nor a mental health institution,” he said. “We need to be investing in mental health resources.
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