The Fulton County Jail in Atlanta unconstitutionally subjects inmates to “inhumane, violent and hazardous conditions” that threaten their safety, a US Justice Department official said Thursday, announcing the results of a 16-month investigation.

The DOJ launched a civil rights investigation into conditions at the Fulton County Jail after several inmates had died in a matter of weeks. One inmate, according to his family, was "eaten alive" by bed bugs.

Georgia officials violated the rights of people in an overcrowded jail plagued by killings and inhumane conditions, a Justice Department report says.

The Justice Department has found that egregious conditions at Georgia’s Fulton County Jail — including pest infestation, malnourishment, a lack of adequate medical care and rampant violence that contributed to multiple deaths — violate the constitutional rights of people in custody.

Jail officials in Georgia’s most populous county are violating the constitutional rights of people in their custody by failing to protect them from violence, using excessive force, and holding them in filthy and unsafe conditions,

The U.S. Department of Justice says dangerous, unsanitary and deadly conditions at the troubled Fulton County jail violate inmates' constitutional rights. Why it matters: Fulton elected officials and Sheriff Pat Labat have quarreled for years over how to fix the overcrowded northwest Atlanta facility.

FULTON COUNTY, Ga. - On Thursday, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan for the Northern District of Georgia will hold a press conference to make a civil rights announcement.

Justice Department finds that Georgia’s Fulton County fails to adequately protect jail inmates from violence

In a blunt report released on Thursday, the department said officials in Fulton County have had “deliberate indifference to the risks of harms.”