By Alba Rosa
The Macon Telegraph
MACON, Ga. — Dozens of assaults have happened among people held at the Bibb County Jail each of the last few years, according to data provided to The Telegraph.
The county’s detention facility saw more than 80 assaults in 2023 and 2024, and reported 79 through the beginning of October this year, according to data from the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office. The number of these incidents has risen sharply in recent years: the jail reported just 16 aggravated assault incidents in 2020 and another 16 in 2021. The number jumped to 46 in 2022.
Conditions at the Bibb County Jail became a city-wide concern after local leaders such as Macon NAACP President Gwenette Westbrooks and District 3 Commissioner Stanley Stewart raised alarm about sanitary issues, and habitability for people inside the facility. A Bibb County grand jury toured the facility and released a report detailing sanitary issues, broken plumbing, poor lighting and other uninhabitable conditions earlier this year.
After several media reports regarding concerning conditions, Democratic Georgia Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock urged U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi to investigate the conditions of the Bibb County Jail on July 24.
The concern regarding the likelihood of violence at the jail was also raised, especially after a jail fight in June that injured several and killed Breele Jaheim Johnson, a 22-year-old detainee.
But Bibb County officials have pushed forward with several measures to try to fix the problems, including making upgrades to the jail and looking to release more detainees who are waiting for long court cases to proceed, if they are eligible. What has caused the rise in violence?
People in their teens and 20s at the Bibb County Jail account for most of the aggravated assaults in the facility, Maj. Brad Wolfe told The Telegraph.
Those incarcerated at the jail in their 30s and older are “not as likely to be involved in stuff like that,” he said.
Though Wolfe doesn’t know how most fights start, he believes conflict brought in from outside the jail causes issues.
Wolfe alleges the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office has made efforts to reduce the amount of violence, and even though these incidents are “a very big concern ... they’re not as common as they were, say, a few months ago.” Upgrades to jail coming soon
Overpopulation was among the biggest concerns about jail safety raised by public officials and advocates earlier this year. Sheriff David Davis and Mayor Lester Miller first addressed overpopulation in the Bibb County Jail by releasing eligible detainees on ankle monitors.
Another big issue was broken jail cell locks, which compromised security. By the summer, Maj. Brad Wolfe told The Telegraph that the locks were fixed.
The broken locks used to allow incarcerated people to walk freely through a cellblock, but now the Bibb County Jail has less “inmate movement,” according to Wolfe.
The fixes have been effective, and Wolfe said officials don’t believe there’s need to make more changes.
“Before, with the broken cells that we had, all the inmates couldn’t be secured in their cells all the time, so they had a lot of free time and free movement,” Wolfe said. “Now, we’ve gotten those cells fixed, and they’re secured in their cells more ... so they’re not moving around as freely, and they can’t get to each other as easily as they did before.”
The Bibb County Sheriff’s Office has not responded to questions regarding further upgrades that have taken place at the jail. How much will jail expansion cost?
Davis and Miller also hired the Jericho Design Group, an architectural firm in Atlanta that specializes in institutional facilities, to provide upgrades to the jail.
Clay Murphey, the Special Local Option Sales Tax manager for Macon, said the project will add about 150 beds to the jail, improve the infirmary, create more space for maximum-security inmates and add more security control space.
Detainees with mental health concerns will be given 24 cells that are designed specifically for them as part of the upgrades.
The expansion would cost between $28 and $31 million to construct, and will take 14 to 16 months.
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