Justice Department investigators found squalid living conditions, unchecked violence, and illegal mistreatment of minors and mentally ill inmates.

The Fulton County Jail in Atlanta, where a mentally ill man infested with lice died in 2022 from neglect, systematically violates the constitutional rights of the people it incarcerates, the U.S. Justice Department said on Thursday.

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,