FULTON COUNTY, Ga. — The Canine Cellmates program has been kicked out of the Fulton County Jail due to a lack of space and overcrowding issues, the program's executive director, Susan Jacobs-Meadows said.
"Eliminating our program even in the short term is a drop in the bucket," she said. “[Overcrowding] is not going away anytime soon… so forevermore, overcrowding in Fulton County Jail can also be used as a reason for us to not come back. He assured me that this program was important to him and that he was going to get us back in there as soon as he can.”
The program helped with rehabilitation and the reduction of recidivism, while training shelter dogs and preparing them for a forever home. It involved 10-week cycles, in which inmate handlers would train with dogs to prepare them for adoption.
Jacobs-Meadows said Sheriff Pat Labat called her last week and told her there was no more room for the dogs at the jail.
"He called me on Thursday evening. We talked. He said, 'Let me think about this overnight.' He called me back Friday morning and said, 'You got to move the dogs out today.' That was a huge deal," she recalled.
The Fulton Sheriff's Office responded to an 11Alive inquiry by referring to a recent Board of Commissioners meeting in which Sheriff Pat Labat talked about overcrowding at the jail.
"Today we have almost 600 people sleeping on the floors and the jail is being held together with duct tape and bubble gum," he said.
Jacobs-Meadows said Sheriff Labat told her that taking her program out of the jail would free up 37 beds.
"Life got better for 37 people, but it doesn’t substantively change the position that they’re in. So it doesn’t really help. We have the potential to help get inmates in our program, maybe through the system faster potentially," she said.
The in-custody program at Fulton County Jail was nearly a decade old.
"The ultimate goal is that each dog graduates and goes into a loving and forever home, and men that have evolved while in the program, and supported upon their release, go on to live productive lives without further incarceration," the Canine Cellmates website states.
A statement noted that the sheriff "has discussed publicly on many occasions, there are many factors contributing to overcrowding including, but not limited to, an increase in violent crimes committed, a COVID backlog in the county’s criminal justice system as a whole and national shortages in law enforcement staffing."
“Not being able to start a new class of Beyond the Bars, which is our outer-custody program, where we literally get men released from incarceration to do this program in lieu of going to prison," Jacobs-Meadows said. "So without being able to run that, we can’t even help on that front. So it’s really a critical situation for us, too.”
This program has helped men, like Roosevelt Micher, get a second chance. He said he is very disappointed with the decision to remove the program from the jail.
"If you just sit in jail and you went in with nothing, you go out with nothing, it’s going to be the same old cycle because it has happened to me," he said. "The same old cycle. You do the same thing, you get the same results. If you do what you’ve always done, you get what you've always gotten. This [program] broke the cycle for me."
Micher was incarcerated at Fulton County Jail in August 2021 and was released in October 2022. Since then, he said he has been able to get two jobs, fix his credit, and was helped through his interviews.
"It offered me the opportunity to get out, find employment, and move on. If you're willing to accept the hand - because we're not just looking for a handout - but what [Susan] offers is a hand-up. I accepted a hand-up training dogs," he said. "I'm indebted and would be appreciative for her for the rest of my life."
On top of this, earlier this year, the nonprofit faced eviction in the building that houses its training. They found a temporary new home but she said it needs a lot of work.
"We didn't even know if we had the ability to build out enough kennels in this space to house those dogs because this is a weird chopped-up space," she said. "I now have to hire more staff because we're stretched too thin. So it's also costing me money, which, you know, we have a very skinny budget."
Jacobs-Meadows said the Fulton County District Attorney's Office is working to find another building for the group do this work. In the meantime, she said Sheriff Labat told her they hope to bring the program back.
“I don’t know how long that could take and can we just continue to hang on? I don’t know… it’s a tough time," she said. "I feel like the universe kind of socked us from both directions at one time."
The sheriff's office and the City of Atlanta announced an agreement last year to house Fulton County Jail inmates at the largely-closed Atlanta City Detention Center. The deal was to involve no more than 700 inmates transferring from Fulton County to the Atlanta facility - but it's not clear if any have yet done so.
The Canine Cellmates program started an out-of-custody version in 2021, in which formerly incarcerated individuals could work with the program for a year and have their records wiped. They graduated their first six individuals from the program in November.