WASHINGTON (Reuters) -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,

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

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

FULTON COUNTY, Ga. - The United States Department of Justice has issued its report after opening a civil investigation into the conditions at the Fulton County Jail. They announced the disturbing results of that investigation at a press conference early Thursday afternoon.

The deaths of at least four Georgia men with mental disabilities at the Fulton County Jail are "symptomatic of a pattern of dangerous and dehumanizing conditions," the U.S. Department of Justice said.

At that time, at least seven people had died inside the jail since the DOJ started its investigation. “Today’s Justice Department report confirms that abuse at the Fulton County Jail has been not just horrific,