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.”

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.

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.