PR03-036

Date:

December 11, 2003

 
Inmate Release Delays Expected During Countywide Computer Shutdown, Scheduled For Sunday
 

The Fulton County IT Office has announced a county-wide system shutdown of the computer network on Sunday, December 14, 2003. Technicians will gradually shut down computers throughout the morning with a complete shutdown expect by 11:00 a.m. All computers are expected to be back on-line and fully operational by Sunday evening. The shutdown is necessary in order to complete upgrades and modifications to the county’s mainframe computer system.

While the county’s computer network is off-line, the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office will be unable to satisfy legally required searches of active warrants in the criminal justice databases, necessary to verify eligibility for inmate releases at the jail.

As part of the inmate release process, all inmates are checked for outstanding warrants before leaving the jail. The Sheriff’s Office relies solely upon computer verification of these warrants to ensure that inmates are not wanted by other jurisdictions.

Although release delays are inevitable, the Sheriff’s Office does not expect a huge backlog of prisoners pending release because of the outage, and those inmates awaiting release will be processed out as soon as the computer systems are restored. The jail has developed a recall system to notify families of inmates when their releases have been processed.

For more information, please contact Lieutenant Clarence Huber at (404) 730-4148. Lieutenant Huber can also be reached on his digital pager at (404) 742-6798.