The Fulton County Jail in Atlanta unconstitutionally subjects inmates to “inhumane, violent and hazardous conditions” that threaten their safety, a US Justice Department official said Thursday, announcing the results of a 16-month investigation.

Georgia officials violated the rights of people in an overcrowded jail plagued by killings and inhumane conditions, a Justice Department report says.

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 found that Fulton County Jail in Georgia violates constitutional laws, with conditions leading to violence, neglect, and deaths.

U.S. Justice Department officials said jail officials in Georgia’s most populous county violate 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.

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.

The U.S. Department of Justice says dangerous, unsanitary and deadly conditions at the troubled Fulton County jail violate inmates' constitutional rights. Why it matters: Fulton elected officials and Sheriff Pat Labat have quarreled for years over how to fix the overcrowded northwest Atlanta facility.

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

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,"

Justice Department finds that Georgia’s Fulton County fails to adequately protect jail inmates from violence