<p>At the Fulton County Jail, inmates climb down bed sheets to escape, sleep on the damp floors and fight with guards.</p><p>Deputies recently allowed the filming of a music video in a maximum security wing, the sheriff faces a criminal investigation and she is handing the jail over to the federal government.</p><p>It's overcrowded, understaffed, moldy and broken. Some say it may be the worst of its size in the country.</p><p>"This is as bad as it gets," said Stephen Bright, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights. "There are cells with toilets that don't work, there are people who are sleeping on floors of the jail _ floors that flood for various reasons."</p><p>A federal judge is expected to appoint someone Thursday to take control of the jail away from Fulton County Sheriff Jackie Barrett, the first black woman elected sheriff in the nation in 1992.</p><p>Then officials will find out whether the jail can be fixed, despite its housing of about 2,900 inmates when it was originally designed for 1,400.</p><p>"It's gross mismanagement. There's something new every week," said Fulton County Commission Chairwoman Karen Handel. She also said Barrett should be able to handle the jail because she's given an $80.5 million budget, and the county spends $55 a day per inmate.</p><p>A lawsuit alleges conditions at the jail amount to "cruel and unusual punishment."</p><p>Problems at the jail have been growing for years, but they drew more attention when an inmate escaped while rapper Clifford Harris, known as T.I., was allowed to use a maximum security cell, guards and inmates as props for a music video. The escape was not related to the video, which Barrett said she did not approve.</p><p>"In the rap video taping at the jail, she has said she did not know anything about it. That says she does not have direct supervision," said Harry Ross, a pollster and political strategist who is trying to pressure Barrett to resign. "The morale is very very low, and people are basically making decisions without her knowledge."</p><p>Barrett fired a jail supervisor and suspended three others for their roles in the video shoot.</p><p>There have been many other incidents at the jail in recent years, from a near-riot over an Atlanta Falcons football game to the attempted escape of a man who convicted of the shooting death of a sheriff's deputy.</p><p>The football incident happened last August at a detention center next to the main jail when the deputies tried to turn off a game against the Dallas Cowboys before it was over. More than 100 inmates were involved, some of whom started small fires and only returned to their cells after about 150 officers rounded them up.</p><p>In March 2003, Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin and two other inmates broke the locks in their maximum security cells, cut a screen and tried to break a window so they could lower themselves out of the jail with a rope made of sheets. Al-Amin, known as H. Rap Brown when he was a black militant leader in the 1960s, was apprehended and sent to a state prison.</p><p>Another time, two inmates crawled through a ventilation shaft, slipped out a seventh-floor window and climbed down bed sheets to freedom in June 2003.</p><p>Barrett herself may face charges for investing $7.2 million in public money and taking campaign contributions from businessmen who stood to benefit from those investments.</p><p>Gov. Sonny Perdue has appointed a panel to examine whether he should suspend Barrett, who has said she will not seek re-election this year.</p><p>But Barrett's attorney, Ted Lackland, said the problems at the jail are caused by inadequate funding, too few deputies, political feuds and a clogged judicial system that creates overcrowding.</p><p>"It's a systemic problem in the criminal justice system. Each participant in that system is partially responsible," Lackland said. "What we're trying to do is move the conversation off a personality dispute and into a problem-solving perspective."</p><p>Barrett did not return a phone call through her spokesman Wednesday seeking an interview.</p><p>The Georgia Sheriffs' Association requested the governor's probe into Barrett, but the group said she may not be entirely to blame.</p><p>"You can do everything right and still have major problems," said Terry Norris, executive vice president for the association. "Operating jails is very complex."</p>
