Since last December, she's had a half-dozen prisoners escape from the county jail -- not counting those, such as convicted cop-killer Jamal Al-Amin, who almost escaped, but not quite.

Her reputation was further tarnished when her chief jailer testified in court that most of the locks didn't work in the "high-security" cellblock and that inmates wandered about at will. Barrett immediately fired the jailer not for running a slack operation, but -- to judge by her press statements at the time -- for publicly implying that the jail was not safe and secure.

The latest outrage came when deputies turned loose an accused rapist because they confused him with another prisoner. (That was the second time this year they mistakenly released an inmate.) Barrett acknowledged that the man had been recaptured within yards of an earlier, alleged victim he seemed to be stalking. But, hey, no harm, no foul was the attitude.

Now it turns out that assessment may have been premature, as another woman has charged that she was held captive and raped by the AWOL inmate the day after Barrett's folks handed him his get-out-of-jail-free card.

An appropriate response by the sheriff's office might be to express regret to the victim of a terrible ordeal that could easily have been prevented. Instead, Barrett has implied that the alleged rape victim could be making it up. "We want to make sure there were no false allegations," she told the AJC last week.

Last we checked, investigating crimes is the job of police. A sheriff's primary responsibility is to run the jail, and it's evident from the past year that Barrett had been letting things slide for a while down at the big house.

She complains that a Fulton County probe into her management of the $78 million sheriff's budget is politically motivated despite its 6-1 commission approval. Our advice is that Barrett should spend less time worrying about who's out to discredit her, and more effort on denying her critics any further ammunition.

The Weekly Scalawag is now accepting nominations. E-mail scott.henry@ creativeloafing.com.