Denial of food and medical care. Cells and floors soiled with blood, urine, and feces. Excessive force by prison guards. Weeks, months, and years in solitary confinement.
These are the conditions found at a “special needs” for-profit prison, the East Mississippi Correctional Facility, which is tasked by the state’s department of corrections with incarcerating 1,200 people, approximately 1,000 of whom have severe psychiatric disorders, according to a legal motion filed Friday.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, American Civil Liberties Union, Law Office of Elizabeth Alexander, and Covington & Burling LLP filed the motion in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, asking the federal court to approve a 2013 complaint as a class-action suit against the state officials in charge of the East Mississippi Correctional Facility (EMCF). They say they hope this move will help protect all of the people who are subject to the facility’s “inhumane” and “torturous” conditions.
Formerly run by private prison company GEO Group, the EMCF is now operated by the Utah-based Management and Training Corporation, with its health services provided by the Mississippi-based Health Assurance, LLC. Both companies won lucrative contracts with the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
The documents filed Friday—including a motion, brief, and numerous expert opinions—detail grisly abuses within the prison’s walls.
A man in his twenties went blind in one eye after being denied his glaucoma medication. Because he was already blind in his other eye, the denial of medicine left him completely without vision.
A 31-year-old man suffering from a brain tumor was denied a CT scan and neurosurgeon referral.
The facility is plagued by numerous suicide attempts, some of them successful.
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