With the backing of JAY-Z and Yo Gotti, the social justice department of Roc Nation has filed another lawsuit against the Mississippi Department of Corrections. It marks the second suit they’ve filed this year.
Team Roc — the philanthropic arm of Roc Nation — wants the “barbaric” conditions at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman addressed immediately on behalf of 152 inmates currently housed there. Eighteen inmates have died throughout the Mississippi correctional system, with the majority of those deaths taking place at Parchman.
According to a Team Roc press release, inmates alleged “the food is adulterated with rat feces, cockroaches, rocks, bird droppings, and other foreign matter” and many inmates are “in dire need of medical care for cancer, lupus, serious heart defects.”
Parchman’s conditions reportedly also lack clean water, acceptable food, electricity, heat, clothing, healthcare and other basic needs, leading to internal riots. At least nine inmate deaths from suicides, homicides and other incidents have been categorized as “natural deaths.”
“The toilets routinely back up and flood the prison cells, which allows fecal matter, urine and water to cover the floors and drain out into the housing unit’s common space…the portable water system at Parchman is contaminated with human feces, presumably from the sewer system,” the suit reads. “Prisoner-on-prisoner violence is rampant, and, at times, is facilitated by corrupt guards seeking to curry favor with inmates.”
Team Roc and attorney Alex Spiro filed the first suit against the Mississippi DOC last month, claiming the recent inmate deaths are “a direct result of Mississippi’s utter disregard for the people it has incarcerated and their constitutional rights.”
DOC Commissioner Pelicia Hall and Mississippi State Penitentiary Superintendent Marshall Turner are named as defendants. However, the Mississippi DOC said the outbreak of violence is due to gang activity — not poor conditions.