Rappers Yo Gotti and Jay-Z filed a second lawsuit this week against the Mississippi Department of Corrections targeting the state’s notorious Parchman prison, where at least nine inmates have died since the beginning of the year.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of more than 150 inmates housed in the prison, formally known as the Mississippi State Penitentiary in a report by CNN.
The lawsuit alleges that there are tons of “barbaric” conditions within the facility, including food contaminated with rat faeces and cockroaches, flooded cells and lack of medical care.
It further states that the prison suffers from understaffing issues which result in improper inmate care, neglect and rampant inmate-on-inmate violence. At least three people have died behind facility bars as a result of violent outbreaks.
The inmates cite problems such as flooded cells, missing light fixtures, collapsing ceilings, black mold, broken sewer systems and water systems contaminated with human feces, and cold, dark cells that in the summer jump to stifling hot temperatures.
In a further attempt to explicate the treatment of the inmates, the suit says:
Inmates insert their own catheters, treat their own stab wounds, vomit up blood, teeter on the verge of diabetic comas, and suffer through seizures without medical care. Even a broken neck can go without treatment at Parchman, with the inmate being left to suffer through his injury while sleeping on exposed, steel bedsprings with no mattress.
In a news release, Team Roc, the philanthropic arm of Jay-Z’s entertainment company Roc Nation called for the Mississippi Department of Corrections to address the health and safety risks within 90 days.
The announcement came alongside a distressing video released by the organization, which details the conditions inside the prison and includes testimony from the relatives of inmates who died inside.
Just last month the two rappers helped more than two dozen inmates file another class-action lawsuit against the prison that attributed inmate deaths to a “culmination of years of severe understaffing and neglect.”
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