JACKSON, Miss. – Inmates in a Mississippi prison are isolated for long periods in “barbaric” conditions, sometimes in filthy cells with rats and broken toilets, and they are denied access to medical and mental health care, a federal lawsuit filed Thursday said.
The class-action suit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of prisoners at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility near Meridian. It names the Mississippi Department of Corrections and agency officials as defendants.
Tara Booth, an agency spokeswoman, said the department had not been served with the complaint and would respond to the allegations in court.
The lawsuit said rats climb over prisoners’ beds and mice crawl out of broken toilets.
“The extreme deprivations and extraordinarily harsh conditions at EMCF have even fostered commerce in rats: Some prisoners capture rats, put them on improvised leashes, and sell them as pets to the seriously mentally ill,” the lawsuit said.