JACKSON – At the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility, guards have smuggled drugs to inmates, had sex with some of them and denied others medical treatment and basic educational services, according to a lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The law center, the American Civil Liberties Union and Jackson attorney, Rob McDuff, filed the complaint Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Jackson on behalf of 13 plaintiffs.
“These young men live in barbaric conditions,” said Sheila Bedi, the law center”s deputy legal director.
House Juvenile Justice Committee Chairman Earle Banks, D-Jackson, provided a letter the Justice Department sent Gov. Haley Barbour, Attorney General Jim Hood and other state officials last month. In it, Thomas E. Perez, an assistant attorney general, urged the state to cooperate with the investigation, which would determine whether there are systemic constitutional violations at Walnut Grove.
A spokesperson for the agency didn”t immediately return a call from The Associated Press seeking comment about the letter.
A spokeswoman for Hood said she could neither confirm or deny receiving the letter.
The suit, which seeks class action status, names the Walnut Grove Correctional Authority, the GEO Group, Inc., which is contracted to operate the facility; Health Assurance, LLC; Walter Tripp, the facility”s warden; Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps and Mississippi Education Superintendent Tom Burnham.
GEO Group, based in Boca Raton, Fla., and the agency officials declined to comment on the lawsuit Tuesday.
The complaint details allegations of inmates stripped naked and held in isolation weeks at a time; sick inmates denied proper health care and prison guards who were complicit in inmate fights that resulted in stab wounds and severe beatings, including one that left an inmate with permanent brain damage.
The suit also claimed handcuffed youth were kicked and punched by guards, while others secured in their cells were sprayed with chemical restraints.
The facility, which opened in 2001, is located in Leake County and houses some 1,200 inmates aged 13-22. More than half of the inmates are incarcerated for committing nonviolent offenses, the complaint states.
The complaint states that courts often require youth sentenced to the facility to complete their education while incarcerated, but most youth are denied access to basic education.
The suit said understaffing at the prison is one of the main problems, and cited reports from the Joint Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review and the MDOC Corrections Auditor that have also raised concerns about the issue.
Taxpayers pay the Walnut Grove Correctional Authority $14 million each year to operate the prison, according to the complaint. The suit alleges that in many parts of the prison only one guard is assigned to a zone, which could hold as many as 60 inmates.
“It has a strong financial incentive to imprison as many youth as possible on the cheap,” Bedi said.
Bedi and Banks were joined at a news conference Tuesday in Jackson by about a dozen members of a recently-formed group who say they are relatives of inmates at the facility.
Michael McIntosh said his son, Michael Jr., was beaten so badly earlier this year he sustained brain damage from which he”ll never recover.
McIntosh, of Hazlehurst, wouldn”t disclose the crime that led to his 21-year-old son”s incarceration.
“After my son was attacked, no one would tell me where he was or what happened for two weeks,” McIntosh said
McIntosh said he was finally able to visit his son in a hospital about a month after the attack, but “he was so severely beaten, he couldn”t see me.”
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