A federal judge ruled in an SPLC case today that the Mississippi Department of Corrections is violating the Eighth Amendment rights of prisoners at Walnut Grove Correctional Facility by failing to protect them from violence by “gangs run amok.”
State employees at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as “Angola,” routinely and systemically failed to properly assess, diagnose and treat the medical problems of people who are incarcerated at the largest prison in the state, which for years has had the world’s highest rate of...
Florida prosecutes more children in the adult criminal justice system than any other state – 10,000 over the last five years. The head of the SPLC’s Florida office explains why reform is needed.
An SPLC lawyer in Mississippi recounts her experience helping two prisoners whose draconian sentences for nonviolent offenses illustrate the injustices of the U.S. prison system, the world’s largest.
The SPLC submitted hundreds of pages of expert reports to a federal court as part of a motion to certify a lawsuit against the East Mississippi Correctional Facility as a class action. The reports expose shocking human rights violations at the for-profit prison for the mentally ill, including conditions described as “torture” by a forensic psychiatrist.
Almost two weeks after Michael Brown died in the street after being shot by a police officer a half-dozen times, this nation hasn’t taken the steps necessary to understand the root causes of the rage in Ferguson. And, as a nation, we must understand it.
The Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) systemically puts the health and lives of prisoners at risk by ignoring their medical and mental health needs and discriminating against prisoners with disabilities – violations of federal law by a prison system that has one of the highest mortality rates in the country. The SPLC and the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program (ADAP) filed suit to end the deplorable conditions in Alabama prisons.
An investigation by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program (ADAP) has found that for many people incarcerated in Alabama’s state prisons, a sentence is more than a loss of freedom. Prisoners, including those with disabilities and serious physical and mental illnesses, are condemned to penitentiaries where systemic indifference, discrimination and dangerous – even life-threatening – conditions are the norm.
Prisoners at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility in
When Alabama legislators revised the state’s anti-immigrant law in 2012, they passed a law requiring the state to maintain an online list of immigrants who are detained by law enforcement, who appear in court for any violation of state law, and who unable to prove they are not “unlawfully present aliens.” It provided no means for people to be removed from this “black list” if the listing is an error or if their immigration status changes. The Southern Poverty Law Center and its allies filed a federal lawsuit to stop this state-sanctioned “blacklisting” of immigrants, which could encourage harassment and violence.
