The lawsuit, filed by Jay-Z's lawyer Alex Spiro in the U.S. District Court in Greenville, Mississippi, says "these deaths are a direct result of Mississippi's utter disregard for the people it has incarcerated and their constitutional rights," according to the report. The letter added that the deaths were as a result of years of severe understaffing and neglect at Mississippi’s prisons, NBC said. “As Mississippi has incarcerated increasing numbers of people, it has dramatically reduced its funding of prisons. As a result, prison conditions fail to meet even the most basic human rights,” NBC reported, citing the contents of the letter. The Mississippi Department of Corrections and Spiro’s law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

Source: Dhaka Tribune January 15, 2020 15:00 UTC