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.
Showing 38 Results
Children held at the Henley-Young Juvenile Justice Center in Jackson, Miss., were denied mental health services and subjected to verbal abuse and threats of physical harm by staff members. The Southern Poverty Law Center and Disability Rights Mississippi filed a class action lawsuit in June 2011 after numerous attempts to resolve the issues with county officials failed. A settlement agreement to protect youth at the facility was approved in March 2012.
A minor at the Sumter Correctional Institution in Florida was brutally beaten and raped as part of a prison initiation ritual that was ignored by a guard. The SPLC and its co-counsel filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the youth to end the culture of brutality at the prison, which houses...
After the federal government failed to release records under the Freedom of Information Act that would shed light on controversial – and potentially unconstitutional – immigration raids in 2016 that took more than 100 women and children from their homes and placed them in a Texas detention...
Louisiana officials denied poor people their constitutional right to counsel by failing to establish an effective statewide public defense system. The SPLC and its allies filed suit in state court fix the broken system.
In 2016, a funding crisis forced as many as 33 out of 42 public...
In 2018, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a federal lawsuit highlighting widespread violations of detained noncitizens’ rightful access to counsel in multiple civil immigration prisons in the Southeast. The...
The SPLC filed a petition seeking the “immediate and unconditional release ” of a 15-year-old boy who was illegally held in a Louisiana juvenile prison without a court hearing required under state law.
A Madison Parish judge committed the child to the secure custody of the Office of...
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...
The city of New Orleans operates a sophisticated video surveillance system throughout town. While city employees frequently provide police and prosecutors with video footage to aid criminal cases, the city will not even provide a simple map of the camera locations to aid attorneys representing...
The SPLC and its allies filed a federal class action lawsuit challenging Florida’s use of solitary confinement as cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act.
The lawsuit...
