The
Boston Globe reports today on a federal lawsuit filed on behalf of mentally ill inmates housed in solitary confinement for as long as 23 hours a day. The lawsuit alleges that prison officials are not respecting inmates' Eighth Amendment rights, which prevent the government from imposing "cruel and unusual punishment."
Though the lawsuit describes similar conditions to those in the Maine prison system, on which the
Portland Phoenix has been reporting for more than a year, the suit is filed against the Massachusetts Department of Corrections. (The lawsuit is attached in PDF format. It is in two parts:
complaint.pdf (133.62 KB) and
complaintattachment.pdf (208.72 KB).)
We have sent copies of the article to legal activists, prison officials, and others around Maine, in hopes of jarring loose some of the stone walls that have been erected to humane treatment of prisoners, and to our reporting on the real conditions faced by Maine inmates.
Here are links to the stories on prison conditions by Portland Phoenix contributing writer