Officials at a correctional facility in south central Pennsylvania are accused of retaliating against inmates by cutting power and heat and withholding essential items such as toilet paper to entire cell blocks, according to a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday.
Dauphin County Prison (DCP) has engaged in a month-long “campaign of mass torture” to punish inmates suspected of smoking synthetic marijuana, according to Margo Hu, an attorney with the Abolitionist Law Center (ALC), a legal nonprofit representing the plaintiffs.
DCP is already known for being a “troubled prison facility,” attorneys wrote, citing more than 20 deaths of inmates since 2019 and a high rate of overdoses. However, details alleged in the class-action lawsuit “eclipse even the most atrocious previously reported conditions,” according to the ALC.
Plaintiffs allege correction officers shut off power and heat to dozens of men being held in solitary confinement in November and December 2023.
The punishment was in response to allegations that some people in the prison’s restricted housing units were smoking synthetic marijuana, which was brought into the facility as contraband by prison staff “in violation of the law,” according to the complaint.
But instead of rooting out corruption among prison staff, officials “got angry” and took their anger out on “the incarcerated people for whose well-being they were responsible.”
As part of DCP’s “act of collective punishment,” jail officials confiscated legal paperwork, cut off communication with loved ones, “and deprived people of basic necessities, including toilet paper, showers, and religious texts.”
For weeks, plaintiffs lived in frigid darkness, unable to bathe themselves properly, participate in their own legal defense, or even pray as their consciences demanded.
“What Dauphin County is accustomed to is just not right,” said 27-year-old Kani Little, one of the plaintiffs who alleged he was physically punished when he complained about the conditions. “My goal in speaking out has always been for people to be treated better.”
The lawsuit, filed by Little and two other plaintiffs, seeks monetary relief and demands accountability for DCP’s “unlawful and inhumane acts.”
Dauphin County, the warden, the chief deputy warden and two other jail officials are named as defendants.
With News Wire Services
