Jay-Z, Yo Gotti-backed lawsuit causes health care company to ditch Mississippi prison system
It was a Tidal wave of momentum.
The health care provider for Mississippi’s state prison system is terminating its contract with the corrections facilities, the Mississippi Clarion Ledger reported.
The company, Centurion, and the Mississippi Department of Corrections are facing a class-action lawsuit from more than 200 incarcerated people. Jay-Z’s company Roc Nation, along with rapper Yo Gotti, hired lawyers for 227 inmates after more than a dozen prisoners died in Mississippi earlier this year.
Centurion’s multimillion dollar contract with the MDOC will officially end on Oct. 5, according to local CBS affiliate WJTV. Centurion sent a termination notice on July 7. The MDOC paid Centurion $52 million in 2019 alone.
But according to incarcerated people, that money didn’t go very far. The class-action lawsuit says that at Mississippi’s infamous Parchman facility the conditions were “not suitable for animals.”
“There is no excuse for the 53 deaths across the Mississippi prison system over the past several months, many of which were preventable,” lead attorney Marcy Croft said in a statement. “We will not stop until the incarcerated receive consistent and competent medical care.”
Centurion said that it was ending the contract because the MDOC did not provide enough people or money to adequately care for prisoners. The company provides health care at prisons in 16 other states as well.
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