Pa. jail officials accused of cutting heat, withholding toilet paper from inmates
NY Daily News, 12/17/24: “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 monthlong ‘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.'”