A 64-year-old patient with untreated diabetes reported losing his vision and has not, as far as Eber knows, received an ophthalmological evaluation or referral to a retinal specialist. According to reports filed by the plaintiffs and expert witnesses involved in the case, a 25-year-old inmate was not granted timely access to a urologist following an abnormal ultrasound that showed a testicular mass, which later swelled to the size of a softball and metastasized to his abdomen. District Court on behalf of the 1,170 prisoners there. He details other cases at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility, all part of a class action lawsuit filed in May 2013 in a U.S. There's no justification, Eber says, for intentional abandonment so that medical symptoms or pre-existing conditions go untreated or receive only rudimentary attention. The investigators assert that prison inmates should be guaranteed proper medical and mental health care and basic human decency. Constitution, domestic law, and international human rights principles. The project investigates the nation's prisons and jails and advocates for compliance with the U.S. He tells people to ask themselves this: What kind of person do you want leaving prison?Ĭell visits in isolation units don't have to be so cruel, says Eber, SPH '02, a senior staff counsel with the ACLU's National Prison Project. A small cadre of prison medical staff, yards away, looks on. A sliver of pink phlegm shoots from his mouth. Out of the cell now, the man coughs and shows signs of wheezing. On the floor lie 'fishing lines,' a rudimentary mechanism for prisoners to pass messages or contraband-matches, a razor, a piece of glass-back and forth. Eber conjectures the blood might be a symptom of forceful or long-term coughing. Some cut themselves.Įventually the door opens, revealing a tall, thin 40-year-old African-American man, hunched over with one hand on a wall splattered with blood. Some inmates flood their cells by cramming whatever they can into a toilet, or use damaged electrical sockets to set fire to their mattresses. Inmates often leave the slots open as a cry for help to receive medical attention, food, or a shower, and such defiant acts are common. Corrections officers routinely spray through a cell door's tray slot if the inmate refuses to close it. The man inside, Eber says, suffers from asthma, which has likely worsened due to pepper spray in the air. One hears garbled shouts from other unit inmates, intermixed with a rhythmic, buzzing cacophony of machinery. (One such unit is known to inmates as the 'dead zone' or 'dead man's zone.') The officers are here for an unknown reason, perhaps to respond to a medical emergency, but if so, Eber says, they are already too late.

Two corrections officers stand outside a cell in one of the EMCF's isolation units. He clicks open a file to show footage shot by the private corporation that now manages the prison. 'I can show you a video of what I'm talking about, and I have some pictures,' says Eber, dressed in a loose-fitting dark suit as he sits in his cramped Washington office at the American Civil Liberties Union. But words alone, Eber says, can't bring home the facility's gruesome conditions.

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