Five men formerly held at Lanesboro Correction Institution in Anson County, NC have filed a federal lawsuit alleging that officers repeatedly helped gang-affiliated inmates get weapons and wage attacks. Plaintiffs in the case allege that they were violently assaulted by fellow prisoners wielding contraband weapons, and that corrections staff were aware of these attacks and refused to intervene or move the plaintiffs to safer quarters. The Lanesboro Complaint is available here.
“This case is about protecting the human rights and dignity of people who were held in Lanesboro Correctional Institution. Our U.S. Supreme Court has held that a person’s punishment for committing a crime is imprisonment, not exposure to maltreatment and unsafe conditions,” said Daryl Atkinson, Senior Staff Attorney at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, which filed the complaint in partnership with the NC Central School of Law and the law firm of Tin Fulton Waker & Owen, PLLC.
“The Supreme Court has made clear that prison officials have a duty under the Eighth Amendment to protect the people in their custody from violence at the hands of those who might do them harm,” said Ian Mance, an attorney at the Southern Coalition. “The plaintiffs in this complaint were stabbed in their heads and throats by people armed with deadly weapons, some of whom, we allege, carried out the attacks while in areas of the prison where they had no business being,” said Mance.
“This lawsuit raises important concerns about how the administration at Lanesboro has jeopardized the safety of the people in its custody, its own employees, as well as members of the community at large,” said Scott Holmes, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys and Director of the Civil Litigation Clinic at the NC Central School of Law.
Media coverage is available below.
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Southern Coalition for Social Justice
Partnering with communities of color and economically disadvantaged communities in the south to defend and advance their political, social and economic rights through the combination of legal advocacy, research, organizing and communications.