BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department asked Monday to join a class-action lawsuit that accuses Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman of overseeing a jail that routinely subjects prisoners to brutal, inhumane conditions.
“The Orleans Parish Prison is a violent and dangerous institution,” the federal agency said in a request filed in New Orleans federal court, seeking to be included as a plaintiff in the lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center. It contends that the jail’s conditions violate the U.S. Constitution.
Federal officials have been investigating the Orleans Parish Prison since February 2008, chronicling what they say are repeated instances of jail officials refusing to correct conditions that leave prisoners vulnerable to attacks and rape from other prisoners and their guards.
Gusman is accused of running a prison that doesn’t provide proper medical and mental health care, fails to protect prisoners from physical and sexual violence, ignores requests for help, offers inadequate monitoring and treatment of suicidal prisoners, and houses inmates in unsafe and unsanitary facilities.
The Orleans Parish sheriff is “engaging in a pattern or practice of violating the constitutional rights of prisoners” at the prison that houses about 2,500 inmates and has shown “deliberate indifference” to complaints, the Justice Department says in its legal request.
Gusman’s office didn’t immediately respond to calls for comment Monday.
The sheriff has previously said his office was improving its deputy training and inmate conditions to respond to complaints. Gusman’s also accused the Justice Department of making “sensationalized comments” to try to pressure his office to reach a consent decree.
Monday’s court filing says a settlement has been reached to make improvements to prison operations and the settlement will be submitted to the federal judge if the Justice Department is approved to intervene in the case.
“We are hopeful that we can reach a negotiated resolution of this case in the near future and put in place a comprehensive blueprint for sustainable reform,” Thomas Perez, an assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement.
Any settlement will require improvements in staff training and supervision, mental health and medical care, suicide prevention efforts and the physical plant, the department said.
The federal agency issued scathing assessments of conditions it found in the prison, in letters to Gusman in both September 2009 and April after the class action lawsuit was filed. But the Justice Department said Gusman hasn’t corrected the problems.
“Today’s development further confirms the gross neglect, sadistic rapes and brutal beatings that have become so commonplace at Orleans Parish Prison. We hope the sheriff will stand up and finally address the abusive and inhumane conditions that have plagued the jail for far too long,” Katie Schwartzmann, a lawyer for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said in a statement.
