Rapper Meek Mill isn’t the only rap artist working with Jay-Z to help the prison population.
According to TMZ, Yo Gotti has sent a letter to Mississippi’s Gov. Phil Bryant and said if he doesn’t improve the state’s prison conditions, he and Team Roc will file a civil rights lawsuit.
Team Roc is the philanthropic portion of Jay-Z’s company Roc Nation that manages Gotti, who’s from Memphis Tenn.
Reportedly, five inmates have been killed in three separate Mississippi prisons over the past two weeks. Gotti’s letter, issued on Thursday, Jan. 9, was sent after two of those prisoners died in Parchman Farm, a state prison located in Parchman, Miss.
Gotti said the conditions there are “absolutely inhumane and unconstitutional” and inmates are “forced to live in squalor, with rats that crawl over them as they sleep on the floor.” He also said they’ve “been denied even a mattress for a cot.”
In an Associated Press article, Bryant spoke about the violence throughout Mississippi prisons and didn’t accept any of the blame.
It’s been reported that gangs have taken over the prisons in recent weeks. Plus, two prisoners escaped from Parchman during a spike in violence but have since been captured.
“Someone asked earlier, who’s responsible for what’s happening at Parchman? The inmates,” Bryant said in the article. “The inmates are the ones that take each other’s lives. The inmates are the ones that fashion weapons out of metal … So, I would say look to the inmates.”
Others, however, like Malaika Canada, whose son is an inmate at East Mississippi Correctional Facility, said it’s not the prisoners’ jobs to keep things under control.
“The Mississippi Department of Corrections needs to be responsible for this massacre,” she stated.
Gotti reportedly gave Bryant just a few days to address the letter, before the suit will be filed.
