When Jay-Z’s Team Roc, the social justice arm of the rap mogul’s entertainment company, first filed federal lawsuits in early 2020 on behalf of over 200 prisoners at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman, the inmates alleged revolting conditions: rat feces, cockroaches and bird droppings contaminating their meals; broken lights, toilets and showers in a “perpetual state of systemic failure”; and a deprivation of medical care that required the self-treatment of wounds.
The accusations were so alarming that the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division launched an investigation around that same time across Mississippi’s prison system in the wake of a string of violent deaths, lockdowns and protests outside the state Capitol to “shut it down,” referring to Parchman.
But over the past couple of years conditions at the prison seem to have improved substantially — enough so that last week Team Roc agreed to dismiss the claims in its lawsuit against the Mississippi Department…
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