Fifteen inmates at the Miami Correctional Institute are suing for being kept in what lawyers say are deplorable conditions.
The lawsuit, filed in Indiana’s Northern Federal District, seeks unspecified damages from the Indiana Department of Corrections.
The ACLU says the plaintiffs were housed in cells within the prison’s “restrictive units.”
“I assume because of COVID, they were not getting the five days a week recreation they were supposed to get,” said the ACLU Legal Director For Indiana Ken Faulk.
According to the lawsuit, the cells the inmates were in had broken lights and windows. Prison officials only covered the broken windows with steel plates and did not fix the lights.
“They literally were walking into live wires in their cells because they could not see. They were running into their toilet and beds because they could not see,” said Faulk.
Some inmates spent up to 60 days in the dark cells beginning in the summer of 2019, only leaving to shower every other day.
Warden William Hyatte and Deputy Warden George Payne asked a judge to give them until Oct. 5 to respond to the allegations.
