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The 59th GRAMMY Awards - Roaming Show

Source: Lester Cohen / Getty

While people continue to debate JAY-Z‘s right to be a billionaire, the one thing you can’t argue is all the good he’s done on behalf of social justice.

And now he’s putting his millions towards another good cause alongside fellow rapper Yo Gotti on behalf of 29 inmates who claim that their “lives are in peril,” because of “inhumane conditions” and the immense amount of violence in prison.

The lawsuit was filed on Tuesday in Mississippi federal court, Gotti’s hometown, by Hov’s lawyer because reportedly, inmates “are dying because Mississippi has failed to fund its prisons, resulting in prisons where violence reigns because prisons are understaffed.”

According to CNN, at least 5 prisoner deaths in the state since last December, and according to officials, all but one were during violent “disturbances.”

What makes things even more suspicious, is that this isn’t the first time Mississippi’s history that there’s been an abundance of prisoner deaths at a specific period in time. Back in 2018, Mississippi’s Department of Corrections Commissioner Pelicia E. Hall, proposed that the FBI use their resources to help investigate the death of 15 inmates that took place within one month.

The new lawsuit called the recent deaths a “culmination of years of severe understaffing and neglect.”
“As Mississippi has incarcerated increasing numbers of people, it has dramatically reduced its funding of prisons,” the lawsuit says, adding that the underfunding forces inmates to “live in squalor, endangering their physical and mental health.”
Team Roc, the philanthropic arm of Jay-Z’s team, kicked things off with a letter to the governor’s office, mentioning that the terrible treatment cannot continue.
“We cannot treat people this way, and it’s time to do something about it,” Alex Spiro, Hov’s lawyer added.