Jay-Z has filed a lawsuit against the head the Mississippi Department Corrections and the warden the state penitentiary for failing to take any action to put a stop to the excessive violence endured by inmates, five each have died in the past two weeks. The lawsuit, which was filed on Tuesday by Jay-Z’s lawyer Alex Spiro on behalf 29 inmates, states that “these deaths are a direct result Mississippi’s utter disregard for the people it has incarcerated and their constitutional rights.” In a statement to NBC News, Spiro expressed that “we cannot treat people this way and  DOC Commissioner Pelicia Hall and Mississippi State Penitentiary Superintendent Marshall Turner have been named as defendants in the case.

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This lawsuit comes in the wake  The letter outlined the “inhumane conditions in prisons operated by the Mississippi Department Corrections,” including inmates being “forced to live in squalor, with rats that crawl over them as they sleep on the floor, having been denied even a mattress for a cot.” “This unthinkable spate deaths is the culmination years severe understaffing and neglect at Mississippi’s prisons,” the letter reads. “As Mississippi has incarcerated increasing numbers people, it has dramatically reduced its funding prisons. As a result, prison conditions fail to meet even the most basic human rights.” Spiro essentially threatened that they would take legal action if the proper precautions to ensure safety were not taken, as they were “prepared to pursue all potential avenues to obtain relief for the people living in Mississippi’s prisons and their families.”