Cooperating attorneys for the ACLU of Rhode Island have today filed three lawsuits against Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI) supervisors and staff on behalf of the family members of three individuals who died by suicide at the prison within the span of five months last year. Two of the individuals are believed to have been held in solitary confinement. The complaints allege that prison officials were deliberately indifferent to the decedents’ known suicide risk, and that the failure to properly intervene or provide them necessary medical care was negligent and violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.”
