A Pennsylvania inmate has spent more than a year in solitary confinement because he refuses to cut his dreadlocks.
Eric S. McGill, 27, filed a handwritten lawsuit in October naming three senior jailers at the Lebanon County Correctional Facility. Last week, a group of lawyers amended the federal complaint to note that McGill’s mental health is suffering from the solitary confinement, leaving him to have anxiety attacks several times a week, reported The Associated Press.
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“By keeping Mr. McGill in solitary confinement because he refuses to cut off his dreadlocks, (the) defendants have inhibited his right to free exercise of religion for no legitimate penological purpose,” McGill’s lawyers with the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project told the court, seeking an order that would mandate McGill be placed in general population, plus be awarded damages, according to The Associated Press.
McGill follows Rastafarianism and believes his spirit lives in his dreadlocks and that he would lose strength in the afterlife if he cuts them, according to his lawyers.
Peggy Morcom, Lebanon County’s lawyer for labor and employment matters, didn’t address the amended complaint, but has previously argued that Pennsylvania state law allows county jails to set inmate hairstyles requiring that they “comply with sanitation and security policies.”
Source: Inmate kept in solitary for refusing to cut his dreadlocks seeks court intervention
