An agreement by state officials to pay a $6.75 million settlement in a lawsuit brought by nearly 160 incarcerated people at Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley received a judge’s approval last Friday. The plaintiffs claimed they were victims of a “weeks-long campaign of violence” by corrections officers.

Lawyers representing incarcerated individuals called the settlement a landmark civil rights case on Tuesday and said the prison has been “plagued with violence since it opened in 1998.” State officials originally announced they reached a settlement agreement in May.

The lawsuit, Diggs v. Mici, was filed in January 2022, and nearly 160 incarcerated people claimed they were subjected to excessive force by corrections officers between Jan. 10 to Feb. 6, 2020. The lawsuit named

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