and additional contractors provided food services, etc. In October 2010, United States Department of Justice officials informed Governor of Mississippi Haley Barbour that the department had started a civil rights investigation concerning the prison, in relation to its treatment of prisoners, to assess whether constitutional standards of prisoner safety and humane treatment were being maintained. In November 2010, plaintiffs represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU National Prison Project filed a federal class-action lawsuit against GEO (which had acquired Cornell and taken over its contracts in Mississippi and elsewhere) and MDOC, saying that the prison authorities allowed abuses and negligence to occur at WGYCF. The lawsuit stated that prison guards engaged in sexual intercourse with the prisoners, tolerated and encouraged violence, smuggled illegal drugs into the facilities, and that prison authorities denied required education and sufficient medical care. As of that month the prison had about 1,200 prisoners ages 13–22; the lawsuit said that half of the prisoners were incarcerated for non-violent offenses. By 2011 prisoners outnumbered Walnut Grove city residents by a 2:1 ratio. Two thirds of the prisoners had been convicted of non-violent offenses. DOJ report - March 2012 The Justice Department Civil Rights Division delivered its March 20, 2012 report directly to the governor's office and the court. It said that conditions at WGCF were "among the worst we have seen in any facility anywhere in the nation," characterizing both GEO and the MDOC's lassitude as ignoring the safety of young inmates, allowing a denial of required health care, and hiring guards who were known to have gang affiliations. Press reports indicated the jail was run by gangs whose members included corrupt prison staff. The US Justice Department said that rapes of younger inmates were common. The DOJ report said that the Walnut Grove Correctional Facility had "systematic, egregious, and dangerous practices exacerbated by a lack of accountability and controls", and stated that sexual misconduct there was "among the worst that we have seen in any facility anywhere in the nation". Settlement and aftermath Extensive testimony was heard in court related to the class action suit, including about the state's oversight of the privately run prisons. The state's Deputy Corrections Commissioner, Emmitt Sparkman, had testified in court hearings that the state lacked any authority to force GEO to upgrade security at the persistently short-staffed WGCF. He was questioned about the lines of authority for