Rev. Sharpton will visit Meek Mill in prison Monday

The Rev. Al Sharpton plans to visit rapper Meek Mill on Monday at the Chester State Correctional Institution, where Mill is imprisoned for violating his probation.

The New York-based civil rights activist will meet with Mill, who has been incarcerated since earlier this month, as part of criminal justice reform efforts by Sharpton's civil rights group, the National Action Network (NAN).

Rachel Noerdlinger, a spokeswoman for Sharpton and NAN, said the meeting has been scheduled for 2:30 p.m. Monday. Sharpton will speak to the media afterward, she said.

Mill's case led to outrage and sparked a national debate about race and the criminal justice system after a Common Pleas Court judge gave him a sentence of two to four years in prison for violating his probation in a 2008 drug-and-gun case.

Billboards have appeared around the city that ask people to "Stand with Meek Mill," and Jay-Z published an editorial in the New York Times last week.

"Taxpayers in Philadelphia, Meek Mill's hometown, will have to spend tens of thousands of dollars each year to keep him locked up, and I bet none of them would tell you his imprisonment is helping to keep them safer," Jay-Z wrote.

While in prison, Mill, 30, has also spoken with free-agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who said the rapper is "humbled by the support the people have shown him."

Noerdlinger said that NAN has been monitoring cases such as Mill's across the country and that Sharpton helped to get imprisoned rapper Tupac Shakur out of solitary confinement in the 1990s. Shakur later died, in September 1996, from medical complications resulting from a shooting in Las Vegas.