[Understaffed and underfunded, Mississippi’s Parchman prison has
received media attention for its grisly violence, gang control and
subhuman living conditions. Lawmakers have known about these issues
for years, and have done nothing to fix it.] [[link removed]]

LAWMAKERS REFUSED TO INCREASE AN INFAMOUS PRISON’S FUNDING. THEN,
CHAOS ERUPTED.  
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Jerry Mitchell
January 8, 2020
ProPublica
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_ Understaffed and underfunded, Mississippi’s Parchman prison has
received media attention for its grisly violence, gang control and
subhuman living conditions. Lawmakers have known about these issues
for years, and have done nothing to fix it. _

,

 

One prisoner strangled another to death while other inmates cheered
the killing. Two convicts escaped a dilapidated building by walking
out an open door. Maximum-security detainees freely roamed hallways,
beating and threatening others.

Violence has roiled the Mississippi prison system for more than a
week, with state corrections officials imposing a statewide lockdown
and a county coroner declaring that gangs in the prisons have launched
an all-out war against one another.

At the center of the chaos is the Mississippi State Penitentiary at
Parchman — one of America’s most notorious prisons. Since July
2019, seven prisoners have been killed by fellow inmates at what is
supposed to be the most secure facility in the state. In the prior
eight years, there were four inmate killings.

The current violence comes after years of neglect by state officials,
who allowed conditions at Parchman to deteriorate when federal courts
ended oversight of the facility in 2011, according to an investigation
by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting and ProPublica.

Inmates described themselves as being prey to prison gangs who control
the supply of contraband drugs and weapons, bedding, food and
cellphones. Photographs and videos reviewed by the news organizations
show the most dangerous inmates, identified by their red-and-white
striped uniforms, walking freely outside their cells, with no guards
in sight.

A video purporting to show the killing of a Parchman inmate on Jan. 3
shows inmates shouting and cheering.

Parchman’s descent has put at risk the safety of corrections
officers, the investment of hundreds of millions of dollars of
Mississippi taxpayer funds and the health of the inmates the state is
charged with protecting, the investigation found.

Corrections officials last year failed to fill hundreds of positions
available for guards. In a Sept. 6 email obtained by the Mississippi
Center for Investigative Reporting, a correctional officer, Terrence
Shaw, told state lawmakers how dangerous it had become working in Unit
29, Parchman’s maximum-security unit.

A building at Unit 29 that should have at least five officers had only
two, and some buildings had only one, he wrote. “The National Guard
army should have been called in several years ago.”

“Staff morale is down, staff quitting left and right,” Shaw wrote.
“All staff working deserve a pay increase that is fit to live.”

Inmates and experts alike say the current violence in no small part
arises from the prison’s sheer state of disrepair. Building
facilities — water, lights, sewage — are crumbling. The‌
‌prison’s‌ drinking ‌water‌ ‌has violated the Safe
Drinking Water Act dozens of times
[[link removed]],
‌and‌ the Environmental Protection Agency has cited the
‌prison’s sewage‌ ‌system‌
[[link removed]] for
three years for violating the Clean Water Act, documents‌
‌show.‌‌ ‌Parchman’s‌ ‌accreditation‌ ‌by‌
‌the‌ ‌American‌ ‌Correctional‌ ‌Association,‌
‌which‌ ‌sets‌ ‌standards‌ ‌for‌ ‌prisons‌
‌across‌ ‌the‌ ‌country,‌ ‌lapsed in 2017.‌‌

Alger Retherford spent more than four decades behind bars at Parchman
for murder and robbery. A member of the prison’s repair crew, he was
released in May.

“We have come full circle, right back to 1975, the same
conditions,” Retherford, 62, said.

In response to the violence, Mississippi’s top prison official,
Corrections Commissioner Pelicia Hall, said she was working with
sheriffs, private prison operators and others to make sure the prisons
are as safe as possible, and she vowed that the Mississippi Department
of Corrections, or MDOC, would pursue criminal charges “to the full
extent of the law.”

Hall has also repeatedly asked the Republican-controlled Legislature
for more money to hire guards and to fix up Unit 29
[[link removed]],
which replaced a different maximum-security unit that was closed down
in 2010 in response to litigation filed by the ACLU
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The request went nowhere.

This year, even before the outbreak of violence, Hall asked for an
extra $78 million in funding — nearly a third of it to renovate Unit
29.

Unit 29 “is unsafe for staff and inmates because of age and general
deterioration,” Grace Fisher, an MDOC spokeswoman, said last month.

The Joint Legislative Budget Committee, which sets spending priorities
for the state, is recommending that representatives reject the request
and instead cut the total corrections budget by $8.3 million. What
happens next will be up to the new Mississippi Legislature, which was
sworn in Tuesday.

Asked if he was concerned about the prison violence and what needs to
be done, House Corrections Committee Chairman Bill Kinkade, a
Republican from Byhalia, said, “We have been working diligently to
… resolve” the issues.

David Fathi, director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project, said it
would be easy to write off what is happening as strictly a Mississippi
story. Instead, he said, it’s an American story.

In state after state, he said, federal courts have intervened in
prisons with high levels of violence, lack of proper health treatment
and other woes, but when that oversight goes away, conditions get
worse again.

“State officials complain about federal court, but that seems to be
the way to maintain conditions of basic decency,” he said.

Fathi has no doubt that the current conditions at Parchman are
unconstitutional, he said. “There’s no place for this kind of
treatment in a civilized society.”

“Unfit for Human Habitation”

Parchman prison opened in 1901
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Inmates lived in small camps and worked sunup to sundown in nearby
plantation fields. By 1905, the state of Mississippi was raking
in $185,000
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two years from harvests, the modern-day equivalent of more than $5
million [[link removed]].

The disciplinary system was infamous. Whippings came from
a 3-foot-long, 6-inch-wide whip named “Black Annie.”
[[link removed]] Rather
than hire more guards, prison officials often relied on favored
inmates, known as “trusty shooters,”
[[link removed]] who
often abused their power over fellow inmates, sometimes shooting and
killing them.

In 1971, Parchman inmates filed a class-action lawsuit. A year later,
U.S. District Judge William Keady concluded that “inhumanities,
illegal conduct and other indiginities” corrupted the trusty system,
that inmates’ quarters were “unfit for human habitation”
[[link removed]] and
that they had been deprived of wholesome food, medical treatment and
basic hygiene. He ordered improvements in health care and almost every
aspect of prisoner life.

The landmark decision shut down the trusty system across the South.

In the years that followed, Keady continued his oversight, sometimes
showing up unannounced at the prison. Mississippi spent more than $35
million to modernize Parchman
[[link removed]],
replacing the work camps with more than two dozen buildings surrounded
by razor wire.

The reforms slowly took effect. In 2003, the American Correctional
Association, or ACA, certified that Parchman met all modern standards
for prison operation
[[link removed]]. In
response to litigation brought by the ACLU, prison officials shut
down Parchman’s notorious Unit 32, a violent supermax unit that a
federal judge concluded suffered from unconstitutional conditions
[[link removed]].

By‌ ‌2011,‌ ‌the‌ ‌prison‌ ‌had‌ ‌turned‌
‌a‌ ‌corner.‌ ‌After‌ ‌nearly four decades‌ ‌of‌
‌court‌ ‌monitoring‌ ‌and‌ ‌an‌ ‌infusion‌
‌of‌ ‌taxpayer‌ ‌dollars,‌ ‌new‌ ‌facilities‌
‌had‌ ‌been‌ ‌built.‌ ‌Prisoner‌ ‌abuse‌ ‌had‌
‌declined.‌ ‌A‌ ‌judge‌ ‌ended‌ ‌federal‌
‌oversight‌,‌‌ ‌and‌ ‌Mississippi‌ ‌was‌
‌once‌ ‌again‌ ‌entrusted‌ ‌with‌ ‌the‌ ‌care‌
‌of‌ ‌its‌ ‌inmates.‌ ‌

“We felt like it was mission finally accomplished,” said Ronald
Welch, a Jackson lawyer who represented the state’s inmates before
the courts for much of that time.

Three years later, Chris Epps, the corrections commissioner at the
time and a champion of prison reform, was arrested on bribery charges.
Epps, a former Parchman guard who served as president of the
ACA, pleaded guilty and is now serving nearly 20 years in prison
[[link removed]].

By 2017, when Parchman’s accreditation lapsed, the facility was
failing to meet basic industry standards, according to Robert Reeves,
a certified ACA auditor who once served as manager of ACA compliance
at South Mississippi Correctional Institution.

Reeves, who retired in 2016 and continues to communicate with MDOC
employees, said staff members are not able to keep up with repairs in
the facilities. Outside contractors hired by the agency have not made
up the gap.

“They’re in such bad shape,” Reeves said of Mississippi’s
corrections facilities.

Welch, the lawyer who monitored Parchman for 36 years, said the latest
report and photographs show conditions much worse than before the
federal court stopped monitoring.

If just a fraction of Parchman’s problems took place in a public
building other than a prison, it would be shut down, he said. He
called the prison’s conditions an “unbelievable nightmare.”

His assessment was echoed by J. Cliff Johnson, the director of the
University of Mississippi’s MacArthur Justice Center, who regularly
visits the prison.

“Parchman is held together with baling wire and bubble gum,”
Johnson said. “We put facilities like Parchman in the middle of
nowhere so that people don’t have to think about the humans inside
those facilities or their inhumane treatment. We don’t want to hear
about it. We don’t want to see it. We don’t want to think about
it.”

“I’ve got him in a chokehold”

In 2014, MDOC employed 1,591 correctional officers. Although the
inmate population in state prisons has fallen slightly, the number of
correctional officers has plummeted to 731 — a loss of more than
half the workforce. Parchman is unable to fill its open positions.
This year, the prison had the authority to employ 512 officers but
hired only 261.

That figure is far below ACA accreditation standards, which require no
more than a 10% vacancy rate in any 18-month period for correctional
employees who work directly with inmates.

Hall, who plans to resign as corrections commissioner in mid-January,
blamed the soaring number of job openings on low salaries. MDOC has
asked the Legislature to increase starting pay rates from $25,650
annually to $30,640, at a cost of $2.79 million. But the Joint
Legislative Budget Committee has recommended rejecting this proposal.

he shortage of staff has been accompanied by an increase in inmate
deaths from unnatural causes.

On average, Parchman records about two inmate suicides per year. In
2019, five Parchman prisoners killed themselves, all in single-person
cells, according to the coroner’s office.

Solitary confinement and a failure to check regularly on inmates in
one-man cells increases the likelihood of suicide, experts say.

“In many prison systems, a majority of all suicides occur in
solitary confinement, even though prisoners in solitary account for
only a small proportion of the prison population,” Fathi said.

Seven inmates were killed by fellow detainees in the 13 months from
January last year through the present month, according to the coroner.
From 2011 to 2018, one prisoner was killed every 19 months on average.

On July 10, Jeffery Allen, 40, was beaten to death in the shower,
according to the coroner. Less than a month later, Samuel Wade, 27,
was strangled to death. Just before midnight on Nov. 12, Jeremy Irons,
31, was fatally stabbed by other inmates. The death took place after
an argument over a $40 debt, according to inmates.

On Nov. 19, Michael Anderson, 26, who was serving a 10-year sentence
for armed robbery, was fatally stabbed by other inmates, according to
the coroner.

Anderson’s father, Robert Coleman, said his son, before his death,
shared that a prison gang “wanted him to do something that he
didn’t do” and that he wasn’t under the protection of his
“brothers” anymore.

Another three homicides have taken place since the new year began.

One factor in the soaring number of deaths is that prison gangs have
become a de facto replacement for the old armed trusties, according to
some prison experts.

“We are talking to correctional officers who say that gang leaders
are making decisions about who gets housed where,” said Johnson, of
the University of Mississippi’s MacArthur Justice Center, whose
office represents many prisoners in Parchman. “When people get
‘out of line,’ the severe gang disciplinary system rules the
day.”

Travis Arnold, sentenced to five years in prison in 2018 for statutory
rape and failing to register as a sex offender, said he and other
inmates have long felt unsafe because “there are not enough guards
to protect us, and they never come around and check on us.”

Those fears became a reality when a gang war between the Vice Lords
and the Gangsters erupted at Parchman and other Mississippi prisons,
starting Dec. 29.

In an attempt to stem the violence, Parchman officials last week
reopened notorious Unit 32, which had been closed in 2010 under the
federal consent decree. Inmates subsequently shot a video there that
shows standing water, mold, peeling paint and cells where there is no
running water for sinks or toilets
[[link removed]].

“This illustrates one of the shortcomings of litigation — sooner
or later the lawsuit goes away, and defendants are then free to return
to their old ways, unless and until a new lawsuit is filed,” Fathi
said.

Video circulating on social media purports to show the Jan. 3 killing
of an inmate. ProPublica could not verify the authenticity of the
video with prison officials. Though officially banned, cellphones are
widely available to inmates. Several inmates contacted said it
appeared to show Parchman’s interior, and details in the video match
the coroner’s description of the circumstances of the death of one
inmate.

In the video, an inmate can be seen standing inside a cell, dressed in
the distinctive red-and-white pants worn by the most dangerous
prisoners. The inmate repeatedly strikes another man in the cell with
his fists. Loud shouting can be heard while an unnamed prisoner
narrates the video: “They’re straight up hitting the motherfuckers
with knives and shit, beating them motherfuckers up. They’re behind
the cell while we’re on lockdown.”

A woman’s voice can then be heard, perhaps from a cellphone: “He
has his own family.”

An inmate can be heard boasting: “I’ve got him in a chokehold.”

Another inmate cheers him on: “Oh, yeah, oh, yeah. Dead. Oh, yeah.
Dead. Deaaaaad.”

Despite the loud shouting throughout the incident, no officer can be
seen responding.

Though the identity of the man attacked in the video could not be
confirmed, a prison doctor pronounced an inmate named Denorris Howell
dead at 3:20 a.m. on Jan 3. Authorities initially thought Howell was
stabbed to death by his roommate.

But Sunflower County Coroner Heather Burton later determined that
Howell had sustained a fatal neck injury and that the blood stains on
his clothing belonged to his roommate, who was also injured in the
attack.

No charges have been filed, and MDOC officials have declined to
comment.

Howell’s mother, Janice Wilkins of Memphis, Tennessee, said her son
had called her on his cellphone and told her that the lights had been
turned out. Before hanging up the phone, he said that a guard was
letting inmates out of their cells.

“My son won’t be back,” she said. “But I’m crying for other
inmates who are incarcerated.”

Johnson called the video “the stuff of dystopian nightmares.”

“We take thousands of people and lock them up in hellholes where
they are forced to fight for survival on a daily basis while they
unravel due to the effects of mental illness, addiction, disease and
constant fear,” Johnson said. “Events like this one are horrific
not only because of the depraved behavior of the killers, but also
because we as Mississippians have allowed this to happen, even
encouraged it.”

“We all have blood on our hands,” he said.

Prisoners in the Dark

Mississippi Department of Health inspections from the past decade
provided plenty of warning about the increasingly poor state of
Parchman.

In 2012, one year after federal oversight ended, six inmates lacked
mattresses or bedding in Parchman. Last year, more than 250 did —
nearly 8% of the prison’s inmates.

In 2012, a dozen toilets for inmates in the prison didn’t work. Last
year, there were 64.

The reports document holes in cell walls and prison doors; collapsing
ceilings; broken commodes, sinks, drains and tiles; exposed wiring;
and roaches and rats throughout the prison. One photograph in the
reports shows birds eating off inmates’ food trays.

Unit 29, the maximum-security building, was the focus of special
scrutiny. The roof of the building, which houses the state’s death
row inmates, has holes that let rain pour into the facility. Door and
locks are broken. Inmates have bored holes in the building’s
unreinforced concrete large enough to hide contraband weapons, drugs
and phones, corrections officials have acknowledged.

The official reports are backed up by interviews, documents and
photographs from prisoners inside Parchman and their family members.
Some prisoners said they washed their uniforms in toilets after
laundry service stopped. One prisoner said he fashioned homemade
extension cords from stripped wires, using them to start fires and
boil water in an effort to make it safe to drink.

At Parchman today, many inmates are living in darkness. The latest
inspection shows at least 300 cells without lights or power — a
stark contrast to 2012 when there were no cells without lights or
power.

James Louis Manning, who was released from Parchman in June after
serving time for grand larceny, said he had no light in his cell
during his final year as a prisoner. “It wasn’t fixed before I
left,” he said.

Lack of light in a prison can have serious consequences, said Eldon
Vail, former corrections secretary in Washington state. Officers
can’t check on prisoners to make sure they’re safe. Lengthy
periods of darkness can cause stress and exacerbate mental illness.

Beyond the cells, many of Parchman’s dayrooms, where inmates gather,
lack lighting.

“What officer would want to go into a dayroom with the prisoners out
of their cells and no lights?” Vail asked.

The latest inspection showed at least 43 places where electrical wires
were exposed, making it possible for inmates to set fires or cause
other damage. The inspection also shows some live wires near showers
and water fountains.

Inmate Percy Dean III, who received an 11-year sentence for forgery in
2012, said dangers abound with “live wiring hanging over, under and
on the sides of the steel beds in which inmates have to sleep.”

Parchman’s water and sewer system are creating hazardous health
conditions, according to experts. The number of nonfunctioning sinks
has ballooned from five in 2012 to 59 in the latest reports. One
building had a single working shower for more than 50 inmates.

Although MDOC policy calls for each inmate to get three showers a
week, inmates describe going weeks without the opportunity to clean
themselves. In one month, Manning said he received a total of five
showers, three of them in one week.

Since federal court monitoring ended in 2011, the Health
Department has issued nearly 100 major violations of the Safe
Drinking Water Act to Parchman, finding multiple toxic contaminants in
the drinking water
[[link removed]].
Safety scores for water treatment have plummeted from 3.5 out of 5 in
2015 to 0.5 out of 5 in 2019.

Inmates have posted online images of brown or opaque water streaming
from taps in their cells.

Retherford, the former inmate who was released in May, said he and
other inmates who drank the water “were constantly getting stomach
ailments. I got into the habit of boiling my water in the
microwave.”

Fisher declined comment on the deficiencies found in health and
environmental inspections. She downplayed the issues of discolored
drinking water and said MDOC had fixed problems as they were reported.
Brown water “comes out of my faucets at my homes in Jackson and in
the Delta,” she said.

Revelations of Parchman’s conditions horrified former State Health
Officer Dr. Alton Cobb. “If this state can’t afford to provide
reasonable hygiene to inmates, that is ridiculous,” he said.

Prison advocates say what is happening at Parchman is too serious to
be ignored any longer.

“They have to shutter that place,” said Kevin Ring, president of
FAMM, a national criminal justice reform organization that has asked
for a civil rights investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.
“People can’t live like that, let alone be rehabilitated.”

_Jerry Mitchell is an investigative reporter for the Mississippi
Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit news organization that
seeks to hold public officials accountable and empower citizens in
their communities. Email him at [email protected] and
follow him on Facebook at @JerryMitchellReporter
[[link removed]] and on Twitter
at @jmitchellnews [[link removed]]._

_The Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting and ProPublica are
spending the year examining the state’s corrections system. We want
to know what’s really happening behind the walls of Mississippi’s
prisons. You can share your tips and your stories by emailing us
at [email protected]._

_This article was produced in partnership with the Mississippi Center
for Investigative Reporting, which is a member of the ProPublica
Local Reporting Network
[[link removed]]._

_This story is part of an ongoing investigation into Mississippi’s
corrections system. Sign up for the Locked Down newsletter
[[link removed]] to receive updates in this
series as soon as they publish._

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