Mississippi's violent prisons violating Constitution, US Justice
Department finds
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[February 29, 2024]
By Jonathan Allen
(Reuters) - Mississippi is violating the constitutional rights of
thousands of people held in three of its prisons, where violence is
pervasive and the use of solitary confinement leads to suicide and other
harm, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Wednesday.
The department's Civil Rights Division said that Mississippi's
understaffing of its largest prisons has created dangerous conditions,
according to the published findings of an investigation opened in 2020.
"The mismatch between the size of the incarcerated population and the
number of security staff means that gangs dominate much of prison life,
and contraband and violence, including sexual violence, proliferate,"
the report said. "Prison officials rely on ineffective and overly harsh
restrictive housing practices for control."
The Mississippi Department of Corrections, which cooperated with federal
investigators and received an early copy of the report, did not respond
to questions on Wednesday, nor did the office of Mississippi Governor
Tate Reeves.
Some 7,200 people are held at the Central Mississippi Correctional
Facility, the South Mississippi Correctional Institution, and the
Wilkinson County Correctional Facility, the three prisons discussed in
Wednesday's report.
As part of the same investigation, the Justice Department raised similar
alarm in 2022 about the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman Farm.
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Mississippi is violating the U.S. Constitution's 8th and 14th
Amendments, which forbid cruel and unusual punishments and guarantee
equal protection under the law, the Justice Department said.
It said the state's Department of Corrections was "deliberately
indifferent" to the risk of violence at its prisons, despite
Mississippi's efforts to increase the pay of prison guards and
reduce the use of isolated confinement.
At Central, there were at least 325 reported assaults or fights
between incarcerated people from September 2020 to June 2022, and
dozens of people at all three prisons had to be taken to outside
hospitals with serious injuries in that time, the report said.
The report also recounts people using broomsticks, mop handles,
crutches, shanks, welding shop tools, boiling hot water and a
microwave as weapons in fights. Rape and other sexual violence is
also common, the report said.
The report described conditions in restrictive housing units as
appalling, and said those held in isolation there often resorted to
extreme measures to get attention from staff, including setting
fires, flooding cells and cutting themselves with razors.
Among other recommendations, the report called for Mississippi to
dramatically increase the number of properly screened and
well-trained employees supervising its prisons, avoid the
unnecessary use of solitary confinement, and improve access to
health care for incarcerated people.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
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