Burl Cain’s reputation for turning prisons and prisoners around is arguably one of the best in the country, but it’s not just the inmates in Mississippi’s prison system who need reform.
Cain, who famously turned around one of the nation’s most notorious prisons at Angola in Louisiana decades ago, was tasked in 2020 by Gov. Tate Reeves to do something similar here.
Cain’s approach with prisoners is simple. Focus on moral rehabilitation and reentry programs.
That’s a tall task, especially at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, but an even taller order is combatting corruption within the system’s labor and management.
“The staff is the one giving me the blues, not the inmates,” Cain, MDOC’s commissioner told the Indianola Rotary Club this week. “It’s the staff that’s wrecking this place, not the inmates.”
Cain said it is a constant battle keeping contraband out of the prisons.
“I will find as much contraband in one shakedown as I would get in 10 years at Angola,” he said.
After relaxing restrictions on tobacco, which includes a program that allows inmates to purchase tobacco products from MDOC, Cain said the worst contraband issues surround cell phones, which he said are used to put out hits on individuals and move money for drugs through apps.
“It’s terrible. The middle people are so corrupt,” Cain said. “No visitors, and we have that many cell phones, Where do you think they’re coming from? The employees. They’re loaded up with it, coming in.”
To combat this MDOC has spent $8 million on cameras and an additional $2 million on scanners.
All employees are required to go through the scanners.
Still, even with these measures, Cain said staffing issues, in particular at Parchman, could eventually lead to inmate and employment contraction at the prison.
Cain said this will likely be looked at closely toward the end of Reeves’ term.
“The big bad decision has got to be made,” Cain said. “How much can this area, this community, how many employees can it guarantee we have at Parchman? That’s going to cause us to determine the size of Parchman. It could be that we can’t sustain 2,000 inmates…It could be that we can only sustain 1,500.”
Cain said he’s hired 500 people with a 20% turnover rate.
“That’s too many,” he said.
He said he’s short between 120-130 positions at Parchman. To put that into perspective, he’s short between 15 and 30 positions at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility and South Mississippi Correctional Facility.
He said he has deployed several mobile units to set up in Delta communities at shopping centers and other strategic locations to hold hiring events.
“That’s why we’re really working hard for you, because that will have a negative impact on Indianola and the Delta if we take jobs away,” Cain said. “We want to preserve the number of jobs we have.”
