When Mississippi lawmakers enacted another major reduction this year to the state’s income tax, they said the state could afford to do this while still having a sufficient surplus to address other areas of longstanding concern.
The U.S. Justice Department just gave them a reason to think again.
In a scathing 59-page report, the Department of Justice confirmed what Mississippi’s leadership already knew: the state Penitentiary at Parchman is a disaster, and Mississippi better fix it or it can expect the federal courts to force the issue.
Although the Justice Department faults the Mississippi Department of Corrections for years of “deliberate indifference,” the indifference has been shared by those in the Legislature and in the Governor’s Mansion. This state has a history of treating the incarcerated as subhuman beings, and it should not be shocking that the deprivation they suffer produces that result.
The DOJ report describes deplorable living conditions, inadequate mental health treatment, pervasive violence and the excessive use of solitary confinement. All of that combined makes those inmates who are mentally ill even more sick, and drives the sane toward insanity.
Part of the problem is resources, and part of the problem is attitude.
Parchman is woefully understaffed with guards, and those who work there have a legitimate fear of being assaulted or killed themselves because of how badly they are outnumbered. As a result, gangs have been put in control of maintaining order, while the prison staff sits back and watches from control towers, often indifferent to inmates abusing each other or taking their own lives.
The problems at Parchman may be the worst, but there are similar issues throughout Mississippi’s prison system. Gov. Tate Reeves pledged to fix the prisons by putting a Louisiana corrections veteran, Burl Cain, in charge. The DOJ report, however, does not suggest much progress has been made in the two years since Cain’s appointment.
Mississippi began to backslide after coming out from federal court oversight in 2011, and funding has been inadequate for most of the time since.
Although the state has increased the salary for guards the past couple of years, it apparently has not been enough to attract people to what can be a perilous profession. Nor are there enough mental health professionals to manage the load. According to the DOJ report, Parchman has not had an on-site psychiatrist since 2018 and is trying to handle more than 200 mentally ill inmates a week with three part-time nurse practitioners.
Fixing Parchman and the other prisons is going to take both time and money. It’s also going to require an attitude adjustment.
When offenders are sent to prison for committing a crime, the state has a moral and legal obligation to ensure that the conditions of their incarceration are humane. Inmates aren’t owed a better lifestyle behind bars than they had on the outside, but they do deserve to be free of perpetual terror.
Incarceration is a punishment, yes, but it also is intended to be an avenue of rehabilitation. Prison for the incorrigibly violent is about protecting society from such predators. But for the rest of the inmates, many of them nonviolent offenders, prison life should be about helping them break the habits that put them behind bars and develop the skills that would allow them to transition successfully and honestly back into society when they have served their time.
Mississippi’s prison and government officials often talk about rehabilitation, but the DOJ report appears to question whether that’s more lip service than reality.
