Justice Department Finds Unconstitutional Conditions in 3 More Mississippi Prisons

Mississippi's prisons are falling apart, run by gangs, and riddled with sexual assaults, a Justice Department report says.

A report released today by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division found that three Mississippi prisons fail to protect incarcerated people from rampant violence and sexual assault, and place hundreds of people in solitary confinement "for prolonged periods in appalling conditions."

Federal investigators concluded that severe understaffing, unchecked gang violence, unsanitary living conditions, and the use of extreme isolation violated the 8th and 14th Amendment rights of inmates.

The Justice Department launched an investigation into the Mississippi prison system in 2020 following a string of gruesome deaths and years of deteriorating conditions. In 2022, the Justice Department released a report describing barbaric conditions at Mississippi State Penitentiary, more infamously known as Parchman Farm. 

Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a press conference that today's report shows that constitutional violations inside the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) are "systemic and longstanding."

"Our investigation uncovered chronic, systemic deficiencies that create and perpetuate violent and unsafe environments for people incarcerated at these three Mississippi facilities," Clarke said. "The unconstitutional conditions in Mississippi's prisons have existed for far too long, and we hope that this announcement marks a turning point towards implementing sound, evidence-based solutions to these entrenched problems."

The MDOC is the latest corrections system to come under federal scrutiny for barbaric conditions. The Justice Department sued Alabama in 2020 for ignoring multiple warnings that its gore-soaked prison system violated the Constitution. Last year, the Justice Department announced an investigation into the Fulton County Jail in Georgia, where a schizophrenic man died covered in bedbugs, lice, and lesions.

But the problems in Mississippi have been profound. All three of the Mississippi prisons the Justice Department toured had 30 to 50 percent staff vacancy rates, leaving housing units with hundreds of people largely unsupervised. Emergency responses were often tardy and ineffective.

"Across all these facilities, MDOC does not have enough staff to supervise the population," the report says. "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."

One incarcerated man told federal investigators how he was raped at knifepoint in a shower while gang members guarded the entrance to stop anyone from intervening.

Clarke also described how poor security and lack of supervision in one incident allowed several incarcerated men to enter a women's housing unit.

The report found that prison officials failed to adequately investigate sexual assaults, and the investigations the Justice Department reviewed "were of exceptionally poor quality."

The Justice Department Civil Rights Division also found that the prisons units for restrictive housing, more commonly called solitary confinement, "are breeding grounds for suicide, self-inflicted injury, fires, and assaults."

Under MDOC policies, inmates in restrictive housing are only allowed out of their cells for one hour a day, five days a week. But Justice Department investigators found that they were not even getting that much.

"We also found that the average person in restrictive housing at Wilkinson spends a total of 1 hour and 50 minutes out-of-cell per week, compared to the 5-hour minimum requirement per policy," the report says.

In addition, investigators reported that prison staff falsified logs to show that inmates were receiving recreation and shower time when they were not.

The Justice Department concluded that the prisons' isolation practices "are extreme, deprive incarcerated individuals of basic human needs for safety, sanitation, exercise, social interaction, and sensory or environmental stimulation, and pose a substantial risk of serious harm."

The MDOC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.