DOJ Declares Conditions at Three More Mississippi Prisons Unconstitutional
by David M. Reutter
On February 28, 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a report finding that conditions at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility (CMCF), South Mississippi Correctional Institution (SMCI) and Wilkinson County Correctional Facility (WCCF) violate prisoners’ Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The report required Mississippi officials to correct the unconstitutional conditions or face a federal lawsuit.
DOJ began an investigation in February 2020 at the three prisons, as well as Mississippi State Prison in Parchman. An April 2022 report declared that conditions found at the latter violated the Constitution, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Nov. 2022, p.34.] In its most recent report, DOJ said that “[m]any of the conditions we found at Parchman” exist at CMCF, SMCI and WCCF.
The state Department of Corrections (DOC) failed to protect prisoners from violence at all three prisons, the report declared. CMCF and SMCI are DOC’s largest prisons, holding up to 4,000 and 2,882 prisoners, respectively. WCCF, which is privately managed for DOC by Utah-based Management and Training Corporation (MTC), holds another 949. Together, the three prisons house one-third of DOC’s prisoner population.
According to DOJ, each prison is “riddled with violence.” But“[g]ross understaffing, poor supervision, and inadequate investigations” also combine to “create an environment where gang activity and dangerous contraband trafficking proliferate.” Gangs not only run the prisons but staff members are even on gang payrolls to assist in their criminal activities. Weapons, drugs, cellphones and large amounts of cash are regularly confiscated during searches.
Staff vacancy rates up to 64% leave many areas unsupervised and guards fearful of entering units. As a result, hundreds of prisoners are held “in restrictive housing for prolonged periods in appalling conditions,” the report stated, calling DOC’s Restrictive Housing Units (RHUs) “unsanitary, hazardous and chaotic, with little supervision,” the DOJ report stated. In fact, DOJ said, RHUs “are breeding grounds for suicide, self-inflicted injury, fires, and assaults.”
DOC officials were well aware of the problems, yet their failure to “adopt sufficient large-scale reform to match the needs of the prison system evidences their deliberate indifference,” the report stated. It concluded with needed corrective actions and warned that failure to do so would result in a civil rights action against DOC. See: Investigation of Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, South Mississippi Correctional Institution, Wilkinson County Correctional Facility, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Civil Rights Div. (Feb. 2024).