Mississippi prisons have been plagued by rampant violence.

2/7/20
Walking ankle-deep in open sewage, sleeping alongside mice and rats both dead and alive, and living in fear of prison violence that has left at least 15 people dead, inmates at Mississippi state correctional facilities have referred to the prisons as "death traps". As the death toll rises at the state's correctional facilities due to violence and suicide, the Justice Department's civil rights division announced it would step in to investigate the conditions at four state prisons on Wednesday, including the notorious Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. The federal department will examine whether the Mississippi Department of Corrections adequately protects prisoners from physical harm and whether there is adequate suicide prevention at the Parchman prison, Southern Mississippi Correctional Institute, Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, and the Wilkinson County Correctional Facility according to a statement from the Justice Department. The Mississippi state prison system, which has one of the nation's highest incarceration rates, has had recurring problems with violence for years. Low pay and long hours have made it difficult to hire prison guards, leaving many of the correctional facilities understaffed and unequipped to handle the brutality within the prison walls.

In total, at least 15 people have died across the Mississippi state prison system since December 29. Images inside the Parchman correctional facility from the state health department and the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting show holes behind toilets and water fountains, roaches and garbage in pipes, and open sewage overflowing into prison cells and bathrooms. Lisa Graybill, the deputy legal director of Southern Poverty Law Center, said the federal government's involvement is long overdue. "Mississippi's prisons have a brutal history rooted in slavery and convict leasing, and it is time for the federal government to step in and do what the Mississippi Department of Corrections has failed to: end the violence and ensure humane living conditions," Graybill said in a statement. Mississipi Governor Tate Reeves publicly called the situation a "catastrophe" and asked the Mississippi Department of Investigations to investigate the Parchman conditions. While the Mississippi Department of Corrections did not announce how long an investigation would take, interim commissioner Tommy Taylor announced it was working with the governor to improve conditions in the meantime.

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swing_voter said:

Mississippi is the poorest state in the union.

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Rogue Valley said:

During the mid 20th century, Parchman was infamous for its hundreds of acres of cotton and sugar-cane fields. The state would then profit from the commodities grown and harvested by prison slave labor.

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Bodhisattva said:

We need more of this... sent to prison, put them to work. The harder you work and the better your therapy the better your conditions and chances for release.

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Bodhisattva said:

We need more of this... sent to prison, put them to work. The harder you work and the better your therapy the better your conditions and chances for release.

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Rogue Valley said:

Didn't work that way with Mississippi blacks. The more blacks the state incarcerated, the more money it made from free black convict labor (Neoslavery).

Parchman prison (20,000 acres) also leased out convict labor to nearby cotton and sugar-cane plantations. State law allowed whips to be used in the fields.

So there was an economic incentive for imprisoning as many blacks as possible, usually accompanied with falsified charges of breaking prison rules which added to their sentence.

Even you should be able to grasp the inescapable loop of convict labor profiteering.

Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon

American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey Into the Business of Punishment by Shane Bauer (Winnfield Prison, Louisiana)

Parchman by R. Kim Rushing

Worse than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice by David M. Oshinsky

Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South by Talitha L. LeFlouria

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Simon W. Moon said:

It was a huge shameful ****up the first time around.
But this time we'll get it right!

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Bodhisattva said:

Why not?
The first governments were abusive and totalitarian ... some worked on it and got it right. With your mindset we would still be living under oppression.

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Simon W. Moon said:

We'd be living under oppression because no one ever bothered to form a govt or something?
w/e
Let's put aside your imaginary hypothetical world where people didn't bother to make a govt because govt sucked that one time.

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Simon W. Moon said:

It was a huge shameful ****up the first time around.
But this time we'll get it right!

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Bodhisattva said:

It was an analogy that showed the error of your thinking... all good though. Never mind.

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Simon W. Moon said:

I believe that's what you think it was.

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