Justice Department finds problems with violence, gangs and poor conditions in 3 MS prisons

Gangs, violence and sexual assaults are a problem in three Mississippi prisons because the facilities are short-staffed and inmates are sometimes left unsupervised, the Department of Justice said in a report Wednesday.

The department said the state failed to protect inmates’ safety, control contraband or investigate harm and misconduct.

“These basic safety failures and the poor living conditions inside the facilities promote violence, including sexual assault,” the department said. “Gangs operate in the void left by staff and use violence to control people and traffic contraband.”

The department investigated Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, South Mississippi Correctional Institution and Wilkinson County Correctional Facility. The new report says the conditions in those three prisons are similar to problems that the department reported in 2022 at Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.

“People do not surrender their constitutional rights at the jailhouse door,” Kristen Clarke, the department’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, said during a news conference Wednesday.

A spokesperson for the Mississippi Department of Corrections did not immediately respond to an email message from The Associated Press seeking response to the federal findings.

The new Justice Department report says “appalling conditions” in restrictive housing practices at the Central Mississippi and Wilkinson prisons cause “substantial risk of serious harm.”

“Restrictive housing units are unsanitary, hazardous, and chaotic, with little supervision,” the Justice Department said. “They are breeding grounds for suicide, self-inflicted injury, fires, and assaults.”

The department said the Mississippi Department of Corrections does not have enough staff to supervise the prison population, with job vacancy rates of 30% to 50%.

“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,” the Justice Department said. “Prison officials rely on ineffective and overly harsh restrictive housing practices for control.”

One of the prisons investigated was the South Mississippi Correctional Institute in Greene County. Established in 1989, South Mississippi is located on 360 acres in the city of Leakesville. South Mississippi holds a maximum of 2,882 people.

As of March 2022, there were 2,199 individuals incarcerated there. As of January 1, 2024, there were 2,804. South Mississippi houses minimum, medium, and close custody men. It has the second largest number of incarcerated individuals of any MDOC correctional facility, after Central Mississippi, according to the report.

One section of the report offered a detailed violent attack on an inmate who was transferred to South Mississippi.

“In one extreme example of the sexual violence, we interviewed an individual who experienced a sexual assault at South Mississippi. The individual had experienced prior assaults at Central Mississippi and another MDOC facility. Officials transferred him to South Mississippi after gang members stabbed him multiple times, sodomized him and put a “kill on site,” or “KOS” order on him.

“He reported that when he arrived at South Mississippi, he requested protective custody based on the prior assaults, but the South Mississippi administration initially denied his request. Instead, South Mississippi administrators housed him in general population, in a large, open-bay dormitory with gang members. While using the bathroom, someone held a lock-blade knife to his neck, escorted him into the shower,and raped him. The victim told us that he believes the attack was orchestrated, because gang members lined up around the bathroom to stop anyone from coming in while he was being assaulted.”

In another incident, this was offered:

A tower officer in South Mississippi observed what she described as the whole zone fighting in one housing unit of Area II and radioed for all available staff to respond. The first responding staff member waited before going in the zone because weapons were involved. Once more staff arrived and they opened the unit door, they found rival gang members lined up on separate sides of the unit, with non-affiliated persons gathered in the bathroom area. A security captain fired a “flash-bang” distraction device to gain compliance. One person died from stab wounds to his chest, back and head sustained in this incident. Another two stabbing victims went to an outside hospital, one had 15 puncture wounds to his upper torso and head, and the other had 7 stab wounds to his back, arms, face, and head. A subsequent search found multiple shanks and phones.

Gangs remain a severe problem in the prison population, according to the report, across all facilities.

Just in South Mississippi, the report detailed the problem.

From July 2020 through November 2021, MDOC data show that the number of validated gang members in the South Mississippi population each month ranged from a high of 1055 (40% of the monthly population in September 2019) to a low of 244 (10% of the monthly population in November 2021). While this data reflects a decline in the number of validated gang members in South Mississippi, gangs retain significant influence there.”

Gangs maintain order in the housing units, make bed assignments, control the flow of contraband, and use violence as punishment, the report said. Both staff and incarcerated individuals report that gangs are responsible for the flow of drugs into the facilities, leading to violence, extortion, and drug overdoses. The strength of prison gangs inside the MDOC facilities that were investigated “is so great that even some staff members have gang affiliations and are on the gangs’ payroll.”

Clarke said that because of “poor door security” and lack of supervision in Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, multiple incarcerated men were able to enter a women’s housing unit.

“They stayed and engaged in sexual activity for an extended period,” Clarke said. “Although the sexual activity was reportedly consensual, the other women in the unit felt unsafe and were at risk of harm.”