Parker Evatt, early reformer of South Carolina’s prison system, dies at 88

Parker Evatt, a former state legislator and S.C. Department of Corrections chief known as a staunch foe of the death penalty and for his efforts to help prisoners, died earlier this month. He was 88.

Although Evatt’s views opposing capital punishment were well known when he was selected to lead the Corrections Department, the job required that he oversee legally mandated executions.

In that position, he was in the electric chair chamber in 1994 when the state executed notorious serial killer Donald “Pee Wee” Gaskins.

“He always felt that since he was commissioner, he had to go down there and meet with them, face-to-face,” Evatt’s daughter, Kathy Evatt, a federal public defender, recalled. “It was very hard on him... He opposed the death penalty for religious reasons. He was a devout Methodist.”

Evatt, who was state prison “commissioner” (the top job is now called “director”) from 1987 to 1995, urged creative sentencing alternatives for non-violent offenders and in-prison programs to fight illiteracy and drug use. He also urged the state to hire more probation officers to handle more inmates who would be placed on probation.

For him, the job was a continuation of his work as a state lawmaker from 1974 to 1987, where he had worked for legislation on children’s matters and criminal justice reform issues.

“I don’t mind that violent offenders are locked up, but we need alternatives for many others,” Evatt told an annual S.C. Department of Parole meeting in 1987, according to a State newspaper article.

Evatt also led the Corrections Department at a historic moment: the 1994 closing of the 127-year-old Central Correctional Institution, the state’s first and oldest prison complex, which contained a five-tier granite structure called Cellblock One located in downtown Columbia. Built in 1867, Cellblock One’s dank insides resembled a huge medieval dungeon with prison cells the size of large doghouses. The building was notorious for its inhumane conditions and the violence of the prisoners who lived there..

“The final inmates of this Bastille will be released, and this chapter will be ended,” Evatt told a State newspaper reporter that day. “We’ve been asking for years to close this facility, and now it’s a reality.”

In 1987, Parker had been a state representative for 13 years when, under then-Gov. Carroll Campbell, he became head of the state prison system, which at that time had more than 14,000 inmates, 4,400 employees and a $156 million budget. At the time, the prison system was under a mandate to alleviate overcrowding.

With the backing of Campbell and influential Democratic and Republican supporters, Evatt won a 3-2 vote of the then corrections board to become commissioner.

In 1974, he won a seat as a Republican from Richland County in the S.C. House of Representatives.

Improving public education and addressing crime were his two top issues in the House campaign, in which he defeated former Columbia police chief Bill Campbell.

Parker received numerous awards, including Legislator of the Year in 1983 from the American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina for his work in the areas of incarceration and domestic violence.

In 1994, he was one of four people cited for the American Correctional Association’s highest award, the E.R. Cass award, given to people for outstanding contributions in the corrections field.

A native of Greenville, he joined the U.S. Navy after high school. After the Navy, he went to the University of South Carolina, where he studied engineering, then joined the state highway department.

He left the highway department in in 1966 for work for, first as a volunteer and then director, a fledgling organization that is now the Alston Wilkes Society, a major private agency that annually helps thousands of former inmates re-enter society, intervenes in the lives of at-risk youth, and helps veterans and their families and the homeless. Its budget is more than $12 million, and it has offices across the state.

In 1987, he gave up his job with the Alston Wilkes Society to lead the state prison department.

Anne Walker, current president of the Alston Wilkes Society, knew Evatt for more than 50 years.

“He was always the same person, no matter who he was with, no matter where he was. He always had a smile on his face, and he was always trying to figure out how to do some good in this world,” Walker said.

A memorial service to celebrate Parker’s life will be held on Friday, Dec. 30, at 2 p.m. at Virginia Wingard Memorial United Methodist Church, 1500 Broad River Road, Columbia, SC 29210, with a reception to follow at the church.