Read more: http://www.governing.com/topics/public-justice-safety/courts-corrections/mississippi-correction-reform.htmlMississippi's Corrections Reform
How America's reddest state -- and most notorious prison -- became a model of corrections reform.
BY: John Buntin | August 2010
In January 2002, Margaret Winter, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) National Prison Project, received a letter from Willie Russell, an inmate on Mississippi's death row.
"I am on a hunger strike to the death," the letter began. In highly idiosyncratic language, the letter then described conditions at the facility where death row was housed, Unit 32.
Unit 32 was one of seven prisons located on Mississippi's fabled penal ins ution, Parchman Farm. As described by Russell, it was also a lot like . Inmates were locked in permanent solitary confinement. In the summer, the cells were ovens, with no fans or air circulation. Russell's was even worse: He was in a special "punishment" cell with a solid, unvented Plexiglas door. The cells were also sewers, thanks to a design flaw in cellblock toilets that often flushed excrement from one cell into the next. Prisoners were allowed outside -- to pace or sit alone in metal cages -- just two or three times a week. Inside was a perpetual dusk: One always-on light fixture provided inadequate light for reading but enough light to make it hard to sleep.
Then there were the bugs. The only way to avoid being eaten alive, Russell wrote, was to wrap himself in clothes like a mummy, which made the brutal Delta heat even more unbearable. Worst of all, though, was the noise. Psychotic inmates screamed through the night. Conditions were so bad, Russell continued, that some dozen-odd other inmates -- about one-quarter of Mississippi's death row population -- had also joined the hunger strike.
"I had heard this sort of thing before," Winter says, "but I was gripped by the power of this letter. It was like something out of the Book of Genesis. It had a biblical grandeur to it. And I believed it." Winter hurriedly arranged a trip to Parchman Farm, where she met her correspondent for the first time. He was a giant of a man -- 6 feet 8 inches tall, 250 pounds. Though he was handcuffed, shackled, belly-chained and dressed in the distinctive, solid red jump suits worn by death row inmates, he clearly was a proud man, "fantastically imposing." But he already was visibly wasted by the hunger strike. His skin was ashen, his eyes bluish and dry.
"He didn't want false hope," she recalls. "He said he would stop if I would give him a solemn assurance that we could make changes -- significant changes. He didn't want to be strung along." He'd rather die now instead.
Winter told him that if she could corroborate what he was saying, she felt certain they could change conditions such that he would want to continue living and fighting his death sentence. Russell accepted the offer and agreed to end the hunger strike. Seven months later, in July 2002, the ACLU filed suit against the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) on behalf of Russell, five other inmates and those similarly situated. The ACLU alleged that "defendants knowingly subject the death row prisoners to barbaric and inhumane conditions, which wantonly inflict unnecessary pain and cons ute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and 14th amendments to the Cons ution of the United States."
But where Winter saw a noble giant, Parchman Farm staff saw the 41-year-old Russell as something else -- a murderer with a history of violent crime. In 1987, while serving an armed robbery sentence, Russell was sent to a Jackson, Miss., hospital for medical care. Once there, he kidnapped a guard and escaped, leading police on a high-speed chase that ended with a crash. He was sent to Unit 24 at Parchman Farm, a medium-security prison. Two years later, Russell broke out of his cell and killed a prison guard with a homemade shank. For that, a jury sent Russell to death row. In 2000, Russell shot at a prison guard with a homemade "zip gun." Not surprisingly, prison officials had little sympathy for him.
Many of the measures Russell decried were there (or not there) for a reason. Plexiglas on the cell doors was necessary to prevent inmates from flinging feces and urine at prison guards. Screens were missing because inmates used them to make shanks.
"Basically they didn't think we were doing anything right, and we thought they were all wrong," says MDOC Deputy Commissioner of Ins utions Emmitt Sparkman. And so the scene was set for a classic -- and wholly predictable-showdown, one pitting an idealistic civil liberties organization against a beleaguered corrections system.
Except that in the case of Mississippi, that's not what happened. Instead, in 2006, Sparkman's boss, MDOC Commissioner Christopher Epps, decided to do something very different: He invited the ACLU in. Shortly thereafter, Epps and Sparkman began a series of deeply counterintuitive reforms that risked their careers.
Epps didn't just take on Parchman Farm. He also challenged Mississippi's commitment to a punitive penal code that had doubled the state's inmate population and tripled its corrections budget in 10 years time.
In early 2008, Epps and his old colleague Sen. Willie Simmons teamed up to pass legislation that amended the state's truth in sentencing law, making nonviolent offenders eligible for parole after serving 25 percent of their sentences. More impressive still, they persuaded Epps' boss, Republican presidential hopeful Gov. Haley Barbour, to sign it. Since then, the state has quietly released more than 3,000 convicted felons. Moreover, Mississippi has accomplished this feat without the kinds of high-profile crimes that have embarrassed would-be corrections reformers in other states, such as Colorado and Illinois. As a result, America's reddest state -- and most notorious prison -- has become an unlikely model for reforming overcrowded prison systems...
Poor, poor death row inmates.
Overincarceration and uncons utional prison conditions cost states $$$. A lot of $$$.
Did you read the OP all the way through, or did you stop at the precipitating complaint?
Good read.
Texas sure could benefit from paroling a bunch of non violent offender types.
+10Good read.
The PIC incarcerating 1% of the population is just another measure of failure of the Greatest Country In The History Of The Universe.
Whether the prisoners are guilty or not, there's something definitely, seriously diseased about a society that incarcerates 1% of its population, even ignoring the extremely skewed numbers in color of the prisoners skins, ethnicity.
Compare that 1% against the 10s of 1000s lawyers, bankers, accountants, non-bank mortgage initiators that perpetrated the MBS/sub-prime/MERS crimes, and not one in jail or even indicted.
The PIC will buy enough, has bought enough, politicians that the situation will remain or get worse.
a "felony" for streaming a video? GMAFB
Are the numbers convicted of crimes similarly skewed?
*hint* You have to be convicted of a crime to be in prison.
Holy .
Ok, COMMIT then.
Do you have a point?
Ok, I'll subs ute the word commit.
I'm sure that makes sense in that gibbering sensorium of yours.
Instead of acting like re o Socrates why don't you just say what you mean? You've already derailed the thread, please make your damn point.
Actually, I'd just settle for DarrinS making a lucid point. No such luck tho.
Dammit WH!
Does Darrin have figures on the races of all crimes committed? Thats some I would like to see.
You're a ty excuse for a human, Darrin.
Thank you for the le of my next album. Re o Socrates. Winehole23, Creative Director.
See:
Uniform Crime Reports
Bureau of Justice Statistics National Crime Victimization Survey
This must be the new civility I've been hearing about.
I'll spoon feed you.
Minorities commit a disproportionate number of crimes and are therefore disproportionately represented in our prison system.
Thank you. This relates to the OP how?
It doesn't. But bouton's gets the stat for that rabbit path. Darrin just gets the assist.
I'm sick of Darrin trying to turn every thread into a racial foofaraw, is all. A little more topical focus would be nice.
Tuff on crime policies cost too much, without much appreciable benefit to public safety.
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