United States – Mississippi denied the constitutional rights of thousands of people being held in maximum and private prison facilities, where use of violence is conspicuous and the application of solitary confinement is a gateway to suicide and other harm, the U.S. Department of Justice asserts.
According to the Mississippi Civil Rights Division’s finding from the probe, insufficient number of workers in the state prisons mainly during nights have declared prisons to be dangerous.
“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 report said. “Prison officials rely on ineffective and overly harsh restrictive housing practices for control.”
The Mississippi Department of Corrections, working together with federal investigators and receiving an early version of the report, wasn’t able to respond to the questions on Wednesday, as was the Office of the Governor of Miss Tate Reeves.
The report focuses on the 7,200 people in the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, the South Mississippi Correctional Institution, and the Wilkinson County Correctional Facility, which are the three prisons.
Alongside the same investigation, the Justice Department sounded the alarm in 2022 about Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman Farm as well.
The Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) is in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the US Constitution which prohibit distasteful or unintended punishments and equal protection under the law, the Justice Department asserts.
The decision said that the state Department of Corrections did not take measures to prevent the risks of dangers inside its prisons deliberately. Nevertheless, the state tried to increase the pay of prison staff and limited the application of isolated confinement.
During the period between September 2020 and June 2022 more than 325 assaults or fights between inmates have been reported at the Central prison, and hospital care beyond prison walls had to be given to dozens of prisoners with serious injuries, the report said.
The report also shows how individuals’ resort to broomsticks, mop handles, crutches, shanks, welding shop tools, boiling hot water and even microwaves in arguments. Sexual violence also has high frequency, according to the report.
The report talks about how conditions in restrictive housing units were dangerous, even saying that those in those units attempting to get attention often resorted to extreme acts such as setting fires, flooding their cells, and cutting themselves with razors.
Among the other proposals the report made, it was advised that Mississippi state should increase the number of properly screened and trained staff members who are going to look after its prisons, refrain from the unnecessary utilization of solitary confinement, and improve the level of healthcare deliverance for imprisoned people.