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Federal investigation into Mississippi prison system after 15 deaths

Stevicus

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
"Heinous, corrupt and evil": After 15 dead in Mississippi prisons, the feds step in

"It has reached a point of no return if our cry for help down here isn't heard both far and near," said a former inmate at Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman.

The way the conditions are described, it sounds more like a prison in some third-world authoritarian state, not a country which fancies itself as the "greatest" and "freest" in the world.

Keewin Grayer served 24 years in Mississippi's state prisons for drug offenses. The conditions he experienced on a daily basis were "inhumane," he said, "and well below the standards of any prison in America."

Food would contain insects, rodent feces and hair, he said. He went weeks without running water and showers as a form of group punishment, and prison staff would dangle promises of steak dinners and DVDs to inmates if they cleaned up the filth and mold before an outside agency came in to inspect.

Nasty stuff.

Grayer's stint included being locked up at Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman, one of four facilities where the federal government said Wednesday it plans to investigate a deepening crisis, amplified by a string of violent deaths and lockdowns and protests outside the Mississippi Capitol to "shut it down."

The governor of Mississippi said in his State of the State address that Parchman will be closed.

"The federal government coming in allows these other officials to see for themselves just how heinous, corrupt and evil the Department of Corrections are down here in Mississippi," Grayer said, "because it has reached a point of no return if our cry for help down here isn't heard both far and near."

There have been 15 deaths in the Mississippi prison system since December 29.

Since Dec. 29, at least 15 inmates have died across Mississippi's prisons, with several resulting from gang-related riots, according to officials. At least two of the deaths were suicide-related.

Vanita Gupta, the former head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division under President Barack Obama, tweeted Wednesday that the federal government's decision is "hugely important."

But she told NBC News she remains "cautious" about any proposed actions that would reform the prisons given how the department under the Trump administration has been limited in its use of consent decrees, formal agreements between the federal government and the state that make reforms binding.

"With this administration, one has to be cautious because of the slowdown of the work of the Civil Rights Division and because of the diminishing role of civil rights enforcement," said Gupta, now the CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a civil rights coalition. "I was very heartened to see the announcement with Mississippi given the gravity of the human rights violations alleged there."

In 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions rolled back certain Obama-era efforts, including how the department investigates police departments accused of a "pattern or practice of civil rights violations." Critics say the department under Trump has shifted its civil rights priorities and become less active in pursuing cases.

Thank God for Mississippi.
 
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