Jerry Mitchell, Mississippi inmate raped twice behind bars in less than a year, Clarion-Ledger (Mar 22, 2018), https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2018/03/22/mississippi-inmate-raped-twice-behind-bars-less-than-year/449955002/
Mississippi inmate "J.H." fought back tears as he testified Thursday in federal court in Jackson that he was sexually assaulted twice behind bars in less than a year.
He said he was first sexually assaulted at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in September 2015.
After that, he tried to commit suicide and was eventually transferred to the private East Mississippi Correctional Facility where he was assaulted again.
The American Civil Liberties Union and Southern Poverty Law Center are arguing that the state has been aware of dangerous conditions at the East Mississippi prison. Defense attorneys, however, say the conditions are acceptable, and that some prisoners' harm is self-inflicted.
Located near Meridian, the prison is privately operated under contract by Utah-based Management and Training Corp.
Plaintiffs have presented reports compiled by prison staff that document conditions like inmate deaths and injuries and prison fires. Warden Frank Shaw testified Tuesday that he sees the reports before they are sent to the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
According to most recent reports presented by plaintiffs, 78 inmates were injured in June .
Four inmates have died so far in 2018, and one remains in intensive care.
Asked Thursday about the four deaths, Corrections Commissioner Pelicia Hall responded, "It is my goal that all the prisons operate in a safe and secure manner."
During plaintiffs' quizzing of Hall, U.S. District Court Judge William H. Barbour Jr. grew agitated, chastising what he said was repetitious and irrelevant questioning by plaintiffs' attorneys.
"I don't know where all this winding is going," the judge said. "If you can't tell me where you're going to go, I can't rule for you."
Dr. Bruce Carlson Gage, who oversees mental health in the Washington state prison system, testified Thursday that mental health care at East Mississippi is "dramatically substandard. There's a risk of harm, and there's actual harm as well."
Failures in that care were "pervasive," reflected by the high number of inmates injuring themselves, "far more than I have seen at any other facility," he said.
The prison has seen a suicide, he said. "This was a preventable suicide. There was no need for it to happen."
He called the prison's psychiatric intake "very inconsistent. ... They have missed people with serious mental illness."
In the 21 medical reports that he examined, he saw no intensive screenings, "much less a battery of tests," he said. "I didn't see any examples of what I would describe as a mental health assessment."
He said 130 inmates qualified for individual therapy and that the prison is providing no such therapy. He also said he saw no chemical dependency treatment for the seriously mentally ill.
Asked if he simply differed with the prison's medical experts on this matter, he responded, "no, this is Mental Health 101."
On Thursday, the judge repeatedly chastised the plaintiffs' lawyers, asking them to shorten their questioning. Finally, he asked Gage if the prison had done anything right with any patient.
Gage replied that he saw sound prescribing for mental patients, calling it "a real bright spot in the system."
Shortly before 5 p.m., Barbour chastised the plaintiffs' lawyers again. "The doctor is saying the same thing, over and over again," he said. "Mental health in this prison is not good."
The judge stomped out of the courtroom, ending the trial for the day.
In other testimony, Dexter Campbell testified that he saw fellow East Mississippi inmates influenced by drugs on a daily basis.
After being transferred to the private prison, J.H. testified that he spent his first few days in a holding cell with no toilet, bed or shower. To get the attention of corrections officers, he would beat on the window or kick the door, he said.
Asked if he was ever offered counseling, he replied, no.
"I was very unstable," he said. "I had lots of suicidal thoughts."
He was eventually transferred from the medical unit to a pod that held inmates who suffered from serious mental illnesses, he said.
Asked if he felt safe on the pod, he replied, no. "Some guys were sexually assaulting those who were mentally ill."
He said he complained to officials in June and July 2016 about the problem, but he wasn't transferred.
On Aug. 1, 2016, he said an inmate put a sheet up over the bars, hit him repeatedly on the back of the head and threw him down on the bed.
"He had a rock and said if I made a sound, he would beat me over the head," he said.
He began to cry. "I was scared," he said. "I didn't know what to do."
The sexual assault took place at night, and afterward, he went to his cell, he said. "I got under my sheet and cried."
The next morning, he said he mentioned what happened to a correctional officer, only to have the officer reply, "What did he do? Rape your little booty?"
He dialed the hotline to report the sexual assault, he said.
A prison investigator failed to tag his clothes, which contained evidence of the assault, and give them to authorities, he said. "I wanted to press charges."
He tried to commit suicide again, he said. "I took pills and swallowed a battery from my radio."
He said he often saw inmates wandering around when they were supposed to be locked down and that he saw inmates making weapons on a daily basis.
Under cross-examination, he said he has earned his GED at East Mississippi and is working on a bachelor's degree.
He said he now stays in the "Pathway to Change" pod, where about 66 inmates seek to change their lives.
Inmates have sessions for group therapy on addiction, public speaking and other topics, he said. "We run ourselves."
Wyatt Emmerich, Atrocities galore during testimony over mental prison, Northside Sun (Mar 22, 2018), https://northsidesun.com/opinion-columns/atrocities-galore-during-testimony-over-mental-prison
At one end of Jackson’s Congress Street sits the modern Federal Courthouse. At the other end sits our traditional State Capitol. They face each other at opposite ends of the street.
This physical juxtaposition has significant meaning this month. A class action suit will determine who runs the East Mississippi Correctional Facility (EMCF) in Meridian. Will it be the federal courts or the state executive branch?
For the last two weeks, I have listened to hours of testimony about EMCF, which has been designated as the state prison for criminals with mental illness. Eighty percent of the inmates suffer from a host of disorders including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and severe anxiety.
As a lifelong journalist, I consider myself somewhat jaded. But even I was unprepared for the magnitude of the alleged atrocities. It’s so bad, it’s almost hard to put into words.
The trial is open to the public. Bear in mind the defense has yet to make its case. I pray the plaintiffs have distorted the horrific conditions, but I fear they have not.
Prisoners testified EMCF is run by two gangs, the Vice Lords and the Gangster Disciples. Official staff is dependent on the gangs for the day-to-day operations.
Severely mentally ill patients are not given their medications, causing them to have seizures and psychotic breaks. They are beaten. They are locked in isolation where the lights and plumbing fail for weeks at a time. Their cells are rife with rats. They lose weight rapidly from inadequate food. Often the only way to get attention is to light a fire in their cell. They are constantly trying to kill themselves, typically by cutting themselves with scraps from broken light bulbs.
Except for the severely mentally ill locked in solitary, the other prisoners have innumerable ways of defeating their locks and come and go from their cells as they please. Non-stop bedlam. A genuine hellhole.
During what was supposed to be a lockdown, there was a gang fight on a video camera involving 30 prisoners. The video shows a prisoner in a wheelchair stabbed in the head.
Contraband is everywhere: Cigarettes, cell phones, pot, meth, prescription drugs, you name it. The gangs control the trade. Guards are in on it. It’s big business.
The gangs are a controlling force. They can assault who they want at will. The gang leadership decides what prisoner gets what cell.
Surprisingly, there is a great amount of documentation of this. For instance, the failure to do roll call is meticulously documented with daily reports. So are the fires, fights and failure to supply medicine. Over a thousand exhibits have been entered into evidence. Most are the prison’s own internal reports.
The testimony of one prisoner in particular is haunting me. He was a former network engineer from NASA Stennis Space Center on the coast. He suffers from schizophrenia, epilepsy, bipolar disorder and depression. He has lost weight to the point he looks like a ghost from the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp. He was convicted of rape and turned down a 10-year plea bargain. He wanted the death penalty. The judge gave him life.
This man was trembling so badly during his testimony he could barely keep from falling out of his chair. He told a harrowing story of being locked in a dark cell of solitary confinement. Plumbing and lighting would go out for weeks at a time. Medication was sporadic, causing him to have epileptic fits, hear voices and go crazy.
“I have, you know, murderous thoughts, suicidal thoughts, pains in my head, the shaking. I see and hear the voices. It’s almost unbearable sometimes. . . but if I get my medication I’m fine. I feel normal. I feel human again.”
I’m not sure what the best protocol is for treating mentally ill people, but I’d bet handing them over to the prison gangs is not a recommended procedure.
Bear in mind, mentally ill people are paranoid and delusional to begin with. Then you beat them up, starve them, withhold their medications, leave them in the dark with rats. Is it any wonder they constantly try to kill themselves? Prisoners cutting themselves is a daily occurrence. Suicides are rampant.
One outside prison inspector was shown a cell covered in blood. She took a photo. It was entered into the exhibits.
This inspector’s visit was known days in advance, but the prison staff didn’t even bother to clean up the blood on the floor. That’s how commonplace it is. That’s how bad it is. Blood, feces, roaches, rats are everywhere.
EMCF is run by the third largest prison management company in the country. It’s a publicly traded company, Management & Training Corp. They are caught up in the Chris Epps bribery scandal. Mississippi Attorney General has named them in a civil lawsuit he has filed.
The Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) has a compliance officer who testified about EMCF. Her reports show massive non-compliance. MDOC is supposed to be reimbursed for non-compliance, but it never was. It’s as though MDOC just didn’t care.
That’s the weird thing. Report after report show the atrocities but they were ignored.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) are behind the class action suit. Yazoo native William Barbour, Haley Barbour’s cousin, is presiding. There is no jury. He alone decides what to do.
Sitting day after day in the courtroom, I can’t help but like Judge Barbour. He seems wise and fair and can inject moments of humor in this dismal affair. A good friend from Yazoo City told me he is a class act and was his Boy Scout troop leader. “I don’t want to say he’s an Atticus Finch, but he’s close.”
I sense that Barbour has zero desire to run this prison by judicial fiat, but what is to be done? We can’t allow such barbarism in our state, even for psychotic drug dealers, rapists and murderers.
I asked two expert witnesses how EMCF compared to other facilities throughout the nation. They both said the same thing. It was the worst of the 50 or so prisons they had inspected. By far.
The Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution bans the infliction of “cruel and unusual punishments.”
Can Barbour do any better? Based on results throughout the country, court intervention can work. The courts can do what our politicians won’t do. Barbour doesn’t have to get elected. He can force the state to do what it takes. The irony is that a properly run prison could be less expensive, not more.
By the way, I am often the only “press” in the courtroom. The Clarion-Ledger, Jackson Free Press and Associated Press come and go sporadically. One day a New York Times reporter was there. Haven’t seen anybody from Facebook or Google. *No state officials of any kind are to be found. Nobody cares about crazy people, especially the criminal ones.
Sarah Mearhoff, Mississippi warden testifies on state prison conditions, Assoc. Press (Mar 20, 2018), https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/mississippi-warden-testifies-on-state-prison-conditions/
A warden testified Tuesday that he saw reports that document what plaintiffs argue are unconstitutionally abusive conditions at a Mississippi state prison.
The American Civil Liberties Union and Southern Poverty Law Center are arguing that the state has been aware of dangerous conditions at East Mississippi Correctional Facility. Defense attorneys, however, say the conditions are acceptable, and that some prisoners’ harm is self-inflicted.
Located near Meridian, the prison is privately operated under contract by Utah-based Management and Training Corp.
Warden Frank Shaw oversees the day-to-day operations of the notoriously violent prison.
Plaintiffs presented evidence Tuesday of reports compiled by prison staff that documents conditions like inmate deaths and injuries and prison fires. Shaw testified that he sees the reports before they are sent to the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
According to most recent reports presented by prosecutors, 78 inmates were injured in June 2017.
Four inmates have died so far in 2018, and one remains in intensive care. When asked whether he considers this a large number of deaths in a year, Shaw said, “Every corrections facility I’ve ever worked in has had a certain number of deaths.”
Fires, qualified as major or minor, are also documented. According to reports presented Tuesday, there were no fires over 11 months.
But several inmates have testified during the three weeks of the federal trial that fires are started by inmates on a daily basis, and plaintiffs have presented video evidence of such. Oftentimes, fires are started in cells to get guards’ attention.
Shaw testified that inmate fires are not documented. He said, “disaster fires” would be reported.
When asked if he considers fires started by inmates a “major problem,” Shaw said no. Video evidence of fires from 2016 and 2017 presented by prosecutors, he said, is outdated.
Plaintiffs also argued that much of the prison’s violence can be attributed to insufficient supervision.
Several inmates have testified that guards were not present during attacks or medical emergencies. Shaw testified he is ultimately responsible for ensuring mandatory security posts at the prison are filled “if at all possible.”
If guards leave their posts while on duty, Shaw said they are disciplined “depending on how often it happens and what the type of abandonment may be.”
In addition to the reports, plaintiffs showed video evidence of several incidents involving prison guards. In two incidents, they were standing back as an unrestrained inmate assaulted another. Shaw said they did so to protect their own safety.
In other videos, guards used pepper spray to subdue inmates while they were in their cells. The intention is to cause inmates pain, forcing them to subdue. Pepper spray can irritate eyes and induce coughing.
When asked if cells are decontaminated after being sprayed before inmates are put back inside, Shaw said there is not a “blanket policy on how to decontaminate a cell.” Sometimes a blower is used to air out the cell, and other times, Shaw said keeping the cell door open is enough.
Shaw is one of the state’s primary witnesses for the defense and will testify again once it begins to make its case in the coming weeks.
Whitney Downard, Doctor calls conditions at East Mississippi Correctional Facility 'the worst', Meridian Star (Mar 14, 2018), http://www.meridianstar.com/news/witness-testifies-about-harm-of-solitary-confinement-at-east-mississippi/article_e8066086-2868-11e8-8c97-13427eec659f.html
A psychiatrist called as a witness against the East Mississippi Correctional Facility testified Thursday that solitary confinement had severe and lasting psychological effects on all prisoners but especially those with mental illness.
“My opinion, urgently, is to remove all prisoners with serious mental illness from solitary confinement,” Dr. Terry Kupers, a psychiatrist, said about the privately-run prison near Meridian.
Plaintiffs and defendants have estimated that 80 percent, or over 1,000, prisoners at EMCF has some form of a mental health diagnosis.
Two inmates also testified about their experiences at EMCF.
John Hale said he believed that gangs ran the facility because he said they assigned housing and ran the kitchens. He said he had been forced to move cells because of threats from gangs.
Merlin Hill told the court Thursday afternoon that the prison didn’t fulfill his seizure or schizophrenia medication in a timely manner.
Hill visibly shook during his testimony, a side effect, he said, of not receiving his medication since Wednesday morning. The medication is supposed to be taken twice daily.
According to prison logs presented by the plaintiff, medical staff said Hill refused to take the medication. Hill testified that he had never refused medication and that staff frequently let his prescription “run out.”
Once, after 13 days, Hill filed a sick log request for his appropriate medication. Hill, who had been at EMCF for nearly 17 years, said that every month he goes at least a few days without one of his prescribed medications.
“Sometimes I have murderous thoughts, suicidal thoughts, pain in my head,” Hill said about withdrawals. “It’s unbearable sometimes… I’ve got bad pain behind my eyes and I’m shaking pretty badly. The pain goes away after the first day or two without my (medication).”
Solitary confinement
Unit 5, the focus of Thursday morning’s testimony, houses inmates in solitary confinement.
Kupers has assisted as a consultant and provided testimony inputs cases against the Mississippi Department of Corrections, which oversees EMCF, concerning solitary confinement in Mississippi State Penitentiary, or Parchman.
In the bench trial, which started March 5, Judge William H. Barbour Jr., of the U.S. Southern District Court in Jackson, will issue a judgement.
Kupers frequently expressed surprise at the conditions he witnessed while touring EMCF on multiple occasions, most recently in May of 2016.
“I have never seen so many locks being tampered with and broken,” Kupers said. “I’ve never seen this many fires. I’ve never seen this many incidents of self-harm. I have never seen a facility where light bulbs don’t function. It’s a basic need of people.”
Kupers recommended that the prison decrease the size of its solitary confinement block and reduce the time that prisoners can be held in solitary to 14 days.
“What we do know from the data is that the longer people spend in solitary confinement the worse the damage,” Kupers said, adding that many others advocated for completely abolishing solitary confinement.
“The conditions in solitary confinement at EMCF are the worst I have witnessed in my 40 years as a forensic psychiatrist investigating jail and prison conditions,” Kupers said in a submitted report.
Plaintiffs presented photos of doors with what appeared to be burn marks on several solid metal doors throughout the facility.
An illustration from the plaintiffs mapped out fires in Unit 5 and documented 66 fires between Feb. 25 and March 12, with a high of 11 fires on Feb. 26.
The defense asked Kupers about past work on solitary confinement conditions, of which Kupers said he’d testified in roughly 30 cases. Kupers said he nearly always worked with plaintiffs in these cases.
During the cross examination, Kupers remained critical of the staff at EMCF.
“I’ve never seen custody officers as callous and uncaring… never, in my 40 years of work,” Kupers said.
Attorneys representing the prison have argued during the trial the facility is under new management since the 2013 lawsuit was originally filed.
Since the lawsuit, EMCF was transferred from the GEO Group to the Management and Training Corporation, according to defense attorneys. For healthcare, the state contracted Health Assurance.
Whitney Downard, Psychiatrist: Solitary confinement hurts Mississippi inmates, Assoc. Press (Mar 15, 2018), http://www.meridianstar.com/region/psychologist-solitary-confinement-hurts-mississippi-inmates/article_6f224903-c486-5d0a-8415-b9dad63e0241.html
A psychiatrist testified Thursday in a trial about prison conditions that solitary confinement at a Mississippi prison is "shockingly harsh and inhumane," saying long stays in solitary cause serious damage to the mentally ill inmates held there.
Dr. Terry Kupers testified that East Mississippi Correctional Facility needs to remove seriously mentally ill patients from solitary confinement. The Meridan Star reports that he said conditions in the prison's medical unit are as bad as solitary confinement. He also said prison guards at the privately run prison near Meridian are more "callous and uncaring" than at any prison he's ever examined.
"The conditions in solitary confinement at EMCF are the worst I have witnessed in my 40 years as a forensic psychiatrist investigating jail and prison conditions," Kupers said.
U.S. District Judge William Barbour Jr. is hearing testimony in the bench trial which began March 5. He will rule on whether conditions at the prison run by Utah-based Management and Training Corp. violate constitutional prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment.
State lawyers have said at the trial that the prison has improved since lawyers for plaintiffs began scrutinizing it and that whatever failings it may have don't violate constitutional rights. The defense asked Kupers about past work on solitary confinement conditions, of which Kupers said he'd testified in roughly 30 cases. Kupers said he nearly always worked with plaintiffs in these cases.
Kupers testified that solitary confinement conditions at EMCF increased the risk of "lasting and serious psychological harm" when confinement lasted more than 14 days. Mental illness serves to exacerbate risks, and more than 80 percent of inmates at the prison are under some sort of care for mental illness.
"What we do know from the data is that the longer people spend in solitary confinement the worse the damage," Kupers said.
Kupers said he urgently advocated that prisoners with serious mental illnesses be removed from solitary confinement.
Plaintiffs presented photos showing what appeared to be burn marks on several solid metal doors throughout the facility. An illustration from the plaintiffs mapped out fires in Unit 5 and documented 66 fires between Feb. 25 and March 12, with a high of 11 fires on Feb. 26. "I've never been in a prison with so much evidence of fires or where walls weren't cleaned following a fire," Kupers said.
He added that inmates are also cutting themselves frequently, in a sign of distress. "I've never seen this degree of cutting in a correctional setting," he said.
Inmate Merlin Hill told the court Thursday that the prison frequently doesn't provide his seizure and schizophrenia medications. Hill visibly shook during his testimony, a side effect, he said, of not receiving his medication since Wednesday morning. The medication is supposed to be taken twice daily.
According to prison logs presented by the plaintiff, medical staff said Hill refused to take the medication. Hill testified that he had never refused medication and that staff frequently let his prescription "run out."
Also read: Clergy for Prison Reform calls for an end to private prisons
Once, after 13 days, Hill filed a sick log request for his appropriate medication. Hill, who had been at EMCF for nearly 17 years, said that every month he goes at least a few days without one of his prescribed medications.
By Arielle Dreher, Sabotage, Death, Danger: Private Prison on Trial, Jackson Free Press (Mar 14, 2018), http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2018/mar/14/sabotage-death-danger-private-prison-trial/
By Arielle Dreher, Jackson Free Press (March 14, 2018) :link:
— Terry Beasley remembers a white guy locked in his cell in East Mississippi Correctional Facility one night in 2017, dying. "He was blue," Beasley, an inmate serving a life sentence for a homicide-murder conviction, said in U.S. District Judge William Barbour's courtroom on Friday, March 9.
Some inmates started banging on their windows to try to get the officers' attention, but it took more than an hour for officers to come down to the man's cell from what he could tell from his own cell that night, Beasley said. Eventually, medical staff and the captain came into the zone and recovered the man's body.
"It made me feel scared because I'm a diabetic, and you never know when your sugar (could) drop," said Beasley, who is also asthmatic and diabetic.
Beasley used to clean out cells at the prison in Lauderdale County. On the stand, he described life "in the zone" at one of Mississippi's three private prisons in federal court. He testified that he misses his morning insulin treatment "a lot" whenever the officer in the tower does not let him out of his cell to go get the medication.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, the National Prison Project of the ACLU and two other law firms brought a class-action lawsuit against the Mississippi Department of Corrections back in 2013 due to conditions at EMCF. After the department refused to settle twice, the case went to trial this month in what is expected to be at least a month-long ordeal.
Operated by the Utah-based Management and Training Corporation since 2012, EMCF is one of three private prisons in the state that MTC operates. MDOC is responsible for the facility and stations a monitor there to track how the facility operates. More than 80 percent of the inmates there are on some type of mental-health medication or treatment protocol.
The lawsuit alleges that conditions at the prison violate the Eighth Amendment rights of prisoners housed there. Attorneys must prove in court that inmates receive "cruel and unusual punishment" as a result of being housed there.
The State of Mississippi hired two private law firms to defend MDOC in the case. Their position is that the department is not "deliberately indifferent" to the treatment of inmates at the prison. In his opening statement, W. Thomas Siler Jr. encouraged Judge Barbour to go see the facility for himself. He said EMCF has made great strides and changed a lot since MTC took over the facility in 2012.
"We disagree with their conclusion that we're not adequately staffed," Siler said, noting that many of the issues with the facility and with contraband are "issues caused by sabotage by inmates."
Attorneys defending the state asked the judge to take anecdotal evidence with a grain of salt, emphasizing that the focus of the case needs to be on whether or not the state has violated the Eighth Amendment rights of prisoners. "Are any of the issues they're complaining about current and ongoing?" Siler said.
Missing Basics
Warden Frank Shaw, who runs the prison, is sitting in on the trial, and the State plans to call him as a witness and use him to represent one of the named defendants in the case. The lawsuit names Department of Corrections Commissioner Pelicia Hall as well as Gloria Perry, the chief medical officer at MDOC, and Archie Longley, the deputy commissioner of institutions. Shaw is a Management and Training Corporation employee, however. The private company is not a party to the lawsuit, however.
"The state is responsible for whether it's run properly, and that's what at issue," Judge Barbour told the court last week.
Inmates wore black-and-white striped bottoms, chains around their waists jangling and white tops with the words "MDOC INMATE" across the back. They sat right across the room from the State's attorneys and Shaw. Attorneys representing the prisoners plan to have at least two inmates in the courtroom every day throughout the trial. They will call some of the prisoners as witnesses as the trial unfolds.
In the first week, the plaintiffs called nine witnesses, beginning with Eldon Vail, a 35-year veteran corrections officer and operator from Washington state. Vail visited the prison once in 2014 and again in 2016 to evaluate the state of the prison, including safety, security and staffing levels.
"I concluded that it's a very dangerous facility," Vail testified last week, saying that the "basics" were missing.
"There are not a sufficient number of correctional officers, and most of their problems stem from that issue."
Vail reviewed thousands of documents and conducted interviews the plaintiffs' attorneys arranged. He could not interview prison staff, however. MDOC keeps a monitor at the Meridian private prison to report progress and inadequacies at the facility. The weekly and monthly monitor reports confirmed and reinforced his initial conclusion about the facility, he testified.
"You see the same kinds of issues occurring over and over again," he said.
'Logic Is Not Logic'
Staffing concerns and who is responsible for what happens inside prison walls came up repeatedly in testimony. The inmates who worked as porters in 2015 and 2016 cleaning cells testified to seeing fires daily and cleaning up blood after inmates stuck their hands out of their cells' food slots or from cutting themselves.
The facility, like most prisons in the state, has a contraband problem. In March 2017, visiting privileges at the prison were suspended after back-to-back contraband shakedowns revealed that inmates were posting on the Internet, presumably from contraband cell phones.
"MDOC officials searched a specific section of the facility after learning of an inmate posting live on Facebook last weekend," a March 7, 2017, press release from MDOC says.
Attorneys representing the State said that a lot of incidents—from fires to contraband cell phones to self-harm incidents—are the inmates' fault. How far responsibility stretches to the State—and MTC's employees by extension—to keep the facility in order is at the heart of the case.
Eddie Pugh, an inmate who sat in court all last week and testified Friday, described an incident late last year when a new inmate came to his housing unit. Correctional officers expected inmates to choose where the new inmate would live, Pugh said, and when inmates refused to find him a place, they were put on lockdown.
"We were in the dark for three weeks; we were forced into the cells at gunpoint," Pugh said in court last Friday.
Pugh told the court about how some inmates force others out of their cells and have to sleep on the floor of other cells.
"Do the gangs make that decision?" Judge Barbour asked him.
"To truly understand EMCF, you'd have to be there more than one time...," Pugh responded.
"Why shouldn't every man have his own bed?" Barbour asked.
"I agree with you," Pugh said. "... Logic is not logic in this place."
The trial continues this week, as attorneys representing inmates have about two-and-a-half more weeks of testimony to offer. Defendants will not take nearly as long, Siler told the court.
Jerry Mitchell, Gangs 'running things' at private prison, Clarion-Ledger (Mar 13, 2018), https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2018/03/13/gangs-private-prison/421008002/
In its lawsuit against Mississippi, the American Civil Liberties Union and Southern Poverty Law Center argue that the state has been aware of East Mississippi Correctional Facility's unconstitutionally abusive conditions.
After evidence in federal court Tuesday detailed problems with gang members “running things” at the private East Mississippi Correctional Facility, Mississippi’s contract monitor refused to discuss the matter on the witness stand.
After meeting with the monitor and lawyers, U.S. District Judge William Barbour Jr. cited the sensitivity of the matter and ordered reporters out of courtroom Tuesday morning for the rest of that testimony because it involved inmates by name..
In its lawsuit against Mississippi, the American Civil Liberties Union and Southern Poverty Law Center argue that the state has been aware of East Mississippi Correctional Facility's unconstitutionally abusive conditions. The state’s defense attorneys argue the prison conditions are acceptable and that some of the prison’s ailments can be attributed to inmates’ self-sabotage.
In a May 5, 2015, email, Vernell Thomas, who monitors the East Mississippi Correctional Facility near Meridian, wrote that “several prisoners seem to be running things, even though some are in (segregation) units," where inmates are supposed to remain in their cells at least 22 hours a day.
Thomas, who is an employee of the Mississippi Department of Corrections, testified that was a problem then, but not now.
She reported repeatedly on problems of cleanliness in 2014 and 2015.
In March 2015, the American Correctional Association gave a score of 100 to the prison, operated by Utah-based Management and Training Corp. (Epps was a longtime ACA president.)
“All units have improved with the cleaning due to the ACA in March,” Thomas wrote in an email.
Inmates have complained in testimony about unsanitary conditions and health care services. About 80 percent of the 1,200 inmates at the facility are under some form of mental health care.
A Clarion Ledger series in 2014, “Hard Look at Hard Time,” detailed the problems of corruption, violence against inmates and the power of gangs inside the prisons.
Then-Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps is now serving just shy of 20 years in prison for running one of the largest and longest criminal conspiracies in the state's history.
Thomas used the word gangs in a series of 2015 emails, complaining repeatedly to prison officials about the unsolved problem.
In a July 1, 2015, email, she wrote that gang members were selling “drugs to offenders and staff is aware, but does nothing.”
When she visited the segregation unit, she saw an inmate, who had been caught with cocaine, meth, marijuana, shanks and a sim card, outside his cell, “working” the unit.
She wrote that gang members and leaders assigned to segregation units were being allowed to work outside those units unsupervised.
“These are 10 offenders who have been calling the shots/running the offenders/staff here with the ability to move almost anywhere they want to go,” she wrote in an Oct. 14, 2015, email.
Until testimony was closed to the media, she named the inmates, one by one, who were controlling each pod.
One inmate on the segregation unit “still runs things and staff,” she wrote. “He even questions me.”
When she removed a broom from the pod, she wrote he replied, “You must not know who I am.”
Another inmate, serving a life sentence for murder, maintained “control even though he’s supposed to be locked down constantly,” she wrote.
Thomas wanted the gang members transferred to other prisons.
Other emails and reports by Thomas detailed continuing problems with understaffing, cleanliness, lighting and leaving out mops and broomsticks that could be used as weapons.
"Staff are leaving the pods unmanned," she wrote, later complaining, "When are we going to correct this serious matter?"
When visited the prison at 2 a.m. on April 3, 2015, she found people missing from their posts, including no one at the search desk. When she emailed Tony Compton, who oversees the private prisons for the state Department of Corrections, he replied, "Amazing what you find when they least expect you to come in."
During her testimony, Thomas struggled to come up with the minimum number of correctional officers that the prison should have each shift.
Barbour, who will make the decision in the case, was puzzled, telling her, "I frankly don't understand why you don't know what the exact count should be."
Plaintiffs’ lawyers asked Deputy Corrections Commissioner Jerry Williams about EMCF’s staffing shortfalls (24 out of 30 of the day shifts lacking some mandatory staff positions in November 2016).
Defense lawyers challenged those numbers, saying the numbers in the staffing reports weren’t actually correct.
“That leads me to believe the prison doesn’t know what they’re doing,” the judge said. “I don’t understand why that is not accurate.”
Defense lawyers told the judge that just because no one is listed beside the mandatory positions doesn’t mean the positions have gone unfilled.
Williams was asked about the problems of inmates jamming doors, sometimes getting out and assaulting other inmates, which has happened at the private prison.
Asked if the Corrections Department had ever studied whether hardware should be installed to stop that problem, Williams replied, “Not that I’m aware of.”
Of the 97 reports Thomas filed between 2014 and 2017, 88 cited the problem of inmates covering up their doors and windows.
Asked if it was a security risk for the windows to be covered, she said yes and that she asked them to take it down if she was inspecting, “and they put them right back up.”
Asked if one reason for keeping these windows clear would be to prevent rape, she replied, “Anything can happen in prison.”
Sarah Mearhoff, Inmates testify on East Mississippi conditions, Assoc. Press (Mar 10, 2018), https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/mississippi/articles/2018-03-10/inmates-testify-on-east-mississippi-conditions
JACKSON — Three inmates testified in federal court Friday that a Mississippi state prison has unsanitary conditions, is inadequately staffed and provides insufficient health care.
In its federal suit against the state of Mississippi, the American Civil Liberties Union and Southern Poverty Law Center argue that the state has been aware of East Mississippi Correctional Facility's unconstitutionally abusive conditions. The state's defense attorneys argue that the prison conditions are acceptable and some of the prison's ailments can be attributed to inmates' self-sabotage.
The prison, located near Meridian, is privately operated under contract by Utah-based Management and Training Corp.
All three inmates described instances of failing plumbing, such as sewage backups that caused feces to seep through shower and cell drains, or broken, unusable cell toilets. Inmate Terry Beasley said at one point, the water in his cell's sink ran black.
The inmates also described periods where the electricity failed and lights in their cells would go out - sometimes for weeks at a time.
Defense attorneys said these instances could be attributed to the inmates, saying they "tear up" the facilities. And when there were maintenance problems, they said EMCF sends maintenance workers to address them.
According to the testimonies, the unsanitary conditions extended into the prison's food facilities. Eddie Pugh, who worked in the kitchen for nearly a year, described it as "nasty," saying he could point out hundreds of roaches in the kitchen at any given time. And when making repairs in the kitchen, inmate and maintenance worker Saul Mata said he saw roaches and mouse droppings.
Defense attorneys argued that Pugh worked in the kitchen back in 2015 and the conditions could be different now, and that the prison has passed its state health inspections.
Each inmate also testified that guards did not consistently monitor their cell blocks. According to the inmates, guards make counts once every 30 to 40 minutes during the day, then leave the inmates unmonitored. In emergency situations, the inmates said it is difficult to get officers' attention.
Beasley, who works as a porter in the prison, said a common way for prisoners to try to get officers' attention was to start a fire within their cell, or cut themselves and stick their bleeding arms out of the tray slots in their doors.
In one instance, Beasley said he saw an inmate die after bleeding out on his cell floor. A guard did not respond until after inmates were banging on the door of the cellblock to get his attention.
Beasley said he has diabetes, and if his sugar drops too low, he can go into shock and eventually die. When asked by prosecutors how it makes him feel to know that officers can take this long to respond in the event of a medical emergency, Beasley began crying and answered, "It's scary."
Pugh said he has Crohn's Disease. Sometimes, he said, prison nurses forget to order refills of his medication and he can go without it for weeks at a time.
When asked what he does in this situation, Pugh said, "be in agony."
In each of the inmates' cross-examinations, defense attorneys noted the inmates' mental illness diagnoses and their convictions.
The trial is estimated to take up to six weeks and will resume Monday.
Whitney Downard, East Mississippi Correctional Facility called dangerous in day 1 of trial, Meridian Star (Mar 05, 2018), http://www.meridianstar.com/news/local_news/east-mississippi-correctional-facility-called-dangerous-in-day-of-trial/article_ea502260-c2dc-52c2-bb7b-c42d85422cad.html
Plaintiffs argued in federal court Monday that the Mississippi Department of Corrections failed to provide constitutionally mandated care to East Mississippi Correctional inmates. Defendants countered, saying that the facility is under new management since the 2013 lawsuit was originally filed.
Both sides gave opening arguments Monday in the U.S. Southern District Court in Jackson before Judge William H. Barbour Jr.
Elissa Johnson, one of the attorneys from the Southern Poverty Law Center representing the inmates, said MDOC has failed its constitutional mandate to inmates.
“MDOC has been aware of these violations for years and has done nothing,” Johnson said, citing high rates of assault and use of force in the facility.
Johnson, and her fellow attorneys from several law firms, concentrated on seven specific areas: use of isolation, excessive use of force, lack of protection from harm, sanitation, environmental conditions, physical health and mental health.
Johnson described doors that didn’t lock, prisoners who waited days before receiving medical treatment and occurence of contraband in the facility.
“EMCF is far above any acceptable level of violence,” Johnson said.
Johnson said that expert witnesses for the plaintiffs indicated that the facility was understaffed.
Defendants used two firms to counter the plaintiffs claims: Phelps Dunbar and Bradley Arant Boult Cummings, both of Jackson. Bradley, etc. handled the claims regarding physical health and mental health while Phelps Dunbar addressed the remaining five concerns.
The defense invited Barbour to tour the facilities himself to see the conditions.
“We believe we are more than adequately staffed,” W. Thomas Silar Jr., with Phelps Dunbar, said. “I don’t think the court will find any current or ongoing action that is in violation of the eighth amendment.”
The eighth amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects citizens from cruel and unusual punishment, which plaintiffs allege has occurred a EMCF.
The defense discussed how since the lawsuit, EMCF has transferred from the GEO Group to the Management and Training Corporation. For healthcare, the state contracted Health Assurance.
Dr. Carl Reddix, who owned Health Assurance, was sentenced to six years in a bribery scheme that included former MDOC Commissioner Christopher Epps.
“I think it’s safe to say... (the new warden, Frank Shaw) found a facility in some state of disrepair that was not well managed,” Silar said. “As he’ll tell you, the facility has changed a great deal. He is proud of what he has done.”
Both the defense and the plaintiffs said that more than 80 percent of inmates at East Mississippi Correctional Facility have some form of a mental health diagnosis.
Michael Bentley, with Bradley, etc., who introduced the conviction of Reddix, said both Reddix and Epps are gone, “and we’re not here to defend their criminal conduct... this case is not about what was happening in 2015, but what is happening in the prison today.”
Eldon Vail, the plaintiff’s expert witness, disagreed, saying he believe the facility was understaffed.
“I concluded that it’s a very dangerous facility with significant risk of harm and some actual harm,” Vail, with nearly 35 years of experience in the state of Washington’s department of corrections, said.
Vail cited his experience in prisons across the county, saying many of the problems with the facility stemmed from the understaffing. Vail said that prisoners, especially prisoners with mental illnesses, needed correctional officers in the units to maintain order.
“It’s my opinion that there are not enough correctional officers to establish basic control,” Vail said. “They can’t establish enough control of the units to stop (assaults, etc.) from happening.”
Vail testified for approximately an hour before Barbour adjurned the bench trial until 9 a.m. Tuesday.
“This is not a normal prison. It is an extraordinarily dangerous prison,” Vail said.
R.L. Nave, State, private prisons again on trial in Mississippi, Miss. Today (Mar 05, 2018), https://mississippitoday.org/author/rlnave/
For the second time in less than three years, the state of Mississippi is in federal court defending a lawsuit against one of its privately run prisons.
The trial begins Monday in the case of Dockery v. Hall about conditions at East Mississippi Correctional Facility. The 1,500-bed facility in Meridian is designated to house the most severely mentally ill prisoners in the state; approximately 80 percent of the prisoners there have been diagnosed with a mental illness.
The lawsuit was filed in May 2013 after a two-year investigation by civil-liberty advocacy groups. The case later was granted class-action status with more than 1,100 members.
The lawsuit alleges that the Mississippi Department of Corrections “has deliberately ignored or failed to remediate the life-threatening conditions that persist” at the prison, which is operated by a Centerville, Utah-based company — Management & Training Corp., the third largest private corrections firm in the United States. Named as a defendant is Pelicia Hall, appointed commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections in March after serving as interim commissioner for two months.
“Plaintiffs face a substantial risk of serious harm — including death — living in an extremely dangerous prison environment that is marked by understaffing and staff abdication of even minimal security functions, significant gang control, malfunctioning cell door locking mechanisms, and prevalently available weapons,” attorneys for the prisoners bringing the suit wrote in the original complaint.
Jody Owens, managing attorney for the Mississippi Southern Poverty Law Center, said the conditions that existed in the prison when his organization first filed the lawsuit, with the American Civil Liberties Union and private law firms, persist today.
“Prisons are large facilities and, particularly, private prisons have a pattern and practice of understaffing their prisons,” Owens said on a recent conference call with reporters.
The Mississippi Department of Corrections declined to comment for this story, saying the agency would present its case in court.
Issa Arnita, a spokesman for the private prison company — which is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit although its employees will testify during the trial — said he could not talk about specific allegations because of the ongoing court case.
“We can say — unequivocally — that the East Mississippi Correctional Facility is safe, secure, clean, and well run. From the warden on down, our staff are trained to treat the men in our care with dignity and respect. Our mission is to help these men make choices in prison and after they’re released that will lead to a new and successful life in society,” Arnita said in an emailed statement.
The statement also included information about staffing and security improvements made at East Mississippi Correctional Facility since 2012 such as installing a full-body scanner, motion sensors and upgraded fencing. In addition, the company has enhanced training for all staff members and added additional staff in some areas.
Attorneys paint a picture of life in the prison that is much more grim.
Owens points to four deaths that have occurred at the prison since the beginning of 2018, two of which he says were caused by overdose of a synthetic marijuana called spice and one because a prisoner choked in the dining hall.
“They do not have enough officers (and) people are literally selling their food to avoid fights,” he said.
Eric Balaban, senior staff attorney with the ACLU National Prison Project, said even though the prison has a large population of seriously mentally ill prisoners “the most basic elements of a mental health care system are absent.”
“As a result, very seriously mentally ill men who are warehoused at this facility unnecessarily suffer. They grow more ill, they grow more psychotic, they grow more isolated,” Balaban said.
Mississippi contracts with Centurion of Mississippi LLC, a division of St. Louis-based Centene Corp., to provide medical services at all of its facilities. The three-year contract is worth $150 million, state records show.
Erin Monju, with Washington-D.C. based law firm Covington & Burling, noted that three different companies have provided medical services at the prison since 2011, all of which she said have been “grossly inadequate”
“It is MDOC’s obligation to ensure that state prisoners receive adequate health care. It is also MDOC’s responsibility to ensure that their contractors abide by the contract paid for and abide by the terms of the contract,” she said.
“These contractors have received multi-million dollar contract from Mississippi but Mississippi isn’t receiving the services it paid for,” Monju added. “No one at MDOC is holding these contractors to account.”
The lawsuit comes three years after prisoner-rights attorneys argued in federal court to leave in place a settlement at Walnut Grove Correctional Facility in Leake County, also run by Management & Training Corp.
After several days of hearings, the judge in that case ordered the prison to remain under federal consent decree. In 2016, Mississippi shuttered the facility as a prison but announced that it would explore other uses, including possibly to house mentally ill prisoners.
Jerry Mitchell, Hunger strike in East Mississippi prison before trial, Clarion-Ledger (Mar 02, 2018), https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2018/03/02/hunger-strike-east-mississippi-prison-eve-trial/389225002/
Attorney General Jeff Sessions signed a memo reversing an Obama-era order that sought to limit the use of private prisons. Video provided by Newsy Newslook
Days from a trial centered on problems at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility, some inmates went on a short hunger strike.
Issa Arnita, a spokesman for Management & Training Corp., which runs the private prison in Meridian along with the Marshall County Correctional Facility and Wilkinson County Correctional Facility, confirmed the hunger strike by some inmates on Thursday.
He explained that MTC is combatting contraband in all three prisons. Part of that effort has included a Correctional Emergency Response Team conducting daily, unannounced contraband searches of all of its housing units.
After a search of one of the East Mississippi housing units on Wednesday, CERT discovered several items of contraband, the bulk being cellphones and cellphone chargers, he said.
Under state Department of Corrections rules, housing units are placed under lockdown after the discovery of contraband.
Several inmates went on a hunger strike to reportedly protest that shakedown.
Arnita said inmates in the housing unit on lockdown ate breakfast but refused to eat lunch on Thursday.
He said inmates ate dinner on Thursday night and breakfast on Friday morning without incident.
A trial is slated to begin Monday in U.S. District Court in a class-action lawsuit filed by inmates at the East Mississippi prison, alleging violence, dysfunctional mental health care system, filthy cells and other woes.
Jimmie E. Gates, Federal lawsuit over 'barbaric' conditions at prison slated for trial Monday, Clarion-Ledger (Mar 02, 2018), https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2018/03/02/federal-lawsuit-over-barbaric-conditions-prison-slated-trial-monday/389683002/
Tales of murder, sexual favors, contraband and neglect. The Governor's Task Force on No-Bid Contracts for the Mississippi Department of Corrections got an ear-full from inmates' families during a public forum in Jackson on Friday. Hear their stories.
Four inmates have died in the last two months, including two who died of opioid overdoses, said attorneys for inmates in a federal class-action lawsuit over conditions at the private-run East Mississippi Correctional Facility near Meridian.
Inmates are still living in barbaric and horrific conditions and their basic human rights are violated daily, said Jody Owens of the Southern Poverty Law Center Mississippi office.
On Friday, the attorneys conducted a phone press briefing about the trial in the 5-year-old prisoners’ lawsuit, which is scheduled to start Monday in federal court in Jackson. Federal judge William Barbour is set to preside.
The lawsuit is against the Mississippi Department of Corrections and the Management & Training Corp., which has the state contract to house inmates at the private prison.
Plaintiffs described the private prison, which houses many suffering from mental illness, as a facility where inmates are being mistreated, beaten and exploited by gangs and others.
“Inmates are crying for relief,” Owens said.
The litigation alleges there was sex between officers and inmates, widespread contraband and weapons, a "buddy" system in which officers cover up the beatings of inmates and the rehiring of former employees who used excessive force.
In November 2012, the president of Utah-based Management & Training Corp. toured the institution and was quoted as saying "the living conditions were awful," according to the lawsuit.
However, MTC officials say they have made significant improvements since they took over the prison in July 2012.
But Owens said Friday with other plaintiffs’ attorneys that conditions at the prison aren’t any better than when the lawsuit was filed in 2013 and may have gotten worse.
Owens said SPLC tried to settle the lawsuit at least twice, but the Mississippi Department of Corrections and MTC refused.
MTC began operating East Mississippi Correctional Facility, one of the state's three private prisons, in 2012. Its current population is 1,291 inmates with a capacity for 1,500.
MDOC issued a statement Friday through spokeswoman Grace Fisher saying the agency's practice is not to discuss ongoing litigation. Therefore, the agency is reserving comments until after trial, she said.
MTC's corporate spokesman, Issa Arnita, said in a statement that the company can't speak to specific allegations because the case is in court, but said MTC officials can say "unequivocally" that the facility is safe, secure, clean and well run.
"From the warden on down, our staff are trained to treat the men in our care with dignity and respect. Our mission is to help these men make choices in prison and after they're released that will lead to a new and successful life in society," Arnita said.
Arnita said the facility is accredited by the American Correctional Association and the Correctional Education Association. It's also 100 percent compliant with the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act, which was created to further protect the rights of inmates.
Arnita said some of the improvements MTC, in partnership with the Department of Corrections, has made since MTC began operating the facility, include:
New full-body scanner; 30-foot netting around the perimeter; iron reinforcements and locks installed in cells to prevent access to pipe chases; new canine unit to search for contraband; new motion sensors; additional razor wire installed on the interior perimeter fence; new high-intensity lighting installed around the perimeter; and upgraded security control boards.
Enhanced training for all staff members, additional staff added to certain areas and shifts to improve overall operations.
More than 100 GEDs earned, nearly 1,000 vocational and other certificates awarded, increased "contact hours" (hours where inmates are engaged in meaningful activities including programming, work and recreation) from 101,000 hours in 2012 to 180,479 hours.
The trial is expected to last more than a month. Owens said the plaintiffs' case is expected to last four weeks before the state and MTC begin their defense.
Last month, Barbour denied a motion by the prisoners to prohibit the defendants from introducing evidence regarding the criminal histories of their witnesses but said the plaintiffs’ attorneys can raise objections on a case-by-case basis.
The prisoners also asked the judge to limit the state from bringing up evidence regarding alleged changes in conditions at the prison that occurred after July 14, 2017, the date when discovery closed.
However, Barbour denied that request, saying the current conditions at EMCF is probative on the issue of whether injunctive relief is warranted in the case, which is the only relief sought.
Carl Takei, The East Mississippi Correctional Facility Is 'Hell on Earth', ACLU (Mar 05, 2018), https://www.aclu.org/blog/prisoners-rights/medical-and-mental-health-care/east-mississippi-correctional-facility-hell
At the East Mississippi Correctional Facility, where Mississippi sends some of the most seriously mentally ill people in the state prison system, even the most troubled patients are routinely ignored and the worst cases of self-harm are treated with certain neglect. The conditions at EMCF have cost some prisoners their limbs, their eyesight, and even their lives.
In 2013, the ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center, and prisoner rights attorney Elizabeth Alexander filed a class-action complaint on behalf of all the prisoners held at EMCF. As the case heated up, the law firm of Covington & Burling LLP joined as co-counsel, providing major staffing and support. Despite years of attempts by Mississippi to derail the lawsuit before our clients even saw the inside of the courtroom, the case will finally proceed to trial Monday.
The lawsuit against EMCF describes horrific conditions at the facility: rampant violence, including by staff against prisoners; solitary confinement used to excess, with particular harm to prisoners with mental illnesses; and filthy cells and showers that lack functional toilets or lights. It also sheds light on a dysfunctional medical and mental healthcare delivery system that puts patients at risk of serious injury and has contributed to deaths in custody.
Nowhere was this institutionalized neglect more clear than in the life, and death, of T.H., a patient at EMCF with a history of severe mental illness and self-harm. On Jan. 31, 2016, T.H. stuck glass into his arm. Instead of sending him to the emergency room, a nurse merely cleaned the wound with soap and water. The following day, he broke a light bulb and inserted the shards into his arm. This time he required eight stitches.
Less than two weeks later, he cut himself with a blade hidden in his cell and then tried to hang himself. It was only later that month, after he reopened his arm wound with more glass, that mental health staff finally placed him on special psychiatric observation status.
Yet, because he wasn’t properly monitored, T.H.’s series of self-injury continued unabated until April 4, 2016. Early that afternoon, he stuck his arm, dripping in blood, through a slot in his cell door and asked to see the warden. A lieutenant saw T.H.’s bloodied arm, but, rather than call for emergency assistance, simply left the area. Two hours later, T.H. was observed unresponsive on the floor of his cell.
E. Mississippi Correctional Blood on the Door In response, the prison warden opted to call for a K-9 team to enter the cell with dogs before letting medical professionals examine the patient. By then it was too late — T.H. was dead, having strangled himself with materials from inside his cell. He never once had a proper suicide risk assessment or any treatment to address his self-harm.
The lackadaisical and unconstitutional approach that EMCF staff takes toward prisoner healthcare cost T.H. his life and has caused well-documented suffering among countless other mentally ill prisoners. And it all happens in the context of a prison rife with violence, where security staff often react with excessive force to mental health crises and allow prison gangs to control access to necessities of life, including at times food.
The Constitution requires that if the state takes someone into custody, it must also take on the responsibility of providing treatment for their serious medical and mental health needs. This means, among other measures, hiring qualified medical staff to provide necessary care for people with mental health disorders, creating systems for access to care so sick patients can see a mental health or medical clinician, and making sure that medical care is provided without security staff impeding it.
The ACLU and our co-counsel are fighting to ensure that such care is available at EMCF, where the state of Mississippi has continued to lock some of the most vulnerable prisoners in dangerous and filthy conditions and deny them access to constitutionally required mental health and medical care.
I witnessed those conditions firsthand when I visited EMCF in January 2011 with fellow ACLU attorney Gabriel Eber and two medical and mental health experts. At that time, we were horrified to discover that Mississippi’s designated mental health prison was closer to a vision of hell on earth than a therapeutic treatment facility.
E. Mississippi Correctional Medical Facility When I walked into one of the solitary confinement units, the entire place reeked of smoke from recent fires. I tried to speak to patients about their experiences, but I could barely hear them over the sounds of others moaning and screaming while they slammed their hands into metal cell doors.
Despite repeated warnings from nationally renowned experts brought in to assess conditions at the prisons, a meeting with top Mississippi Department of Corrections officials, and an offer by the ACLU to help MDOC pay to diagnose and fix the problems at EMCF, Mississippi officials permitted these conditions to continue unabated. Rather than take responsibility for fixing this prison, these officials merely switched contractors. In 2012, they swapped out private prison giant GEO Group, Inc. and replaced them with another private prison company, Management & Training Corp., which is perhaps best known for its horrific record of abusing and neglecting immigrant detainees. The state has also switched prison medical contractors multiple times, with little improvement from one to the next.
But the nightmare might soon be over. Over seven years since we first visited the cesspool that is EMCF, our clients will be allowed in court for the first time, asking that their constitutional rights finally be recognized. That recognition won’t undo the great harms they’ve suffered. But by fulfilling the Constitution's promise of protection, we can stop new harms and horrors at EMCF, of which there have been too many for too long.
Wyatt Emmerich, State mental health solution in limbo as lawsuit proceeds, Starkville Dispatch (Mar 21, 2018), http://www.thestarkvilledispatch.com/opinions/article.asp?aid=64685
At one end of Jackson's Congress Street sits the modern Federal Courthouse. At the other end sits our traditional State Capitol. They face each other at opposite ends of the street.
This physical juxtaposition has significant meaning this month. A class action suit will determine who runs the East Mississippi Correctional Facility (EMCF) in Meridian. Will it be the federal courts or the state executive branch?
For the last two weeks, I have listened to hours of testimony about EMCF, which has been designated as the state prison for criminals with mental illness. Eighty percent of the inmates suffer from a host of disorders including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and severe anxiety.
As a lifelong journalist, I consider myself somewhat jaded. But even I was unprepared for the magnitude of the alleged atrocities. It's so bad, it's almost hard to put into words.
The trial is open to the public. Bear in mind the defense has yet to make its case. I pray the plaintiffs have distorted the horrific conditions, but I fear they have not.
Prisoners testified EMCF is run by two gangs, the Vice Lords and the Gangster Disciples. Official staff is dependent on the gangs for the day-to-day operations.
Severely mentally ill patients are not given their medications, causing them to have seizures and psychotic breaks. They are beaten. They are locked in isolation where the lights and plumbing fail for weeks at a time. Their cells are rife with rats. They lose weight rapidly from inadequate food. Often the only way to get attention is to light a fire in their cell. They are constantly trying to kill themselves, typically by cutting themselves with scraps from broken light bulbs.
Except for the severely mentally ill locked in solitary, the other prisoners have innumerable ways of defeating their locks and come and go from their cells as they please. Non-stop bedlam. A genuine hellhole.
During what was supposed to be a lockdown, there was a gang fight on a video camera involving 30 prisoners. The video shows a prisoner in a wheelchair stabbed in the head.
Contraband is everywhere: Cigarettes, cell phones, pot, meth, prescription drugs, you name it. The gangs control the trade. Guards are in on it. It's big business.
The gangs are a controlling force. They can assault who they want at will. The gang leadership decides what prisoner gets what cell.
Surprisingly, there is a great amount of documentation of this. For instance, the failure to do roll call is meticulously documented with daily reports. So are the fires, fights and failure to supply medicine. Over a thousand exhibits have been entered into evidence. Most are the prison's own internal reports.
The testimony of one prisoner in particular is haunting me. He was a former network engineer from NASA Stennis Space Center on the coast. He suffers from schizophrenia, epilepsy, bipolar disorder and depression. He has lost weight to the point he looks like a ghost from the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp. He was convicted of rape and turned down a 10-year plea bargain. He wanted the death penalty. The judge gave him life.
This man was trembling so badly during his testimony he could barely keep from falling out of his chair. He told a harrowing story of being locked in a dark cell of solitary confinement. Plumbing and lighting would go out for weeks at a time. Medication was sporadic, causing him to have epileptic fits, hear voices and go crazy.
"I have, you know, murderous thoughts, suicidal thoughts, pains in my head, the shaking. I see and hear the voices. It's almost unbearable sometimes. . . but if I get my medication I'm fine. I feel normal. I feel human again."
I'm not sure what the best protocol is for treating mentally ill people, but I'd bet handing them over to the prison gangs is not a recommended procedure.
Bear in mind, mentally ill people are paranoid and delusional to begin with. Then you beat them up, starve them, withhold their medications, leave them in the dark with rats. Is it any wonder they constantly try to kill themselves? Prisoners cutting themselves is a daily occurrence. Suicides are rampant.
One outside prison inspector was shown a cell covered in blood. She took a photo. It was entered into the exhibits.
This inspector's visit was known days in advance, but the prison staff didn't even bother to clean up the blood on the floor. That's how commonplace it is. That's how bad it is. Blood, feces, roaches, rats are everywhere.
EMCF is run by the third largest prison management company in the country. It's a publicly traded company, Management & Training Corp. They are caught up in the Chris Epps bribery scandal. Mississippi Attorney General has named them in a civil lawsuit he has filed.
The Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) has a compliance officer who testified about EMCF. Her reports show massive non-compliance. MDOC is supposed to be reimbursed for non-compliance, but it never was. It's as though MDOC just didn't care.
That's the weird thing. Report after report show the atrocities but they were ignored.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) are behind the class action suit. Yazoo native William Barbour, Haley Barbour's cousin, is presiding. There is no jury. He alone decides what to do.
Sitting day after day in the courtroom, I can't help but like Judge Barbour. He seems wise and fair and can inject moments of humor in this dismal affair. A good friend from Yazoo City told me he is a class act and was his Boy Scout troop leader. "I don't want to say he's an Atticus Finch, but he's close."
I sense that Barbour has zero desire to run this prison by judicial fiat, but what is to be done? We can't allow such barbarism in our state, even for psychotic drug dealers, rapists and murderers.
I asked two expert witnesses how EMCF compared to other facilities throughout the nation. They both said the same thing. It was the worst of the 50 or so prisons they had inspected. By far.
The Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution bans the infliction of "cruel and unusual punishments."
Can Barbour do any better? Based on results throughout the country, court intervention can work. The courts can do what our politicians won't do. Barbour doesn't have to get elected. He can force the state to do what it takes. The irony is that a properly run prison could be less expensive, not more.
By the way, I am often the only "press" in the courtroom. The Clarion-Ledger, Jackson Free Press and Associated Press come and go sporadically. One day a New York Times reporter was there. Haven't seen anybody from Facebook or Google.
No state officials of any kind are to be found. Nobody cares about crazy people, especially the criminal ones.
Wyatt Emmerich is the editor and publisher of The Northside Sun, a weekly newspaper in Jackson. He can be reached by e-mail at wyatt@northsidesun.com.
Wyatt Emmerich, Lawsuit exposes harsh reality of mental health care, Starkville Dispatch (Mar 14, 2018), http://www.thestarkvilledispatch.com/opinions/article.asp?aid=64510
At the federal courthouse in Jackson, East Mississippi Correctional Facility is defending itself against a lawsuit claiming atrocious conditions for its inmates.
The facility, just south of I-20 six miles west of Meridian, was built in 1999 to house 1,500 inmates. It specialized in housing the mentally ill.
Taking care of the mentally ill has always been one of the greatest challenges of a civilized society. Over the centuries, horror stories of genuine hell houses have been a never-ending blight on modern society.
So how did a prison become a mental health facility? The answer lies in the age-old problem of unintended consequences.
Forty years ago, media exposes of the horrific conditions of mental institutions led to a nationwide movement to shut them down. This movement was highlighted by the 1975 movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, starring Jack Nicholson who won an Academy Award for his performance of a brilliant, eccentric crazy person whose ultimate fate was a lobotomy which turned his lovable character into a zombie.
The movement released hundreds of thousands of crazy people to roam the streets. You can still see them today on many street corners wandering aimlessly, talking to themselves and often getting into conflicts with the law.
The plan was to have more humane, smaller local mental health facilities. To some extent this has happened. But the best laid plans of mice and men are easily led astray. Mounting needs and budget crunches short-circuited the benevolent vision.
So what happened? Our prison facilities have become the de facto mental institutions for hundreds of thousands of mentally ill people. We are back to where we started, but even worse because prison guards lack basic mental health training that once partially existed at our closed mental institutions. We are worse off than when we started.
Even worse, a large percentage of the mentally ill cannot be legally sent to state prison so they linger in county jails where they are inhumanely subjected to cruel treatment by ill-trained guards. Our jails are overwhelmed.
If these ill people are forcibly medicated, then they can temporarily become non-threatening to themselves or others, which means by law, they must be released. Once free, they stop taking their medications and the whole process starts over.
This is a sad state of affairs. There are many terrible diseases but mental illness is probably the most cruel and the most difficult to deal with.
All the experts know what is needed: Modern, clean facilities where trained experts can compassionately treat the victims. There should be gardens and walking trails and organized activities. Patients should be genetically tested to find what drugs are most suitable. Intensive personal therapy combined with cutting edge drugs could save many of these lives with the ultimate goal of reintegration into society.
But it is not so for one reason: Money. Such modern, humane treatment is exorbitant and our society has not deemed this a priority. So, instead, we have the East Mississippi Correctional Facility (EMCF.)
Like early childhood education, properly treating mental illness would save billions in the long run. But the politics of the world make it almost impossible to happen. Many mentally ill people end up committing suicide. Nobody Cares About Crazy People: The Chaos and Heartbreak of Mental Health in America by Ron Powers is an excellent book that chronicles this crisis in our country.
This is a disaster of huge proportions. One in 10 people will suffer serious mental illness at some point in their lives. The economic toll is billions upon billions.
Often treatment is left to the family, if the mentally ill person is blessed enough to have one. The emotional and financial burden of dealing with a mentally ill family member is devastating. One of the first pieces of advice to family members struggling to help is to seek mental counseling lest they become overwhelmed themselves.
There are genetic factors behind mental illness, but environmental stress can be the trigger. As our society becomes increasingly chaotic and stressed, mental illness is reaching epic proportions.
EMCF is run by a private company, Management & Training Corporation, based in Utah. It's the third largest private prison company in the country. Attorney General Jim Hood is suing the company because of its involvement with the Chris Epps bribery scandal.
In 2015, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Poverty Law Center filed suit to force improvements at EMCF.
The suit alleges the usual horrors that have plagued mental institutions forever. Rape, beatings, cruelty, failure to medicate. As part of the evidence reviewed by Judge William Barbour, a captain at the prison said in a deposition that prisoner-on-prisoner violence was commonplace, that corrections officers were poorly trained, and that guards facilitated inmate violence by opening cell doors and then failed to intervene when prisoners were assaulted.
Guards arranged for prisoners to attack one another, ignored fires set by inmates to signal distress, and allowed prisoners to trade whiskey and cellphones. Mentally ill were locked in solitary confinement for weeks at a time. Plumbing failures. Roaches. Filth. Rats. Watered Down gruel. One mentally ill patient sliced himself up and was left for hours on his cell floor to bleed to death. The list of atrocities is long.
Time marches on. There is nothing new under the sun. The horror of EMCF is repeated time and time again, especially in poorer places where money is lacking.
Let's hope this lawsuit can make some small dent in our collective consciousness. Let's hope in the march of progress, civilized society can one day learn to care for the mentally ill like we do those suffering from heart disease and cancer.
Wyatt Emmerich is the editor and publisher of The Northside Sun, a weekly newspaper in Jackson. He can be reached by e-mail at wyatt@northsidesun.com.
Waverly McCarthy, East Mississippi Correctional Facility on lockdown following May 15 fight, Miss. News Now (May 29, 2018), http://www.msnewsnow.com/story/38301853/east-mississippi-correctional-facility-on-lockdown-following-may-15-fight
LAUDERDALE COUNTY, MS (Mississippi News Now) -
The East Mississippi Correctional Facility is investigating a fight in one of the housing units that started around 9:00 p.m. on Tuesday, May 15.
Three inmates were injured. Two were transported to a local hospital to be treated. One has since returned to the facility. The third inmate was treated at the facility.
None of the injuries are life-threatening.
The investigation is ongoing.
The facility has been on lockdown since the fight.
Copyright 2018 MSNewsNow. All rights reserved.
Wyatt Emmerich, Despite pending federal lawsuit, outlook remains bleak for state's mentally ill prisoners, Commercial Dispatch (Apr 18, 2018), http://www.cdispatch.com/opinions/article.asp?aid=65274
Two hundred and twenty-six years ago, the Federalists were having trouble getting the states to ratify the new Constitution of the United States. The anti-Federalists, led by Samuel Adams, John Hancock and Patrick Henry, feared the proposed constitution did not adequately protect the individual rights of the common man.
As a result, James Madison drafted the Bill of Rights. The rest is history.
This history is playing out in real time as federal District Court Judge William Barbour must decide whether to order sweeping changes at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility (EMCF) just east of Meridian.
The Eighth Amendment of the Bill of Rights bans "cruel and unusual" punishments. The question is whether the mentally ill prisoners at EMCF have been subject to cruel and unusual punishments.
Almost every day for the past five weeks, I attended portions of the trial which was held in the beautiful Federal Building in downtown Jackson. The sparsely attended trial is now over and we await the judge's decision.
As a journalist, the trial offered a motherlode of insights into the Mississippi prison system, one of the biggest items in the state budget at $300 million a year, five percent of total general fund expenditures.
If you had asked me before the trial to rate Mississippi prisons on a scale of one to ten with one being barbaric and 10 being ideal, I would have said a five. Now I would say it's closer to a one or two.
I listened to a dozen prisoners testify. The horror stories were sickening: rats, roaches, rapes, beatings, solitary confinement for weeks in total darkness, deathly ill patients denied medicines, inedible food, fires in cells to get attention, blood covered cells from suicidal cuttings, locks that are easily defeated allowing gangs to have the run of the prison. Drugs, shanks and other contraband are rife.
There have already been four deaths so far this year.
The prison is managed by a private company, Management and Training Corporation (MTC), which got the job in a no-bid contract signed by former Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) Commissioner Chris Epps.
This is the same company that hired Cecil McCrory, a former state legislator, as a consultant for $120,000 a year. McCrory kicked back over $100,000 to Epps. They are both now in jail for bribery while MTC still runs the prison. Attorney General Jim Hood is currently suing MTC over the affair.
By contract, MTC is supposed to have a certain number of guards staffing the prison. But internal reports presented at the trial show MTC only staffs about half the positions. As a result, MTC is supposed to refund millions of dollars to MDOC, but not a penny has been repaid to the state.
The MDOC contract compliance officer has reported on this non-compliance for years but the reports have been ignored by current MDOC Commissioner Pelicia Hall, according to her testimony.
Meanwhile, the EMCF compliance officer sent email after e-mail to officers at MDOC and MTC complaining that the prison was being run by gangs. Nobody did anything.
How do you explain this? The only logical explanation is gross incompetence or a continuation of the type of corruption that landed Epps and McCrory in jail.
Because states have done a terrible job running prisons, the federal courts have intervened over the last 50 years. Today, over half the nation's prisoners reside in prisons that are under some type of federal court order.
In 1991, the U.S. Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Antonin Scalia, raised the bar for federal intervention. The prison had to engage in "unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain" and exhibit "intentional indifference."
Sending a thousand mentally ill people to a prison run by gangs, in my humble opinion, meets both standards.
I recall one young man who was raped. He wanted to press charges against his rapist. The guard said, "So what's the matter? Does your little booty hurt?" The prison refused to send the blood and semen covered underwear to the local sheriff's office. As a result, the rapist went unpunished. That is just one of many horror stories.
Just last year, this same story played out in Alabama. During the trial, one of the young prisoners committed suicide shortly after testifying, shocking the federal judge, Myron Thompson, who issued an emergency decree to change prison practices.
In June 2017, Judge Thompson issued a 305 page opinion implementing sweeping changes into the Alabama prison system.
Judge Thompson wrote, "Surprisingly, the evidence from both sides (including testimony from Commissioner Dunn and Associate Commissioner Naglich as well as that of all experts) extensively and materially supported the plaintiffs' claims."
Unlike Alabama where the prison officials acknowledged the inadequacies of their system, Mississippi prison officials vigorously defended EMCF. Their testimony was evasive and defensive.
After the plaintiffs presented a veritable mountain of damning evidence, I wondered what the defense would say. In essence, they shrugged their shoulders and said, "So what?" In the words of the EMCF warden during his testimony about violence and contraband: "It's the nature of prisons. It's the nature of the beast."
We can do better than that.
Unlike Judge Thompson, an African-American appointed by Jimmy Carter, Judge Barbour, a Yazoo City cousin of Haley Barbour appointed by Ronald Reagan, seems to have little fire in his belly for trying to remedy the EMCF hellhole.
And who can blame him? Recruiting skilled guards and psychiatrists to a small Mississippi city is a monumental task. Managing the criminally insane has always been one of the most challenging aspects of civilization.
That being said, no judge likes to be overruled by a higher court and the case against EMCF is rock solid. The case law is clear. You cannot allow prisoners, especially the mentally ill, to be abused and denied appropriate medical treatment.
I don't always agree with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) or the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) but I give them credit for being an advocate for this helpless class of people.
The Republican leadership of Mississippi cares nothing about the criminally insane. Not one of them attended a single minute of the trial. Meanwhile, there are empty buildings at Whitfield. Their only concern is to cut the prison budget by outsourcing its operation to private companies with questionable backgrounds. As a result, we have gangs running our prisons. If we don't nip this in the bud now, we will regret it.
Mississippi spends a 10th as much as other states per prisoner. The chance of the Republicans spending more is nil. If the courts intervene, then the Republicans have an out. They can claim they had no choice and keep their Americans for Prosperity super PAC money. It's a good deal for everyone.
I am amazed at the checks and balances we enjoy in the United States. Our federal system, combined with advocacy groups, will end up making a huge difference and well they should.
The Alabama governor has suggested calling a special session to address their court order and their dilapidated prison system. At the very least, Judge Barbour should appoint the SPLC and ACLU as court monitors to oversee reforms at EMCF. MDOC has failed miserably and desperately needs such oversight.
Locking up the mentally ill and throwing away the key is wrong. As a civilized society we must treat the mentally ill, not terrorize them with solitary confinement in a dark, rat infested cell.
With all due respect to non-believers and other religious groups, Mississippi is still a Christian state. As such, there is one ultimate authority for most of the voters in Mississippi. Jesus Christ was clear about prisoners. What we do to them, we do to him. It would be wise to obey the King of the Universe.
Wyatt Emmerich is the editor and publisher of The Northside Sun, a weekly newspaper in Jackson. He can be reached by e-mail at wyatt@northsidesun.com.
Mark Rigsby, Federal Judge Will Decide Future of East Mississippi Correctional Facility, Miss. Pub. Broadcasting (Apr 10, 2018), http://www.mpbonline.org/blogs/news/2018/04/10/federal-judge-will-decide-future-of-east-mississippi-correctional-facility/
The future of the East Mississippi Correctional Facility is now in the hands of a federal judge. A group of inmates there filed a class-action lawsuit against the state, claiming inhumane living conditions at the privately-run state prison. MPB's Mark Rigsby was in the courtroom for closing arguments.
Southern Poverty Law Center attorney Elissa Johnson told U.S. Southern District Judge William Barbour that inmates at the prison, near Meridian, are at risk of serious harm, due to unconstitutional living conditions.
"We presented the evidence we feel supports our seven claims in this case. At this point, the court has all of that evidence. We will wait to hear the court's decision."
Utah-based Management and Training Corporation is the private company that runs the facility. During the 5-week bench trial, the court heard testimony about inadequate staff levels, inmate violence, gangs controlling the prison, widespread contraband, and poor medical and mental health care. Reverend CJ Rhodes is with the grassroots group Clergy for Prison Reform.
"A lot of the conditions we've been hearing about, in terms of rats on chains, the rapes, all the kinds of things going on, we're thankful that attention is being brought to those matters. Hopefully, this judge will rule in favor of a more humane society, and a more humane prison system."
But the attorney representing the Mississippi Department of Corrections, Tommy Siler, says many improvements have been made at the facility. He says the plaintiffs haven't met the burden of proof.
"I would like the judge to hold that no one's constitutional rights have been violated, because I truly believe that have not."
Judge Barbour will make a ruling in the coming days.
Ryan J. Farrick, Class Action Alleging Prisoner Mistreatment by Mississippi Department of Corrections Concludes Arguments, Legal Reader (Apr 09, 2018), https://www.legalreader.com/class-action-prisoner-mistreatment-mississippi-department-of-corrections/
Prison cell; photo by AlexVan, via Pixabay, CC0.
On Monday, attorneys presented their closing arguments in a case pitting prisoners against the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
Filed in 2013, the five-week trial brings to a close Dockery, et. al. v. Hall, et. al., a class action suit alleging barbaric living conditions at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility in Meridian, Mississippi. Although a verdict’s yet to be returned, inmate advocates have already begun publishing transcripts from the case’s last day.
“The Mississippi Department of Corrections allows this prison to fail at even the most fundamental tasks: keeping prisoners safe and secure, treating mental illnesses, providing basic medical treatment, and providing a sanitary environment,” said Southern Poverty Law Center attorney Jody Owens. “The result is a place so dangerous and violent that it shocks corrections experts, yet the department keeps handing taxpayer money to private companies to run the prison and its services, rewarding them year after year for doing a horrific job.”
Many for-profit prisons have been accused of civil rights and constitutional violations, ranging from an over-use of solitary confinement to inadequate medical facilities. Image via PxHere/public domain.
Similar to other suits targeting for-profit prisons, the prisoners and their advocates claim contractor Management & Training Corporation (MTC) is neglecting inmates to buffer profit margins. Expert witnesses testifying for the plaintiffs say that MTC, along with for-profit healthcare contractor Centurion, did a dismal job fulfilling their obligations to the well-being of the detained.
“The Mississippi Department of Corrections has a cruel way of handling prisoners with mental illnesses. It funnels them into the Eastern Mississippi Correctional Facility, and then systematically neglects their needs for treatment,” said senior ACLU staff attorney Eric Balaban. “When they become unstable due to lack of treatment, the prison punishes them with solitary confinement, which typically makes mental illness worse. Yet the state keeps writing checks to Centurion for this so-called ‘care.’”
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, some 80% of the prisoners at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility suffer from mental illness and psychological handicaps.
On top of poor to nonexistent healthcare, attorneys for the inmates claim that meals didn’t even provide the prisoners with proper nutrition.
“It’s a bedrock principle,” said attorney Elissa Johnson in March, “that states must provide constitutionally adequate care.”
Nevertheless, attorneys for the State of Mississippi have maintained that its officers and contractors did no wrong. One lawyer wondered aloud how anyone could possibly accuse the facility’s administrators of running an “unconstitutional” establishment.
“It’s hard to see how reasonable people can look at the same facility and come to such opposite conclusions,” said William Siler lawyer for the state.
Siler suggested that any reduction in quality of living was caused by the inmate vandalism and neglect, noting how prisoners routinely break lightbulbs and flood showers.
“What you see,” said Siler last month, “is them trying to say we need to protect inmates from themselves.”
But lawyers for the SPLC and its co-counsel on the case claim that aggravating East Mississippi’s mentally ill inmates does nothing but ill-prepare them for a life outside the barbed wire. Litigation associate Erin Monju of Covington & Burling LLP said the DoC is “causing suffering far beyond the prisoners’ sentences,” punishing entire communities and families alike.
SPLC, Trial in SPLC lawsuit exposes inhumane, unconstitutional conditions at Mississippi prison, (Apr 08, 2018), https://www.splcenter.org/news/2018/04/09/trial-splc-lawsuit-exposes-inhumane-unconstitutional-conditions-mississippi-prison
Attorneys gave closing arguments today in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, concluding a five-week trial in Dockery, et al. v. Hall, et al., a class-action lawsuit over conditions at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility in Meridian, Mississippi.
Approximately 80 percent of the prisoners at the facility have mental illnesses. At trial, the SPLC showed that the Mississippi Department of Corrections has inflicted preventable suffering on thousands of prisoners, violating the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
“The Mississippi Department of Corrections allows this prison to fail at even the most fundamental tasks: keeping prisoners safe and secure, treating mental illnesses, providing basic medical treatment, and providing a sanitary environment,” said Jody Owens, the SPLC’s managing attorney for Mississippi. “The result is a place so dangerous and so violent that it shocks corrections experts, yet the department keeps handing taxpayer money to private companies to run the prison and its services, rewarding them year after year for doing a horrific job.”
The defendant in Dockery, the Mississippi Department of Corrections, contracts with Management & Training Corporation (MTC), a private prison company, to operate East Mississippi Correctional Facility, and with the for-profit company Centurion to provide medical and mental health care to the prisoners. At trial, attorneys for the prisoners brought experts in the field of corrections who testified to the extreme inadequacies of MTC’s and Centurion’s performance, and to the Department of Corrections’ knowledge of these shortcomings.
“The Mississippi Department of Corrections has a cruel way of handling prisoners with mental illnesses. It funnels them into the East Mississippi Correctional Facility, and then systematically neglects their needs for treatment,” said Eric Balaban, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Prison Project. “When they become unstable due to lack of treatment, the prison punishes them with solitary confinement, which typically makes mental illness worse. Yet the state keeps writing checks to Centurion for this so-called ‘care.’”
At trial, Mississippi Department of Corrections Chief Medical Officer Gloria Perry admitted that she has never visited East Mississippi Correctional Facility. Prisoners testified about being sexually assaulted and having to set fires to get medical attention due to the prison’s lack of staff. The department’s own testimony and documents showed gangs running many aspects of the prison.
“Because of the Mississippi Department of Corrections’ failure to address the unconstitutional conditions at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility, prisoners suffer irreparable harm that can make it even more difficult to re-enter society, in addition to worsened medical conditions that could have been treated, mental illnesses that have grown far worse, and psychological damage from being assaulted,” said Erin Monju, litigation associate at Covington & Burling LLP. “The department is causing suffering far beyond the prisoners’ sentences, also punishing families and communities.”
“The Mississippi Department of Corrections has let MTC and Centurion deny prisoners’ needs as human beings to the point of desperation and violence, making East Mississippi Correctional Facility a hazard to the health of prisoners and staff,” said Elizabeth Alexander, who has spent her career litigating on behalf of prisoners’ rights across the country.
The lawsuit, originally captioned Dockery v. Epps, was filed in 2013.
Madison Pauly, Mississippi Inmates’ Lawsuit Describes Violence and Neglect in a Private Prison, Mother Jones (Apr 04, 2018), https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2018/04/mississippi-inmates-lawsuit-east-mississippi-mtc/
Smoke damage is visible on cells inside the East Mississippi Correctional Facility. ACLU
Last August, when Terry Beasley and other inmates noticed a man had died in his cell, they pounded on the window of their dayroom for at least 30 minutes. “Still wouldn’t nobody come on the zone,” Beasley recalled. Finally, an officer opened the door to their housing area, allowing an inmate to slip past and run to get help from the guard captain. Knowing how long it took to get help in an emergency “made me feel kind of scared,” Beasley said, “because I’m a diabetic, and you don’t know when my sugar might drop.”
Beasley described life inside the East Mississippi Correctional Facility during the first week of a federal trial over conditions at the for-profit state prison located 90 miles east of Jackson. EMCF is the state’s designated facility for inmates with psychiatric needs, and around 80 percent of the prison’s roughly 1,200 inmates have been diagnosed with a mental illness. Five years ago, prisoners there sued the Mississippi Department of Corrections, claiming that its top officials had failed to keep tabs on the prison’s corporate operators and allowed dangerous conditions to go unaddressed. The prisoners’ class-action lawsuit describes a crumbling facility with broken locks on cell doors, frequent assaults by inmates, and a critical shortage of guards and medical staff.
“What I’ve seen at East Mississippi Correction Facility, I have not seen for decades,” said Elizabeth Alexander, one of 13 attorneys representing the inmates. “This is a trip back to the old days of prison conditions.” The case went to trial in March after multiple failed attempts to settle outside of court, according to American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Carl Takei. It’s being heard by US District Judge William H. Barbour, Jr., who will decide whether the state has been “deliberately indifferent” to conditions at EMCF that posed serious risk of harm to inmates.
In their complaint, filed in 2013, prisoners claimed the state prison commissioner and other officials had failed to hold the companies that run EMCF accountable for “grossly inhumane conditions” that “cost many prisoners their health, and their limbs, their eyesight, and even their lives.” The inmates’ original complaint told the stories of multiple prisoners who lit fires to obtain emergency medical attention. According to EMCF records, 1,217 inmates and 47 staff members were injured by fires in 2016. In addition to Beasley’s testimony, deputy warden Norris Hogans testified that as of February, inmates were still lighting fires outside their cell doors three times a week.
Hogans also testified about fights that broke out on March 6, 2017, when the facility was supposed to be on lockdown. All prisoners were supposed to be in their cells, yet security footage shows more than a dozen inmates in two separate housing areas milling around in common areas. In one pod, prisoners began fighting with broom and mop handles; in the other, they kicked and beat a man and left him lying on an elevated walkway. Guards did not enter either housing area for around 30 minutes. Hogans said the prison did not investigate how so many inmates were loose during the lockdown. According to the New York Times, when the prison’s warden was asked if guards were able keep inmates in their cells, he replied, “They do their best.”
A fire burns in the East Mississippi Correction Facility. (More photos of the facility, some disturbing, can be seen here.) ACLU
The inmates filed their case the year before a corruption scandal swept through the highest levels of the Mississippi Department of Corrections. In 2015, former state prison Commissioner Chris Epps pleaded guilty to a federal bribery charge after distributing more than $800 million in contracts to prison companies while receiving at least $1.4 million in bribes and kickbacks, mostly funneled through a former state legislator to whom companies had paid thousands of dollars in “consulting fees.” Those companies included Management and Training Corporation, a Utah-based firm that received a contract from Epps in 2012 to operate EMCF, and Health Assurance, a vendor that provided medical and mental health care at the facility between 2012 and 2015.
Epps and his accomplice went to prison, as did the part-owner of Health Assurance. MTC has denied any wrongdoing and maintained that it had no knowledge that its “consulting fees” would be used to illegally line Epps’ pockets; it’s currently fighting a lawsuit from the state attorney general over its role in the scandal. EMCF’s medical services are now provided by a correctional health care company called Centurion.
The inmates lawyers say little has improved at the facility since Epps stepped down. Takei argues that many of the issues at East Mississippi Correction Facility stem from chronic understaffing and the state’s failure to require MTC and Centurion to hire more guards and medical professionals. “Staff was beyond short,” one guard wrote in a log book last year that was entered into the trial record. “No staff to conduct or do security check.” EMCF currently has no full-time psychiatrist, despite having a mental health caseload of about 1,000 men. The Mississippi Department of Corrections, which pays MTC $26 per day for each minimum-security inmate, denies that the prison is understaffed.
Understaffing is a common complaint at private prisons. Yet the situation at EMCF is exacerbated by its prisoners’ mental health care needs. Some of the most alarming testimony in the trial has come from one of the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses, Terry Kupers, a professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California, and a nationally recognized specialist on solitary confinement. After investigating the prison’s segregation unit, Kupers testified that its conditions were the worst he had ever seen. Jammed locks on cell doors left inmates free to roam and attack others, and broken lights went unfixed, leaving inmates in darkness for days. He found little record of mental health care examinations or therapy.
“It’s more than inattention, it’s just outrageous neglect and callousness,” Kupers said in court. “They can’t get light bulbs. They cannot get cleaning material. The damage from the fires is not removed. The trash is not picked up. They get almost no services. They can’t even get the attention of the officers.”
The interior of a cell at East Mississippi Correction Facility ACLU
Beasley worked as a porter in the prison’s solitary confinement unit in 2016, cleaning the unit and sometimes the cells. He testified that nearly every day, he saw prisoners who had cut themselves stick their arms out of the food tray slots in their cell doors, “blood just dropping everywhere.”
Kupers’ investigation confirmed Beasley’s stories. “I’ve never seen this degree of self-harm in a correctional setting,” Kupers testified. He explained that many prisoners in solitary became stuck in a cycle: They would attempt to escape isolation by cutting themselves so they would be taken to the medical unit. There, they would get some relief, but before long they would be back in isolation for a longer stay because self-harm is a rule violation punishable by solitary confinement. “The people with serious mental illness, I can say with a reasonable degree of medical certainty their condition is going to worsen under these conditions,” Kupers said in court. “They are going to have worse disability, and they’re going to have a much worse prognosis. And, God forbid, they will [attempt] suicide to a larger than excusable proportion.”
While the inmates’ complaint details frequent suicide attempts, just one inmate has died as the result of suicide since 2012—a fact emphasized by the state’s lawyers. (There have been many other non-suicide deaths at the prison, including four so far in 2018.) Throughout the case, the state has argued that conditions at the prison are mostly acceptable and that the prison has made good-faith attempts to fix its problems. “This is a prison; it’s not a daycare center,” W. Thomas Siler Jr., a lawyer representing the state, said in his opening argument. “Every prison everywhere, every expert is going to say it’s got its share of problems.”
The state’s legal team has also laid responsibility at the feet of inmates, who it says “sabotage” the prison by jamming locks, setting fires, and smuggling in contraband. “It’s just that kind of thing, a constant effort of trying to stay ahead of the prisoners, and stay ahead of what they’re doing to defeat whatever we’re doing to help keep them safe,” Siler said.
As evidence of the dire conditions at East Mississippi Correction Facility has accumulated during the monthlong trial, Judge Barbour has often appeared impatient with the inmates and their legal team. He has urged prisoners not to “lollygag around” before they are transported to court each morning and has admonished their lawyers for going into too much detail about the poor conditions. “Suppose I tore up your pad of questions. Could you question this witness? No,” the judge interrupted Eric Balaban, another ACLU lawyer, after listening to Balaban question an expert witness for several hours on March 22. “You’ve made your point. The mental health in this prison is not good.”
The trial is expected to conclude this week, and Judge Barbour’s decision will follow in the coming weeks. If he rules in the prisoners’ favor, he could force the Mississippi Department of Corrections to develop a plan for addressing EMCF’s problems. If he sides with the state, it will be up to prison officials to take action—leaving prisoners like Terry Beasley waiting for relief.
Whitney Downard, Defense winds down case in prison trial, Meridian Star (Apr 03, 2018), http://www.meridianstar.com/news/localnews/defense-winds-down-case-in-prison-trial/articlec8a985ce-2b4c-5880-abbc-78fdf04f26da.html
Bill Graham / The Meridian Star
JACKSON – With a handful of witnesses left in the class action suit against the East Mississippi Correctional Facility, a federal court scheduled closing statements for Monday morning, one month after the trial started.
The defense, representing the Mississippi Department of Corrections, called only one witness on Wednesday because another witness had travel delays. Patrick Arnold, the medical director at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility, specializes in internal medicine and has 15 years of experience as a doctor in a correctional facility.
The plaintiffs, represented by firms such as the ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center, said they had four more witnesses for their rebuttal and told Judge William H. Barbour Jr., of the U.S. Southern District Court in Jackson, that they planned to wrap up their witnesses by Friday afternoon.
Arnold described the structure of the medical unit at the prison, which has nurse practioners, registered nurses and licensed practical nurses. Similar to a "free-world" doctor's office, Arnold said that patients typically are screened by a nurse before seeing him.
During a lockdown, when movement would be restricted, Arnold said that patients are accompanied by a guard. During cross examination, he explained that this movement could either be limited by a prisoner's designation or a shortage of guards, thus making the patient a no-show.
If a patient didn't arrive at his appointment, it would be rescheduled for the next available appointment.
To request an appointment, a prisoner must fill out a "sick call." Arnold confirmed that these requests are supposed to be private, however, plaintiffs said that these boxes for requests are located out of the reach of prisoners and must be handled by guards.
In the case of a patient with a physical and mental health problem, a common problem at the prison, which serves as the state's designated prison for the mentally ill, Arnold said, he consults about care with the mental health director.
"There are times when a dual diagnoses makes the addressing of symptoms more complex," Arnold said.
Arnold testified that he didn't have a say in policies regarding minimum staffing and that he didn't know the number of nursing vacancies, which falls under the jurisdiction of the nursing director.
"In general, as is the case with any doctor-nurse relationship, the doctor writes the orders or gives orders and it is the responsibility of the nurses to carry it out," Arnold said.
After less than two hours of testimony, the court went into recess and planned to reconvene at 9 a.m. Thursday.
Wyatt Emmerich, Mentally ill should not be at the mercy of gang leaders, Northside Sun (Apr 05, 2018), https://northsidesun.com/opinion-columns/mentally-ill-should-not-be-mercy-gang-leaders
The United States Federal Courthouse in downtown Jackson is a gleaming testament to the power of our federal government. The walls are literally works of art. The doors are hand carven in elaborate styles. Magnificent hallways and sheets of glass scream the power of modern prosperity.
So it seemed symbolic as I left the courtroom and noticed a 30-yard trail of blood all the way to the elevator.
I had just finished listening to testimony of a 26-year-old African-American man who had been in prison for seven years. He is mentally ill. Schizophrenia, bipolar - the works. He is a cutter, meaning that he won’t stop cutting himself. Several times he has come close to bleeding to death.
I was impressed by his vocabulary. At one point he used the word “profusely” to describe his bleeding. He seemed intelligent.
Ten percent of Americans will suffer serious mental illness at some point in our lives. Just like we all harbor the vulnerabilities of heart disease and cancer, we are all at risk of mental illness. It is in the nature of the wiring of our brains.
Like a booby trap waiting to explode, mental illness is triggered by environmental trauma. Some of us are blessed enough to avoid such trauma, but the hard nature of life means, inevitably, like the random mutations that lead to cancer, some will fall prey. Highly intelligent and creative people are especially vulnerable.
The young prisoner has been locked up in the East Mississippi Correctional Facility (EMCF) which is the subject of an on-going federal lawsuit for its barbaric conditions.
He was asked why he cut himself. “I can’t really say,” he testified. “I just get this overwhelming urge. After I do it, it’s a relief. Like a burden has been taken off my shoulders.”
Another time, the young man drank cleaning fluid off a cleaning cart. “That’s stupid,” the guard said and walked away. Somehow, he survived.
This prisoner is due to be released in a month, but there is little chance he will recover. There is a narrow window of opportunity to save someone affected by severe mental illness. They are paranoid. They are terrified. They are overwhelmed by anxiety.
Timely intervention can bring them back. A simple mouth swab genetic test can now identify the best medicines. Gentle and kind therapy in a peaceful, tranquil setting can stabilize their fear and slowly bring them back to reality, just like chemotherapy and angioplasty can save a person from cancer or heart disease.
In our ignorance, we still often blame mentally ill people for their condition. Because mental illness affects behavior, a mentally ill person lacking family support or financial resources will often find themselves arrested. Many of them find their way to EMCF, the Mississippi prison designated to house the mentally ill.
According to the law, these mentally ill prisoners are supposed to receive the intensive therapy and appropriate medications that can bring them back. But at EMCF, it rarely turns out that way.
Instead, they are thrown into a hellhole - a prison run by gangs, where they are beaten, raped, starved, gassed and stuffed in a dark solitary cell with roaches, rats and thin gruel.
If it had been the heart or kidney that had failed, these people would have Medicaid and could get decent medical interventions. But woe to a poor person whose brain becomes diseased in Mississippi.
Centuries ago, these people were burned at the stake for being witches. Or holes were drilled in their heads to let the bad spirts escape, a procedure that usually led to death. Others were locked up in insane asylums not much better than EMCF.
The Nazis just shot the mentally ill. We don’t do that in Mississippi. We torture them until they cut themselves. Then rescue them from impending death; punish them for the attempt; and then torture them some more.
It’s not that the administrators and guards at EMCF are bad people. They probably represent a standard Bell curve of human behavior. Some are saints. Some are sinners. Most fall somewhere in-between.
They are trying to do an extremely difficult job with inadequate resources. There is a shortage of skilled labor to fill these positions. Fire the existing staff and there is no guarantee the next crew will be any better.
During the trial numerous exhibits were submitted showing the staffing of mandatory positions in the prison is often half of what it is required to be. In addition, the cell locks are easily defeated. So the gangs take over.
Given the staff shortage, over time, the prison has learned to use the gangs to help manage the prison. The gangs, which have an elaborate hierarchy, decide which prisoners have which beds. They keep order and discipline. They are rewarded with a franchise to sell contraband. For a price, you can get anything you want.
Some of the guards are in cahoots. Others are intimidated by the gang leaders. Others just want to keep their head down and get paid. No doubt, some are trying their best.
Although expedient, using gangs to help maintain prison order is fraught with potential problems.
First of all, gangs are illegal organizations that engage in illegal activities and use violence to maintain discipline. Once gangs get a toehold, they expand. If gangs are allowed to run our prisons, they may infiltrate law enforcement and numerous other areas of our economy. Just look at Mexico if you want to see the pitfalls of tolerating gang entrenchment.
How can the FBI allow this to happen? They should be nipping this in the bud.
Second, it is absolutely inhumane to allow gangs to run a prison for the mentally ill. The gangs have no understanding of the unique nature of mental illness, so they just beat and isolate these people until they cut themselves, hang themselves and light fires in their cells as a cry for help.
Putting a mentally ill person in these conditions is a death sentence – either actual death or a living hell. If psychosis isn’t stabilized, the brain undergoes permanent physical changes that can be seen on an MRI.
I could recount horror story after horror story. It’s all in the transcript.
Society owes our affluence to brilliant, creative individuals. These are our inventors, entrepreneurs and writers. But the same mental structures that allow creativity also create a vulnerability for mental illness. To throw these people into a hellhole like EMCF is not civilized.
I am under no illusion that a federal magic wand can eradicate this blight on humanity. But there are states that have instituted far better practices and procedures, usually by federal decree. Mississippi is far behind. We must do better.
It would be great if our state leaders cared, but they don’t. I haven’t seen one of them at the trial. Nobody cares about crazy people.
Jesus spoke about the prisoners in Matthew 25:35. His words are clear. What we do to these people, we do to him.
by: Wyatt Emmerich
date: 2018-04-05
url: http://www.thestarkvilledispatch.com/opinions/article.asp?aid=64979
The United States Federal Courthouse in downtown Jackson is a gleaming testament to the power of our federal government. The walls are literally works of art. The doors are hand carven in elaborate styles. Magnificent hallways and sheets of glass scream the power of modern prosperity.
So it seemed symbolic as I left the courtroom and noticed a 30-yard trail of blood all the way to the elevator.
I had just finished listening to testimony of a 26-year-old African-American man who had been in prison for seven years. He is mentally ill. Schizophrenia, bipolar - the works. He is a cutter, meaning that he won't stop cutting himself. Several times he has come close to bleeding to death.
I was impressed by his vocabulary. At one point he used the word "profusely" to describe his bleeding. He seemed intelligent.
Ten percent of Americans will suffer serious mental illness at some point in our lives. Just like we all harbor the vulnerabilities of heart disease and cancer, we are all at risk of mental illness. It is in the nature of the wiring of our brains.
Like a booby trap waiting to explode, mental illness is triggered by environmental trauma. Some of us are blessed enough to avoid such trauma, but the hard nature of life means, inevitably, like the random mutations that lead to cancer, some will fall prey. Highly intelligent and creative people are especially vulnerable.
The young prisoner has been locked up in the East Mississippi Correctional Facility (EMCF) which is the subject of an on-going federal lawsuit for its barbaric conditions.
He was asked why he cut himself. "I can't really say," he testified. "I just get this overwhelming urge. After I do it, it's a relief. Like a burden has been taken off my shoulders."
Another time, the young man drank cleaning fluid off a cleaning cart. "That's stupid," the guard said and walked away. Somehow, he survived.
This prisoner is due to be released in a month, but there is little chance he will recover. There is a narrow window of opportunity to save someone affected by severe mental illness. They are paranoid. They are terrified. They are overwhelmed by anxiety.
Timely intervention can bring them back. A simple mouth swab genetic test can now identify the best medicines. Gentle and kind therapy in a peaceful, tranquil setting can stabilize their fear and slowly bring them back to reality, just like chemotherapy and angioplasty can save a person from cancer or heart disease.
In our ignorance, we still often blame mentally ill people for their condition. Because mental illness affects behavior, a mentally ill person lacking family support or financial resources will often find themselves arrested. Many of them find their way to EMCF, the Mississippi prison designated to house the mentally ill.
According to the law, these mentally ill prisoners are supposed to receive the intensive therapy and appropriate medications that can bring them back. But at EMCF, it rarely turns out that way.
Instead, they are thrown into a hellhole - a prison run by gangs, where they are beaten, raped, starved, gassed and stuffed in a dark solitary cell with roaches, rats and thin gruel.
If it had been the heart or kidney that had failed, these people would have Medicaid and could get decent medical interventions. But woe to a poor person whose brain becomes diseased in Mississippi.
Centuries ago, these people were burned at the stake for being witches. Or holes were drilled in their heads to let the bad spirts escape, a procedure that usually led to death. Others were locked up in insane asylums not much better than EMCF.
The Nazis just shot the mentally ill. We don't do that in Mississippi. We torture them until they cut themselves. Then rescue them from impending death; punish them for the attempt; and then torture them some more.
It's not that the administrators and guards at EMCF are bad people. They probably represent a standard Bell curve of human behavior. Some are saints. Some are sinners. Most fall somewhere in-between.
They are trying to do an extremely difficult job with inadequate resources. There is a shortage of skilled labor to fill these positions. Fire the existing staff and there is no guarantee the next crew will be any better.
During the trial numerous exhibits were submitted showing the staffing of mandatory positions in the prison is often half of what it is required to be. In addition, the cell locks are easily defeated. So the gangs take over.
Given the staff shortage, over time, the prison has learned to use the gangs to help manage the prison. The gangs, which have an elaborate hierarchy, decide which prisoners have which beds. They keep order and discipline. They are rewarded with a franchise to sell contraband. For a price, you can get anything you want.
Some of the guards are in cahoots. Others are intimidated by the gang leaders. Others just want to keep their head down and get paid. No doubt, some are trying their best.
Although expedient, using gangs to help maintain prison order is fraught with potential problems.
First of all, gangs are illegal organizations that engage in illegal activities and use violence to maintain discipline. Once gangs get a toehold, they expand. If gangs are allowed to run our prisons, they may infiltrate law enforcement and numerous other areas of our economy. Just look at Mexico if you want to see the pitfalls of tolerating gang entrenchment.
How can the FBI allow this to happen? They should be nipping this in the bud.
Second, it is absolutely inhumane to allow gangs to run a prison for the mentally ill. The gangs have no understanding of the unique nature of mental illness, so they just beat and isolate these people until they cut themselves, hang themselves and light fires in their cells as a cry for help.
Putting a mentally ill person in these conditions is a death sentence -- either actual death or a living hell. If psychosis isn't stabilized, the brain undergoes permanent physical changes that can be seen on an MRI.
I could recount horror story after horror story. It's all in the transcript.
Society owes our affluence to brilliant, creative individuals. These are our inventors, entrepreneurs and writers. But the same mental structures that allow creativity also create a vulnerability for mental illness. To throw these people into a hellhole like EMCF is not civilized.
I am under no illusion that a federal magic wand can eradicate this blight on humanity. But there are states that have instituted far better practices and procedures, usually by federal decree. Mississippi is far behind. We must do better.
It would be great if our state leaders cared, but they don't. I haven't seen one of them at the trial. Nobody cares about crazy people.
Jesus spoke about the prisoners in Matthew 25:35. His words are clear. What we do to these people, we do to him.
Wyatt Emmerich is the editor and publisher of The Northside Sun, a weekly newspaper in Jackson. He can be reached by e-mail at wyatt@northsidesun.com.
by: SARAH MEARHOFF
date: 2018-04-08
url: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/04/09/trial-over-prison-conditions-in-mississippi-comes-to-close.html
JACKSON, Miss. – The state of Mississippi has "abandoned its responsibility to provide basic needs" to inmates at a privately run prison that is excessively violent and fails to provide proper medical care, an attorney for the prisoners said Monday.
The American Civil Liberties Union and Southern Poverty Law Center sued the state over conditions at East Mississippi Correctional Facility, which is home to 1,200 inmates, 80 percent of whom have been diagnosed with a mental health problem.
The Mississippi Department of Corrections "receives report after report and does nothing. That is the definition of deliberate indifference," plaintiffs' attorney Erin Monju said in closing arguments.
Warden Frank Shaw testified during the five-week trial that the prison follows protocol and the facility is no worse than any other. Attorneys for the government defended the facility, including its regular use of solitary confinement.
"Coloring books and timeout isn't going to work for criminals," defense attorney William Siler said.
The prison, located outside of Meridian, is operated under a contract with the Utah-based Management and Training Corp. MTC is footing the bill of the legal defense team, but lawyers are defending the state of Mississippi. Plaintiffs say the state has been aware and complacent of the prison's unconstitutional conditions.
In a SPLC news release sent after Monday's closing arguments, Jody Owens, SPLC's managing attorney for Mississippi, said the state's Department of Corrections "allows this prison to fail at even the most fundamental tasks."
"The result is a place so dangerous and so violent that it shocks corrections experts, yet the department keeps handing taxpayer money to private companies to run the prison and its services," Owens said.
The state's attorneys said the groups suing Mississippi have an agenda and want to litigate private prisons out of business.
"We need to get out of their (MTC's) way and let them run their prison," Siler said.
Privately run prisons can be a political hot potato. Lawmakers often tout their lowered costs and better performance than state-run facilities, but opponents point to understaffing, health care cuts and a lack of transparency.
One of Attorney General Jeff Sessions' first orders in the Trump administration was to reverse an Obama-era directive phasing out the use of private prisons. It was perhaps an acknowledgement that the private prisons may be needed given the administration's aggressive enforcement of drug and immigration laws.
Several inmates testified during the trial about the conditions inside the prison. They described being jumped or shanked, sometimes in their own cells, with little help from prison guards. Such inmate violence, the warden said, is common.
"It's the nature of prisons," Shaw said. "It's the nature of the beast."
But the inmates' attorneys argued that the number of assaults at the prison is high and the result of inadequate supervision because of the prison's short-staffing. And they say guards abandon their posts and do not perform their minimum job functions.
Plaintiffs say this lack of supervision not only results in inmate assaults, but also poses a risk in the case of medical emergency. Plaintiffs say one inmate died this year after lying unconscious on the floor of his cell amid his feces and urine, as other inmates banged on the housing unit's door attempting to get medical assistance. Four other inmates have died so far this year.
Inmates regularly take extreme measures to get officers' attention — lighting their cells on fire or cutting themselves and reaching through their door's tray slot.
In one video provided as evidence by plaintiffs, guards did not respond to the scene of a cell fire until five minutes after flames could be seen from outside of the cell.
Inmate Terry Beasley, who testified in March, said he has diabetes and can go into shock and eventually die if his blood sugar drops too low. When asked by plaintiffs how he feels knowing it can take guards minutes to respond in emergency situations, Beasley began crying and said, "It's scary."
Inmates said they had seen cockroaches and mouse droppings throughout the facility, particularly in the kitchen, and had to deal with sewage backing up into cells and bathrooms.
The warden blamed the plumbing problems on inmates.
"In most cases, when we have those issues, it's inmate related. They've either flushed something down they shouldn't have or torn something up," Shaw said.
U.S. District Judge William Barbour Jr. said he planned to take "several days" to issue a written ruling.
Follow Sarah Mearhoff at: https://twitter.com/sarah_mearhoff . Read her work at https://www.apnews.com/search/Sarah%20Mearhoff .
by: Cory Doctorow
date: 2018-04-06
url: https://boingboing.net/2018/04/06/mississippi-is-burning.html
The Management & Training Corporation operates two federal prisons and 20 more state/local prisons around America; previously, it has been censured by Arizona for its role in deadly prison riots; now, the ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center are suing the state of Mississippi over the violence, neglect, and rampant human rights abuses at Management & Training's East Mississippi Correctional Facility, near Meridian in Lauderdale County.
The trial has heard from a seemingly endless queue of shackled men, brought from the prison to testify about the conditions under Management & Training Corporation's policies: they describe a prison where the prisoners routinely break out of their cells to visit terrible violence on other prisoners, without any intervention from guards; where guards turned and ran when the shackled, helpless man they were dragging to his cell was set upon by an armed gang; where guards are paid less than $12/hour and received three weeks' training; where facilities devoted to people with mental illness have virtually no trained psychiatric staff; where prisoners whose bones have been broken during assaults are thrown in their cells for days before they receive any medical attention.
The Mississippi prison system is a model of red state austerity, where the for-profit contractors like Management & Training receive just $9500/year ($26/day) per prisoner -- compared with $73,000/year per prisoner spent in New York.
To turn a profit under those conditions, Management & Training badly understaffs its prisons, creating a workplace few will tolerate -- as a result, even the most incompetent and sadistic employees get to keep their jobs. That's why Frank Shaw was made warden of the East Mississippi Correctional Facility, even after overseeing the catastrophic riots in Management & Training's Arizona facilities.
Shaw told the court he hadn't heard of any of the abuses that the prisoners testified about. He also revealed that he is given bonuses when he contains costs, but faces no sanctions if prisoners are injured or killed on his watch. Four prisoners died in Shaw's facility in the first quarter of this year.
Meanwhile, prisoners who testify about being assaulted are being moved into cells adjacent to their attackers by Management & Training, which is seemingly intent to have them join the ranks of the dead as a message to any other prisoner who might speak out.
Donald Trump has vowed to increase the use of for-profit private prisons in the federal system.
Pelicia E. Hall, the commissioner of the state prison system, testified that she may have been unaware of many problems at the facility because she did not read weekly performance reports from the state’s own monitor.
In the courtroom, the reports were delivered in person: An inmate testified in tears that a female guard had mocked him when he tried to report being raped in a cell in January. The guard never informed her superiors about the rape.
In an unrelated assault, surveillance video showed an inmate being beaten by other prisoners for 14 minutes before guards arrived.
Neither the state nor the private prison company has contested the accuracy of the prisoners’ accounts heard in court, although lawyers for the state say the stories should be treated with skepticism.
An inmate described another attack that occurred this year. He said a prisoner armed with a knife and a 4-foot section of pipe charged at him while he was being escorted to his cell by two guards. Instead of helping him, he said, the two guards ran away.
Inside a Private Prison: Blood, Suicide and Poorly Paid Guards [Timothy Williams/New York Times]
by: Whitney Downard wdownard@themeridianstar.com
date: 2018-03-14
url: http://www.meridianstar.com/news/witness-testifies-about-harm-of-solitary-confinement-at-east-mississippi/article_e8066086-2868-11e8-8c97-13427eec659f.html
Bill Graham / The Meridian Star
JACKSON — A psychiatrist called as a witness against the East Mississippi Correctional Facility testified Thursday that solitary confinement had severe and lasting psychological effects on all prisoners but especially those with mental illness.
“My opinion, urgently, is to remove all prisoners with serious mental illness from solitary confinement,” Dr. Terry Kupers, a psychiatrist, said about the privately-run prison near Meridian.
Plaintiffs and defendants have estimated that 80 percent, or over 1,000, prisoners at EMCF has some form of a mental health diagnosis.
Two inmates also testified about their experiences at EMCF.
John Hale said he believed that gangs ran the facility because he said they assigned housing and ran the kitchens. He said he had been forced to move cells because of threats from gangs.
Merlin Hill told the court Thursday afternoon that the prison didn’t fulfill his seizure or schizophrenia medication in a timely manner.
Hill visibly shook during his testimony, a side effect, he said, of not receiving his medication since Wednesday morning. The medication is supposed to be taken twice daily.
According to prison logs presented by the plaintiff, medical staff said Hill refused to take the medication. Hill testified that he had never refused medication and that staff frequently let his prescription “run out.”
Once, after 13 days, Hill filed a sick log request for his appropriate medication. Hill, who had been at EMCF for nearly 17 years, said that every month he goes at least a few days without one of his prescribed medications.
“Sometimes I have murderous thoughts, suicidal thoughts, pain in my head,” Hill said about withdrawals. “It’s unbearable sometimes… I’ve got bad pain behind my eyes and I’m shaking pretty badly. The pain goes away after the first day or two without my (medication).”
Solitary confinement
Unit 5, the focus of Thursday morning’s testimony, houses inmates in solitary confinement.
Kupers has assisted as a consultant and provided testimony inputs cases against the Mississippi Department of Corrections, which oversees EMCF, concerning solitary confinement in Mississippi State Penitentiary, or Parchman.
In the bench trial, which started March 5, Judge William H. Barbour Jr., of the U.S. Southern District Court in Jackson, will issue a judgement.
Kupers frequently expressed surprise at the conditions he witnessed while touring EMCF on multiple occasions, most recently in May of 2016.
“I have never seen so many locks being tampered with and broken,” Kupers said. “I’ve never seen this many fires. I’ve never seen this many incidents of self-harm. I have never seen a facility where light bulbs don’t function. It’s a basic need of people.”
Kupers recommended that the prison decrease the size of its solitary confinement block and reduce the time that prisoners can be held in solitary to 14 days.
“What we do know from the data is that the longer people spend in solitary confinement the worse the damage,” Kupers said, adding that many others advocated for completely abolishing solitary confinement.
“The conditions in solitary confinement at EMCF are the worst I have witnessed in my 40 years as a forensic psychiatrist investigating jail and prison conditions,” Kupers said in a submitted report.
Plaintiffs presented photos of doors with what appeared to be burn marks on several solid metal doors throughout the facility.
An illustration from the plaintiffs mapped out fires in Unit 5 and documented 66 fires between Feb. 25 and March 12, with a high of 11 fires on Feb. 26.
The defense asked Kupers about past work on solitary confinement conditions, of which Kupers said he’d testified in roughly 30 cases. Kupers said he nearly always worked with plaintiffs in these cases.
During the cross examination, Kupers remained critical of the staff at EMCF.
“I’ve never seen custody officers as callous and uncaring… never, in my 40 years of work,” Kupers said.
Attorneys representing the prison have argued during the trial the facility is under new management since the 2013 lawsuit was originally filed.
Since the lawsuit, EMCF was transferred from the GEO Group to the Management and Training Corporation, according to defense attorneys. For healthcare, the state contracted Health Assurance.
by:
date: 2018-03-06
url: https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2018/03/06/18807189.php
JACKSON, Miss., March 5, 2018 – Trial begins today in Dockery, et al. v. Hall, et al., a class action lawsuit brought on behalf of prisoners at East Mississippi Correctional Facility (EMCF) in Meridian, Mississippi. The American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Law Offices of Elizabeth Alexander, and Covington & Burling LLP will show that the Mississippi Department of Corrections has operated the prison in a continuous state of crisis, neglect, and abuse for years, causing extreme and preventable suffering for thousands of prisoners in violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
The prison holds nearly 1,300 people, roughly 80 percent of whom have serious mental illness. The suit names Pelicia Hall, Commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections, and other Mississippi officials who are responsible for ensuring that conditions at the prison comply with the Constitution. These officials contract with Management & Training Corporation (MTC), a private prison company, to operate the prison, and with the for-profit company Centurion, to provide medical and mental health care to the prisoners. For at least a decade, prisoners have been subject to rampant violence and brutal attacks that staff often allow, including stabbings and rape; have experienced excessive use of force by staff; have received little or no medical care or mental health treatment, even during emergencies; have lived in filthy, dark cells without working lights or toilets; and have been locked down in solitary for months and often years.
“The Mississippi Department of Corrections has abdicated its responsibility to uphold the Constitution and to treat the people in its custody with human decency,” said Eric Balaban, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Prison Project. “The unnecessary and abhorrent suffering the department inflicts on the people inside East Mississippi Correctional Facility changes those men forever, and not for the better. The department exacts a human toll that reaches beyond the individual prisoners, its cruelty hurting the men’s families, neighbors, friends, coworkers, and entire communities.”
At trial, current prisoners at East Mississippi Correctional Facility and national experts in prison management will testify to the Department of Corrections’ awareness of the problems at the prison and how little has changed.
“MDOC has turned a blind eye to treatment at the prison, allowing corners to be cut so private profits can be maximized. Prisoners in segregation live in pods littered with trash and human waste, weapons are common, and officers are unable or unwilling to maintain order,” said Jody Owens, SPLC managing attorney for Mississippi. “With four reported deaths in the last two months, we know EMCF is not safe for anyone.”
At EMCF, suicidal prisoners are observed for short periods of time in the facility’s infirmary and then often returned to conditions in solitary confinement that increase the risk of suicide, where they may spend 24 hours a day without light, in a room no larger than a small bathroom. Approximately 120 suicidal people in solitary for more than three months in “abject filth and darkness,” according to filings.
“For almost seven years, the Mississippi Department of Corrections has been on notice of the horrible conditions at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility and has failed to remedy them,” said Erin Monju, litigation associate at Covington & Burling LLP. “We look forward to trying this case and to giving the prisoners of East Mississippi Correctional Facility their day in court.”
Elizabeth Alexander has spent her career litigating on behalf of prisoners’ rights across the country. “It has been decades since I have seen a prison with such deplorable conditions,” she said. “At the East Mississippi Correctional Facility, lights in the cells and showers often don’t work. The prisoners are frequently exposed to live wiring. They’re surrounded by ground-in filth, and unreliable plumbing doesn’t function. On top of these failures, the Mississippi Department of Corrections doesn’t even provide them with enough food. In addition, they are subjected to almost daily fires and smoke inhalation.”
In January 2016, a prisoner’s cellmate found him passed out on the floor, unresponsive, having defecated and urinated on himself. The cellmate began banging on the door and yelling. Guards passed by the cell but ignored him. Hours later, a supervisor finally instituted an emergency response, and the prisoner was sent to the emergency room, but returned to his cell later that day with instructions that he be monitored. Four hours later, he was found dead on the floor.
Over a period of six weeks later that spring, another prisoner hurt himself repeatedly, including by inserting glass shards into his arm and leaving them there, and also tried to hang himself. He was never treated for self-harm nor given a medically appropriate suicide risk assessment. He also wasn’t monitored adequately. On April 4, 2016, he cut his arm severely and called for help, sticking his blood-covered arm through the slot in his door. A correctional officer saw his arm but didn’t act. Two hours later, the prisoner had strangled himself to death.
The lawsuit, originally captioned Dockery v. Epps, was filed in 2013. The trial is expected to last several weeks.
For legal documents and other information about Dockery v. Hall, see:
https://www.aclu.org/cases/prisoners-rights/dockery-v-hall
Southern Poverty Law Center: Docket for Dockery v. Hall
https://www.splcenter.org/seeking-justice/case-docket/dockery-v-epps
ACLU: Dockery v. Hall
https://www.aclu.org/cases/prisoners-rights/dockery-v-epps?redirect=prisoners-rights/dockery-v-epps
Covington & Burling
https://www.cov.com/en/pro-bono