Some inmates - particularly those identified as leaders of gangs - have been moved to other facilities, while others have been given more time out of their cells for recreation, educational programs or alcohol and drug abuse therapy.
The Associated Press
JACKSON, Miss. — Mississippi corrections officials have managed a wave of reforms in the supermaximum-security unit at the State Penitentiary at Parchman with the same basic criminal mix it had before, according to a new roster of Unit 32 inmates.
Percentages of those serving time for murder and other violent crime and those locked up on drug and property crime convictions vary little.
What has changed is how many are on 23-hour lockdown.
Corrections Commissioner Christopher Epps said the number fluctuates from as little as one-seventh of the population to as much as one-third.
Less than a year ago, the penitentiary had 1,000 inmates, almost all on 23-hour lockdown.
A roster of inmates assigned to Unit 32, which The Clarion-Ledger obtained through a public-records request, shows just more than 700 prisoners. Of those, approximately a third are on lockdown. Of the 237 inmates on lockdown, 62 are death-row inmates who are treated separately by corrections officials.
Margaret Winter, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented Unit 32 inmates in a class-action lawsuit against the state in 2006 over conditions inside the facility, said the number of prisoners in isolation is larger than she expected.
“The last time we heard about it, it was under 160 and going down. I don’t know what this jump is about,” she said.
Still, Winter and Epps agree the improvements at the facility are manifest. Epps and Deputy Commissioner Emmitt Sparkman inspected the prison March 20.
“We observed recreation, inmates playing basketball,” Epps said.
Epps also said he saw inmates cleaning as part of a contest to encourage prisoners to maintain the facility. The inmates who keep their Unit 32 building the neatest can earn a movie night with popcorn, he said.
That’s a sea change from the hellish descriptions witnesses gave in a federal court hearing last May. Inmates and corrections experts described filthy cells and buildings where violent inmates lived alongside mentally ill prisoners. Guards and medical staff could not walk the tiers of cells without dodging thrown feces or cups of scalding water.
Though Unit 32 is still a maximum security facility - and home to Mississippi’s death row - Epps said there has been a lot of progress there since last summer’s violence claimed the lives of four inmates.
The ACLU long said the 23-hour-a-day lockdown almost all Unit 32 inmates were under increased the level of tension and violence in the facility. In November, the state entered a new improvement plan in federal court as a final settlement to the ACLU lawsuit.
Rosters from May 2007 and March 2008 show violent criminals make up three-fourths of the prisoners at Unit 32. In the most recent sample, murderers make up 30 percent of the facility’s inmates, up from 26 percent last year.
In both samples, property and drug crimes make up the remaining population, with burglary being the most serious crime committed by one in 10 inmates in the facility.
Epps said the improvement in conditions and inmate behavior are the result of his department’s decision to try new approaches.
Some inmates - particularly those identified as leaders of gangs - have been moved to other facilities, while others have been given more time out of their cells for recreation, educational programs or alcohol and drug abuse therapy. The result has been no serious violent incidents since the Aug. 28 stabbing death of death row inmate Earnest Lee Hargon by fellow prisoner Jessie Wilson.
Most of the Unit 32 prisoners are serving terms of less than life, and one-third are scheduled to be released in the next seven years.
Epps said the number of inmates on lockdown fluctuates. “It could be a low as 100,” he said, depending a variety of factors.
Winter agreed. Even the higher-than-expected numbers of inmates in isolation is within an acceptable range, she said.
She said she still gets complaints from inmates at Unit 32, but her investigations have found no wrongdoing by the prison.
“So far, the ones who have been in lockdown have been there for a legitimate reason,” she said.