Mississippi prison officials are fielding a new round of scrutiny after two inmates died due to “blunt force” beating in their facilities Monday night. According to NBC, prison officials also said a third inmate died by suicide in his cell on Sunday. Officials didn’t say much about the details of the two inmates who died, but the Mississippi Department of Corrections tweeted out that they believed the deaths were related to “an isolated incident,” at the prison and not connected to the series of violent, reportedly gang-related, deaths that led to a statewide lockdown earlier this month.
Thursday, Jan 23, 2020 · 2:58:28 PM +00:00
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Walter Einenkel
CBS News reports that another inmate was found dead by an apparent suicide, in his cell at Mississippi State Penitentiary on Wednesday.
Officials have also given the names of the two men that were found in their jail cells beaten to death, as 35-year-old Timothy Hudspeth and 36-year-old James Talley.
According to CBS Mississippi, having one of the highest incarceration rates in the United States also has around 1,300 unfilled corrections positions.
Our country’s conservative mania is coupled with conservative America’s pathological corrupt financial neglect and unwillingness to even accomplish the shortsighted job they claim to want done.
Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson has sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice asking that the attorney general investigate the conditions in Mississippi’s prisons that has led to these tragic outcomes. Rap mogul Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter recently sued the Mississippi Department of Corrections on behalf of 29 prisoners after five prisoners died in violent deaths within two weeks. His lawyer, Alex Spiro, told reporters that “These deaths are a direct result of Mississippi’s utter disregard for the people it has incarcerated and their constitutional rights.”
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For years, reports of violent conditions and impotent or criminally negligent prison officials have leaked out. Inmates have tried to organize and have even led nationwide strikes asking for more humane conditions. Many prisoners have risked their lives and been tortured in the process trying to expose the horrific and intolerable conditions within prisons across the country in places like Mississippi, Florida, and Alabama.
Jay-Z’s lawsuit touches on this terrible history of conditions in Mississippi corrections facilities, his legal team writing that “This unthinkable spate of deaths is the culmination of years of severe understaffing and neglect at Mississippi’s prisons. As Mississippi has incarcerated increasing numbers of people, it has dramatically reduced its funding of prisons. As a result, prison conditions fail to meet even the most basic human rights.”
Mississippi’s justice system has been in the news a lot recently. There, for instance, is the case of the father of three who was sentenced to 12 years in prison because guards forgot to take a cell phone from him when he was being checked in for a misdemeanor. And Mississippi is always one of the top three states in the Union leading the U.S. in extraordinary incarceration rates. The small attempts by lawmakers to reform how many people are incarcerated in Mississippi have been wrought with corruption and incompetence.
More and more lawsuits will be filed as state officials and prison officials drag their feet on much needed reforms. Even with prohibitive anti-human rights legislation still in place, supporting bad incarceration practices, the dam is breaking.