Thirteen families are grieving because their incarcerated loved ones have died in inhumane and deplorable Mississippi prisons during the first month of 2020. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves prefers to blame the string of deaths on gang violence and contraband cell phones. Incarcerated folks’ loved ones know the truth: Mississippi prisons are operating exactly the way Mississippi designed them to. The unsafe facilities are part of a system designed to rip black families apart, inflicting as much trauma and violence as possible along the way.
Mississippi incarcerates more people than all but two states in the country. Two-thirds of that giant prison population is black, despite black people making up just one-third of the state’s population. Three out of every four youth who are charged as adults in Mississippi are black. One in 30 black men are behind bars in Mississippi, and racist “habitual offender” laws are in place to keep them there. Mississippi’s version of the “three strikes” law mandates maximum sentences for repeat offenders, no matter the circumstance or insignificance of the crimes. A Fwd.us report revealed that black men account for just 13% of Mississippi’s general population, but receive 75% of the 20+-year sentences under habitual offender laws. Black folks are overrepresented in Mississippi prisons, and the pain is felt most acutely by black communities and families.
As a college student, I read the book Worse than Slavery by David Oshinsky. Oshinsky sheds light on the dark origins of Mississippi’s criminal justice system and the Mississippi State Penitentiary, also known as Parchman Farm. My stomach soured reading about how law enforcement and white landowners collaborated to target and jail black people for petty crimes after the Civil War and abolition of chattel slavery. Wealthy white landowners would then pay bail and force them to work off their debts in fields. As early as 1876, Oshinsky writes, Mississippi was involved in the practice of leasing convicts to private entities.
The exclusive right to lease state convicts quickly became Mississippi’s most prized political contract, coveted by planters, businessmen, and speculators across the board. It passed from Colonel Edmund Richardson, who spent a small fortune bribing legislators, to General Nathan Bedford Forest, first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, to Colonel Jones S. Hamilton, a gambler-turned financier from Wilkinson Country, south of Natchez.
The term “worse than slavery” stems from the fact that convicts worked in inhumane conditions, were savagely beaten, and worked almost endless days with little food or water to increase profits. Black convicts were no longer considered personal property so there was no investment to protect, and thus no reason to maximize their lifespan. Overseers would simply toss the dead bodies of overworked convicts in ditches and replace them, like a contractor managing a construction site would replace hammers or other supplies needed to keep the work moving along.
Parchman Farm provided an opportunity for the state to move away from convict leasing, after state officials realized the prison could operate like a self-sufficient plantation capable of producing large profits. Parchman used its chain gangs to work cotton fields while gun-toting white overseers patrolled on horseback. The prison itself was filled with racism, where residents were segregated and assigned work by skin color. Corrections officers were overseers who beat residents with whips, and violence among residents was rampant. Parchman was even used to torture and break the spirits of freedom workers who were fighting for racial equality in the 1960s. Oshinsky highlighted how many black families, not even a generation removed from chattel slavery, never got to see their loved ones again once they entered Parchman.
Today’s coverage of Parchman shows dilapidated buildings and brown water flowing from the faucets and showers. The facility does not provide air conditioning during Mississippi’s scorching hot summers. Chronic understaffing, low wages, and poor training have led to a culture of corruption, greed, and indifference among prison staff, which in turn has led to rampant violence and riots at the facility. The food served to residents is not fit for any living creature to consume. Residents of Parchman must defecate in bags because of failing toilets and sewage. Black families continue to grieve and lose sleep because their loved ones face death, regardless of their sentence, while imprisoned at Parchman and other Mississippi prisons.
I belong to one of those black families. My uncle spent more than 25 years on Parchman Farm and now is detained in a facility where a resident also died this month. I have never met my uncle in person, because he is serving a life sentence under Mississippi’s habitual offender laws. My older brother will probably miss major life events like my wedding, the birth of my children, and the opportunity to start his own family because he has spent the majority of his life, since he was 15, in Mississippi correctional facilities. When our mother passed in 2012, we had to get special permission for him to attend the funeral. Even then he was shackled like a slave and accompanied by an armed guard as he viewed our mother’s body. The clinking of his shackles accompanied by the sniffles of grieving family members will never escape my memory.
It will be two generations at minimum before my family might escape the trauma that comes with being born into a world where a loved one is serving time in a Mississippi prison. Yet even then, our family history will always be tainted by empty seats around the dinner table during holidays, missing pairs of feet who can’t join the Cupid Shuffle in the front yard at family barbecues, and most importantly, the lonely nights of anguish knowing a loved one is suffering in a dangerous Mississippi prison.
As a 12-year-old, I watched my big brother ride off in the back of a police car that I wanted to believe was destined for a camp for loving big brothers who got in trouble at school. He was eventually dropped off at Walnut Grove Correctional Facility instead. My vision blurred and my head throbbed years later when, as a college student, I read that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) was closing the prison because it was being run by gangs, with the help of corrupt guards.The DOJ report also revealed that older residents sexually assaulting younger residents was extremely common, including some of the worst cases in the country. I realized that the camp I’d imagined, for loving big brothers who got in a little trouble, was really a war zone where no one was safe—including my own family.
My brother is now detained at the South Mississippi Correctional Institution (SMCI), a facility notorious for violence, including a 2018 incident where a resident was set on fire. I lose sleep worrying if he is safe, considering someone was killed there in a violent incident just weeks ago. When he was transferred to this facility, I was overcome with anxiety because SMCI has a history of blocking visitation for residents, sometimes for periods as long as 13 months. Visitation—which is extremely beneficial for incarcerated people and their loved ones—isn't something either of us can count on while he’s at SMCI. Like many other loved ones of incarcerated people, I worry if each visit will be our last, since the deplorable conditions of Mississippi prisons could easily turn my brother’s time there into a death sentence.
It’s not enough to close facilities, like the state did with Walnut Grove, or decaying, decrepit units at Parchman. Mississippi must eliminate the racist habitual offender laws that disproportionately destroy black families and communities. Mississippi also must end the practice of detaining youth and charging them as adults. My brother and uncle both started their dangerous journeys through the deadly Mississippi prison system as youth offenders. The practice disproportionately decimates black families and throws minors convicted of crimes on a path toward death, rather than preparing them to reenter society with a new chance at life. Most importantly, Mississippi must completely redesign the prison system. Placing Band-Aids on the state’s current prison system won’t stop the destruction of black families and communities.
The story of my family is one that is far too common in Mississippi, and without a complete overhaul of our prison system and our laws, black families and black men—just like those first targeted after the Civil War—will continue to suffer.
Ready to help those impacted by the Mississippi prison crisis? Start here!
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You can donate here to support the Mississippi Prison Coalition's vital work to support incarcerated folks and their families.
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The RECH Foundation based in Mississippi has launched a letter writing campaign to write more than 30,000 letters to incarcerated folks in Mississippi’s prisons. Please consider writing and letting them know that people all over the world are fighting for them.