Click to read the court order: https://www.columbianprogress.com/sites/default/files/EMCF%20lawsuit%20dismissal%20order.pdf
Dismissal of a long-running lawsuit about the East Mississippi Correctional Facility has interesting implications for the current furor over conditions at another state prison, the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.
Namely, U.S. District Judge William Barbour found that once-abysmal conditions have improved substantially through new management and more investment. He filed his 55-page opinion on Dec. 31, officially ending the case that had been going for nearly seven years called “Dockery v. Hall.”
The lawsuit centered around the prison near Meridian run by a private company, Management and Training Corp., hired by the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Poverty Law Center led the charge, saying the conditions were an inhumane violation of prisoners’ Eighth Amendment rights in seven categories: Solitary confinement, mental health care, medical care, abuse and excessive force by staff, failure to protect prisoners from violence, sanitation and environmental conditions and nutrition and food safety.
Columnist Wyatt Emmerich described it this way in a 2019 op-ed that ran in this newspaper: “I sat through much of the trial and was appalled by the atrocities: rats, blackout, drugs, rapes, gangs and the like. Basically, the Gangster Disciples and the Vice Lords were running the place, which was filled with mentally ill prisoners in desperate need of medication.”
But Barbour reviews each of the seven categories in his Dec. 31 order and concludes every time that the prison’s problems didn’t violate the inmates’ constitutional rights. His main arguments are that the prisoners did not prove the prison officials showed “deliberate indifference” to their needs and that wholesale changes have been made in how the prison has been run since the lawsuit was filed in 2013.
The judge points to the poor conditions as being related to the bribery and kickbacks that then-MDOC Commissioner Chris Epps participated in. Epps went down while the lawsuit was pending in a scandal that showed he was pocketing cash galore in exchange for handing out state prison contracts. He’s now in prison.
So is Dr. Carl Reddix, whose company bribed Epps to get a no-bid contract for health care at East Mississippi Correctional Center. The state rescinded the contract and gave it to a new company after the bribery scheme came to light.
Barbour said that led to the creation of an in-house medical unit and pharmacy.
“The prison also saw the hiring of a very experienced new warden, an increase in the number and availability of security staff throughout the facility, and the cleaning/repairing/improving of the prison. The changes made at the prison are evident from the record, and from the tour of the facility that was made during trial,” Barbour wrote. “The Court was surprised with respect to the cleanliness and condition of the prison in particular after seeing photographs of facility that were taken prior to the lawsuit’s having been filed before trial, and hearing the anecdotal evidence presented by the prisoners who testified at trial.”
As the state wrestles with what to do at Parchman, the changes at East Mississippi at the very least show an example of how to improve a prison: Hire competent management, root out corruption, increase staffing and clean up the physical plant.
Easier said than paid for but not impossible, at least based on the situation Barbour describes at East Mississippi.
Charlie Smith is editor and publisher of The Columbian-Progress. Reach him via email at csmith@columbianprogress.com or call (601) 736-2611.
