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 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 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 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.
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.
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 Jim Hood has named them in a civil lawsuit he has filed. The Mississippi Department of Corrections 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 and the Southern Poverty Law Center 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. 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.
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. n
Reach Wyatt Emmerich, president of Emmerich Newspapers, at wyatt@northsidesun.com.
