More Slayings at Parchman as Mississippi Confronts Prison Crisis

Parchman, a maximum-security prison notorious for its harsh conditions, has been on lockdown since a gang-fueled spate of violence and disorder several weeks ago. Critics have urged federal officials to investigate conditions they have condemned as unconstitutional and inhumane, and 29 inmates filed a lawsuit last week against state officials, casting the recent killings as the “culmination of years of severe understaffing and neglect.”

In a statement, prison officials disclosed few details about the circumstances surrounding the most recent killings. Heather Burton, the coroner for Sunflower County, Mississippi, said both inmates had been killed by blunt force trauma and were pronounced dead Tuesday morning.

“It appears to be an isolated incident — not a continuation of the recent retaliatory killings,” the Department of Corrections said in the statement, referring to the previous violence that officials have attributed to warring gangs. “We are investigating further now.”

Separately, an inmate was found dead in his cell Saturday night, officials said, in an apparent suicide. The inmate was being held in Unit 29, a section that officials have been trying to clear because it has fallen into disrepair.

The turmoil at Parchman — and in other state prisons across Mississippi — has become one of the most pressing issues confronting Gov. Tate Reeves, who took office last week. On Tuesday, he wrote on Twitter that there was “much more to be done here.”

Reeves has formed a search committee to find a new commissioner for the Department of Corrections, an agency gripped by crisis over the deteriorating state of its facilities and its struggle to hire corrections officers who are willing to work in dangerous environments for low pay.

All the prisons across Mississippi were locked down after the explosion of gang violence, but Parchman is the only facility still under those restrictions. While gangs have driven the unrest, activists and inmates have said that a severely underfunded and understaffed prison system has been a contributing factor.

In a letter calling for a federal investigation, a collection of civil rights groups and elected officials detailed a long record of violence, escapes, uprisings and inadequate health care, as well as “extreme” staff vacancies that have allowed the facilities to become a breeding ground for chaos.

Inmates using illegal cellphones have also illuminated the conditions inside by sending out photographs and videos showing wounds possibly caused by rubber bullets, meals without any protein, dead rodents and walls darkened by mold.

“These inhumane conditions are unconstitutional,” a group of inmates declared in a federal lawsuit filed last week. The legal effort is being backed by the rappers Jay-Z and Yo Gotti.

“Plaintiffs’ lives are in peril,” the lawsuit said, adding that inmates have died as a “direct result of Mississippi’s utter disregard for the people it has incarcerated and their constitutional rights.”

The prison system has been among the most urgent matters facing the governor and lawmakers as they start a new legislative session. Reeves has asked a group of prosecutors and law enforcement officials, led by Mayor George Flaggs Jr. of Vicksburg, to find a replacement for Pelicia E. Hall, the former prison commissioner who announced her resignation in late December and stepped down last week to take a private sector job.

The agency is being led in the interim by Thomas Taylor, a former state lawmaker and mayor of Boyle, a town of roughly 600 people in the Mississippi Delta. Reeves said in a statement that he had also asked the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation to assign an officer to Parchman to conduct an investigation and “bring order and root out the underlying issues.”

“Can we do more to provide for peace? I believe we can,” Reeves said. “To do so, we must get to the heart of the problem. And it starts with bringing order to Parchman.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .