Miss. governor to close prison unit
Death row will continue to be located there
JACKSON, Miss. – Gov. Tate Reeves told lawmakers Monday that he has ordered the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman’s notorious Unit 29 closed, adding that the problems he saw during a tour of the prison last week were “infuriating.”
“We will do better,” Reeves said of the state’s prison system, where a dozen inmates have died in recent weeks, including by stabbings and suicides. “We will right the wrongs of the past, and we will do everything in our power to protect the dignity of every Mississippi life.”
Reeves, a Republican, made the announcement during his first State of the State address outside the Capitol on Monday evening, where he also discussed raising teacher pay and revealed a plan to cut government red tape and improve government customer service.
Interim Department of Corrections Commissioner Tommy Taylor clarified Reeves’ remarks about Unit 29 after the speech, telling reporters that not all of the dozen buildings in the unit would be shuttered. Death row, he said, will continue to be located there, suggesting that part of the unit was in decent shape.
In his address, Reeves suggested correctional officers needed more “tools” and higher pay to do the job adequately. He said the corrections system needed to show “a baseline level of respect to those who find themselves within it.”
Reeves also recounted the story of a former inmate, Eddie Spencer, who in 1982 was a 19-year-old serving time in Parchman.
“He was holding a shank. He was sitting on his cot. And there was murder on his mind. He was considering killing two of his fellow inmates – to toughen his image and bolster his standing in a prison where violence was the norm,” Reeves said. “He stood convicted of armed robbery and attempted murder. It may be easy for us to cast such a man off – to believe that his life does not matter. But God did not.”
According to Reeves, Spencer did not turn into violence. Instead, he finished his sentence peacefully, became a pastor and gave the benediction at the inauguration of Reeves earlier this month.
Rep. Alyce Clark, a Democrat, praised Reeves’ decision to close Unit 29.
“I get calls and letters all the time” from people who are concerned about family members housed in Unit 29, Clark said.
“If he does what he says he’ll do, Mississippi will become a better state,” she added.
Twelve men have died while in Department of Corrections custody since Dec. 29. Nine of them were inmates at Parchman. The Department of Corrections has attributed some of the deaths to gang-related violence.
The number of deaths within the last month are more than double the average for the Department of Corrections. Records obtained by the Clarion Ledger show that between January 2014 and September 2019, an average of 5.5 people died while in custody per month.