Case: DOJ CRIPA Investigation of Four Mississippi Prisons

On February 5, 2020, the U.S. Justice Department Civil Rights Division announced an investigation pursuant to the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (CRIPA) into conditions in four Mississippi prisons: the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman), Southern Mississippi Correctional Institute, Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, and the Wilkinson County Correctional Facility. The Justice Department stated that it will investigate whether "the Mississippi Department of Corrections adequately protects prisoners from physical harm at the hands of other prisoners at the four prisons, as well as whether there is adequate suicide prevention, including adequate mental health care and appropriate use of isolation, at Parchman."

On April 20, 2022, DOJ announced the findings of the Parchman part of the investigation, issuing a 59-page report.  DOJ found:

• The State failed to protect incarcerated persons from violence at the hands of  other incarcerated persons, subjecting Parchman prisoners to an unreasonable risk of violence due to inadequate staffing, cursory investigative practices, and deficient contraband controls, all of which led to an "environment rife with weapons, drugs, gang activity, extortion, and violence, including 10 homicides since 2019."
• The State failed to meet the serious  mental health needs of  persons incarcerated  at Parchman, combining flawed intake screening and poor mental health assessments that failed to identify  mental health care needs with too few qualified mental health staff.
• The State failed to  take  adequate suicide prevention measures. More specifically, it failed to identify  individuals at risk of suicide, and it housed them in dangerous areas that were not suicide resistant. It did not train officers to identify signs and symptoms of suicidal behavior, and staff failed to respond to self-harm emergencies in a timely or reasonable manner. The report highlighted 12 suicides in the prior three years.
• The State's use of prolonged restrictive housing (solitary confinement) placed Parchman's prisoners at risk of serious harm. According to the statement of Assistant Attorney General Kristin Clarke, this was the first time DOJ found solitary confinement conditions to violate the Constitution. (Prior investigations were pursuant to the Americans with Disabilities Act, rather than the Constitution.)

The report also criticized the state's response to a prisoner riot on Dec. 31, 2019. Parchman's staff, it said "was caught off guard, utterly overwhelmed, and ultimately unable to adequately and quickly respond to fighting and significant injuries in multiple buildings."

The DOJ report stated, that by statute "49 days after issuance of this letter, the Attorney General may initiate a lawsuit pursuant to CRIPA to correct deficiencies identified in this Findings Report if State officials have not satisfactorily addressed our concerns," and that "the Attorney General may also move to intervene in related private suits 15 days after issuance of this Report."

On February 24, 2024, the DOJ announced their findings with regards to the other four correctional facilities, finding that they all violated the constitutional rights of the people incarcerated there. In summary, the DOJ identified the following violations:

 "MDOC fails to protect persons incarcerated at these three facilities from wider spread physical violence. This is because MDOC fails to adequately supervise people in housing units, stop the flow of contraband, and properly investigate incidents of serious harm. These issues are all worsened by poor living conditions and low staffing levels that have allowed gangs to claim control inside the prisons.

-MDOC uses restrictive housing (aka “solitary confinement”) in a way that exposes incarcerated people to a substantial risk of serious physical and psychological harm at Wilkinson and Central Mississippi."

Following these findings, the investigation into investigations into Parchman, Central Mississippi, South Mississippi, and Wilkinson were deemed complete. As of 2025, MDOC allegedly remains  in ongoing settlement negotiations with the DOJ.