For the second year in a row, legislation that would have shuttered the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman died in committee.
Senate Bill 2047, authored by Sen. Juan Barnett and tabled by the Corrections Committee on Wednesday, planned to initiate a four-year phasedown of operations at Parchman. During that time span, inmates and employees would have been transferred while the Mississippi Department of Corrections leased out most of the 18,000-acre site in Sunflower and Quitman counties, apart from a few buildings to be kept for inmates with mental illness, those on death row, and workforce development.
The bill specifically directed MDOC to contract with the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in Tutwiler for the incarceration of inmates formerly housed at Parchman and suggested the nearby, private prison be turned over to state control and renamed as the “Northwest Mississippi Correctional Facility.”
During the committee’s debate, it was apparent some members were once again hesitant to move forward with the idea of creating a larger prison site elsewhere without firm monetary figures to go off. Barnett, a Democrat from Heidelberg who chairs the committee, contended that the closure of Parchman would cost around $110 million and said that number is smaller than what the state spends to keep its largest and oldest prison intact.
“I think it is an economic disaster for us to continue to pour in good monies to a facility that has out-used its usefulness,” Barnett said, vouching Parchman has degraded significantly over its 124 years in operation. “How long are we going to continue to pour money into an operation like this?”
The Mississippi State Penitentiary has been the subject of criticism over the years with documentaries showcasing the living conditions along with lawsuits and a Justice Department investigation challenging the humanity of the facility. In 2023, MDOC Commissioner Burl Cain announced that renovations and repairs have allowed Parchman to regain national accreditation for the first time in nearly a decade.
Barnett’s push for the state to close Parchman, which he said former Republican Gov. Haley Barbour endorsed during his time in office, may have taken a step back with its latest tabling. In 2024, a bill to do the same passed the Corrections Committee but hit a dead end in the Appropriations Committee.
