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We are journalists who investigated solitary confinement units in Mississippi prisons, where about 47 people died by suicide in the past decade. Ask us anything.

Edit, noon CDT: Thanks everyone for your comments! We're stepping away for other work now, but we'll check back if you have more questions. Thanks again! If you'd like to learn more, visit themarshallproject.org/jackson & mississippitoday.org and consider signing up for our newsletters to stay up to date on Mississippi's criminal justice system.

Hey y’all! We are Daja E. Henry (u/marshall_project) and Mina Corpuz (u/MSTODAYnews), reporters at The Marshall Project and Mississippi Today.

We’ve spent a lot of time investigating deaths in the Mississippi prison system. Our coverage of unsolved homicides last year prompted the Mississippi Department of Corrections commissioner to review more than two dozen unprosecuted homicides and gained significant attention in the Legislature. 

This month, we released a project on suicides in solitary confinement here in Mississippi. Over the past decade, at least 66 people died by suicide in the state’s prisons. Nearly 75% of those were in solitary confinement. 

They are people like 21-year-old Denise Short, a young mother who asked to be placed on suicide watch, but was instead locked in solitary confinement. She was found dead the next morning.

Solitary confinement is proven to worsen mental illnesses and increase risk of suicides. Yet, the Mississippi Department of Corrections continues to warehouse vulnerable prisoners under these conditions that the U.S. Department of Justice called “breeding grounds for suicide, self-inflicted injury, fires, and assaults.”

Despite the National Commission on Correctional Health Care’s mandate that solitary confinement should never exceed 15 days, we found people who had been in solitary confinement for years at a time. Quintez Hodges had been in solitary confinement for 20 years before he died.

We talked with lawyers, incarcerated people, family members who lost loved ones to suicide, researchers, corrections experts, and more. 

What do you want to know about solitary and our findings? Ask away! (Starting at 10 a.m. CDT)

Proof

u/marshall_project — 12 days ago
▲ 2 r/texas

Meet One of the Most Prolific Artists From Prison Music’s Golden Age

Like many session musicians, one of the most prolific and versatile performers to ever record in American prisons has a name few would recognize. But recently, while collecting and digitizing albums made behind bars, our Staff Writer Maurice Chammah kept seeing Morgan White’s name on record sleeves. He composed, sang and played drums and piano on at least five prison albums from 1964 to 1982, all in Texas.

White is now 86 and recently spoke with Chammah. Here's his story and music (no paywall/ads)

themarshallproject.org
u/marshall_project — 1 month ago