Mississippi DOC Held Mentally Unwell Prisoners in Solitary, Many Died Because of It
by Michael Dean Thompson
Prisoners in the Mississippi Department of Corrections (DOC) seeking help are often placed in solitary confinement, according to two new reports by The Marshall Project. Nearly 75% of the known suicides occurred among people living in restricted housing, which can include solitary confinement. Policy regarding restricted housing in Mississippi holds that a well-being check be performed twice per hour and no more than 40 minutes apart. Yet, some suicide victims were found hours after their deaths with rigor mortis already set in.
In its use of restricted housing for prisoners undergoing mental health crises, the DOC is “unfortunate but not alone” according to Terry Kupers, a forensic psychologist and nationally recognized expert on solitary confinement. “The more inadequate the mental health treatment in a medical system,” Kupers said, “the more people with mental illness are sent to solitary. It’s just a matter of convenience.”
It was a matter of convenience when they placed Brandon Mitchell in solitary confinement at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility (ECMF) in 2021. ECMF is a private prison in which roughly 75% of the prisoners are struggling with mental illness according to Emily Lawhead, spokesperson for Management and Training Corp., which runs the prison.
During nearly three years of solitary confinement, Mitchell got only about two weeks reprieve. For ten months prior to his death, Mitchell’s mental health challenges became a recurring problem. He was kept in solitary even as he cut his arm, set fires, broke cell windows and tied a jumpsuit around his neck. During the final ten months, he asked for medication and to be taken out of the cell.
Mitchell asked a nurse at one point, “Why y’all always refusing me medical treatment?” He felt he was not being taken seriously, and he was not. Just two weeks before he killed himself, a mental health nurse wrote in her notes that he was acting out “all to get attention.”
Andrea Armstrong is a nationally recognized researcher on deaths in custody. “The idea that a person is in segregation and is actively seeking help, and the response, oddly enough, is to further isolate the person, is really a head-scratcher for me,” she told The Marshall Project.
The DOC requires that segregation prisoners receive frequent checks, particularly if they are “violent or mentally [dis]ordered,” or “demonstrate unusual or bizarre behavior.” Suicidal prisoners are supposed to be under continual observation.
Often, guards are the primary point of contact for health care. Yet, they are not trained to understand how various mental health crises might play out. “People tend to self-harm, go to suicide watch for days or a week, and get sent back to solitary,” Kupers said. “A suicide crisis is not over in a few days.” He points out that self-harm is a psychiatric emergency. Prison guards will see manifestations of mental illness as disciplinary violations, for which the answer tends to be more time in solitary confinement. Kupers calls it a “vicious cycle” of despair.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) investigated the Mississippi DOC in 2024. The agency described the restricted housing units as “breeding grounds for suicide, self-inflicted injury, fires, and assaults.”
At times, guards take an active role in encouraging self-harm. When she committed suicide, Denise Short was a 21-year-old mother who was incarcerated for her role in a drive-by shooting. Just months into a ten-year sentence, Short told guards she needed to be placed on suicide watch. They placed her in segregation instead, behind a steel door with a narrow slot for a window.
Jenessa Hicks is a lawyer representing Short’s family. According to Hicks, the timing of Short’s death and the logs of her check-ins do not match up. Short was last seen alive between 4 and 5 p.m. on March 19, 2024, according to the lawsuit. At about 6 a.m. the next day, a guard logged an observation that it appeared through the window as if she was standing, but video evidence indicates she was already dead. Her death was not discovered until 8:20 a.m., over two hours later.
According to the lawsuit, Short told a DOC employee about her suicidal thoughts. Rather than getting her immediate help, she was told, “Do what you have to do.” The DOC denies the interaction occurred.
Quintez Hodges had served 20 years on death row when he died in 2021, even though his death sentence was vacated in 2010. He looked forward to one day returning to his family. But, during a winter storm in February 2021, his housing unit went without gas or electricity. Families complained and the heat was turned back on. The DOC logs recorded soaring temperatures then in the unit, with an average of 128 degrees Fahrenheit. Fellow former death row prisoner Joseph Petri Brown thought the heat was so high because guards were retaliating for the media attention drawn by the families. He described chewing on a pen cap just to generate saliva.
After two decades of incarceration, Hodges expressed suicidal thoughts for the first time, yet no assessment was completed. Within two weeks, he was dead, hanging from a bed sheet around his neck. Somehow, the cause of death was undetermined.
In an interview, Brown said, “This is not a fucking suicide. They were killing that man.” He added, “Even though he may have put the rope around his neck, [DOC] hung that man with a rope. All they had to do was turn that fucking heat down.”
Source: The Marshall Project
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