Mississippi Prison Reforms Have Been Touted As A Model To Follow, But In Reality They’ve Been Mostly Broken Promises
Mississippi vowed to take steps to help prisoners better prepare for life outside bars, send offenders to drug courts for treatment rather than to prison, and to help keep offenders guilty of technical probation violations from returning to prison, among other things. But none of that has happened.
ProPublica/Mississippi Center For Investigative Reporting:
Trump Hailed This State’s Prison Reforms As A National Model — But The Numbers Reflect A Grim Reality
Last November, as he rallied support for federal prison reform, President Donald Trump visited Gulfport, Mississippi, touting the legislation and what Mississippi had accomplished. Trump talked about the “fantastic job” that Mississippi Corrections Commissioner Pelicia Hall was doing of turning the state’s prisons into places that train inmates for jobs. The following month, Trump signed the First Step Act, whose goal is to reduce the federal prison population and better prepare offenders for life outside bars. (Mitchell, 5/9)
In other news about failed quality of care and safety —
The Associated Press:
Teen’s Death Raises New Questions About US Care Of Migrants
Juan de León Gutiérrez told his mother he was calling from a warehouse in Mexico, hidden by a human smuggler who had been paid to take the teenager into the United States. “He told me he had something of a headache, perhaps because he was hungry and had not been able to sleep,” said his mother, Tránsito Gutiérrez de León. The 16-year-old died on April 30 after officials at a Texas youth detention facility noticed he was sick, becoming the third Guatemalan child to die in U.S. custody since December. (Merchant and Perez D., 5/9)
