STARKVILLE – I read a Jackson newspaper story about the predictable lament in the Leake County hamlet of Walnut Grove over the closing of the Walnut Grove Correctional Facility – a private prison that had been one of the economic mainstays of the town.
I know Walnut Grove, a place that’s home to a lot of good, hard-working people and one of Mississippi’s best catfish houses. Those facts make it sad that for many, the town of Walnut Grove became synonymous in Mississippi with one of the worst instances of prison abuse and neglect ever exposed in the courts.
And the closure of the prison became a self-fulfilling prophecy that was foretold over six years ago when the American Civil Liberties Union first claimed conditions at the prison were unconstitutional and cited beatings, rape, and gang violence as evidence of those failures.
Last June, U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves ruled that the Mississippi Department of Corrections was violating the Eighth Amendment rights of inmates at the Walnut Grove Correctional Facility by failing to protect them from gang violence. The ruling noted alleged collusion between some prison guards and gang members.
In that ruling, Reeves ordered MDOC and MTC—the for-profit prison corporation the state paid to operate WGCF—to implement basic safety measures to end gang control as well as violence by guards against prisoners. Reeves observed that life at Walnut Grove was a “horror as should be unrealized anywhere in the civilized world.”
The downfall of the Walnut Grove prison also was foretold in the 49-count federal indictment of former Mississippi Commissioner of Public Safety Chris Epps.
Epps pleaded guilty in 2015 to corruption charges alleging that he and co-conspirator Cecil McCrory, a former lawmaker and president of the Rankin County school board, engaged in a criminal conspiracy that saw Epps take nearly $2 million in bribes and kickbacks. Epps pleaded guilty specifically to money laundering conspiracy and filing a false tax return. McCrory pleaded guilty to money laundering conspiracy.
Federal prosecutors accused the men of a scheme in which McCrory directed more than $1 million to Epps, including cash and mortgage payments, in exchange for lucrative state contracts.
In addition to McCrory, former prison phone consultant Sam Waggoner and Harrison County politico Robert Simmons have pleaded guilty to bribing Epps in return for contracts. Former state Rep. Irb Benjamin of Madison is charged with bribing Epps for contracts at prison work centers and county jails.
The closure of the Walnut Grove prison was also foretold by the 2012 tale of former longtime Walnut Grove Mayor Grady Sims, then 61, who was sentenced to serve seven months in federal prison for federal witness tampering. Sims pled guilty to the charge on February 14, 2012.
Sims had been the town’s mayor since 1981 and served in the post continually for over 30 years. In October 2009, Sims also became the administrator of the Walnut Grove Transition Center in Walnut Grove.
According to the FBI, at that time, the Transition Center was a privately-owned and operated facility which had contracted with MDOC to house state inmates. In November 2009, Sims rented a motel room in Carthage, Mississippi; drove a female inmate in his custody from the Walnut Grove Transition Center to the motel room.
The FBI later confirmed during a federal grand jury investigation that Sims was recorded during several telephone calls with the female inmate instructing the inmate to lie to investigators by saying they had never had sex and had never been together in that motel room. Sims was subsequently interviewed by the FBI, and he admitted to both having sex with the female inmate and instructing her to lie to investigators about their sexual encounter.
So, despite the good people and the peaceful surroundings in Walnut Grove, the prison was for the better part of a decade awash in corruption, violence, sexual predation of every stripe, and was the focal point of kickbacks and bribes from the local city hall to the halls of state government.
Is there any wonder that current MDOC Commissioner Marshall Fisher said last month: “MDOC’s budget is lower than what we anticipated. Pursuant to an intensive budget review and evaluation, we have determined this is the most prudent action. We have the space in our state-run prisons to house the 900 inmates at Walnut Grove.”
(Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him sidsalter@sidsalter.com.)