The Associated Press led the way with cross-format spot and enterprise coverage of recent prison unrest in Mississippi, bringing much-needed insight and context to a chaotic, evolving situation and giving voice to those affected by the deadly violence.
AP began chronicling rising violence across Mississippi’s troubled prison system in late 2019, but it became clear after four deaths in four days that something bigger was going on.
AP was the first mainstream outlet to report that the violence revolved around a dispute between the Vice Lords and Gangster Disciples gangs, weaving in coverage of a Dec. 31 court ruling on prison conditions that many other outlets largely ignored or missed altogether.
Reporters Jeff Amy, Atlanta, and Emily Wagster Pettus, Jackson, Mississippi, quickly put together a deeper dive into the history of underfunding and other problems in the prison system. Officials were saying little in the midst of the crisis, but Amy knew they filed documents each year with legislative budget officials that contained key measures of prison performance. Those documents showed three state-run prisons were staffing only half their guard posts on a routine basis, and also described the ramshackle state of a cell block at the notorious Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.
Inmates lie on the floor next to a full toilet at Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, in an undated photo taken by an inmate and verified by the AP. After violence at the prison on Jan. 2, 2020, guards and state troopers marched some prisoners at Parchman into Unit 32, a cell block closed in 2011 as part of a settlement; the inmate who shot this photo said the unit has no running water or mattresses, and is plagued by mold and other issues.
Anonymous courtesy photo via AP
Amy and Wagster Pettus were able to obtain photos and video shot by a prisoner using a contraband cell phone that showed conditions inside a closed-down cell block reopened to help quell the unrest. In part by comparing the images to past photos of the cellblock, AP was able to verify the authenticity of the visuals and secure needed permissions to use the material.
AP also published all-formats interviews with grieving mothers of prisoners killed, including footage shot by New Orleans video journalist Stacey P. Jenkins, and reported on legal questions surrounding the state’s decision to sign a contract to house inmates at a private prison to help separate prisoners.
Roosevelt Holliman, left, who was beaten and stabbed at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman on Jan. 2, 2020, and Denorris Howell, who was found dead in his cell on Jan. 3, are shown in undated file photos released by the Mississippi Department of Corrections. More than two dozen Mississippi inmates sued the state Jan. 14, saying understaffed prisons are “plagued by violence” and inmates are forced to live in decrepit and dangerous conditions. The federal lawsuit follows an outbreak of violence that killed five inmates and left an undisclosed number of others injured between Dec. 29 and Jan. 3.
Mississippi Department of Corrections via AP
Sharon Brown, a member of Victim’s Voice, a inmate support group, speaks into a bullhorn about the prison conditions an incarcerated family member has described to her, Jan. 7, 2020, outside the Capitol in Jackson, Miss. Prisoner advocates from a number of groups called upon the federal government to investigate Mississippi’s prison system for possible civil rights violations, citing recent inmate deaths as highlighting deliberate violations of inmates’ constitutional rights.
AP Photo / Rogelio V. Solis
AP’s coverage was used by hundreds of outlets and generated thousands of social media interactions, as well as making the front pages and websites of numerous Mississippi customers.
For pulling back the curtain on the conditions and systemic problems inside the state’s prisons, and putting the toll of violence in human terms, Amy and Wagster Pettus receive this week’s Best of the States award.