Locked Down: Life inside Mississippi prison where inmates set each other on fire, gangs control power
Published 1:01 pm Monday, August 19, 2019
Jeffery Wilemon was so severely beaten at South Mississippi Correctional Institution that he had to be airlifted to Forrest General Hospital in Hattiesburg. Mississippi Department of Corrections
Henry Armstead, pictured here with his daughter, was severely beaten and burned while incarcerated at South Mississippi Correctional Institution, according to an incident report. Now transferred to the hospital at the State Penitentiary at Parchman, he’s still on a feeding tube. Photo courtesy of Demetrius Armstead family
Russell Turner, editor of the weekly Greene County Herald newspaper, had been a champion of the 516-bed South Mississippi Correctional Institution. After touring the prison, he now calls it “a ticking time bomb.” Owen Hornstein/InvestigateTV
Demetrius Armstead said she didn’t learn that her son, Henry Armstrong, had been beaten and burned at South Mississippi Correctional Institution until six days later, when the prison chaplain told her to head to a Hattiesburg hospital. She found her son on life support. “Everything in the whole of my body just went to the gut of my stomach,” she said. “It just tore me up on the inside.” Owen Hornstein/InvestigateTV
Drone photo shows the campus of South Mississippi Correctional Institution in Leakesville. Tammie Mills & Jon Turnipseed/InvestigateTV
Fisher, the MDOC spokeswoman, replied that the department “denies alleged statements that gangs run SMCI or any other prison. Such an assertion contradicts the public safety mission of the agency.”
‘It Just Tore Me Up’
The tour came just days before a correctional officer found Henry Armstead on his back between the benches in a dayroom, according to an incident report obtained by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting.
He had been “severely beaten and had severe burns on his back,” the report said.
His mother, Demetrius Armstead, said she didn’t learn that her son had been hurt until six days later, when the prison chaplain told her to head to a Hattiesburg hospital. She found her son on life support.
His swollen head reflected a severe beating, she said.
“And I could see the burns from his ear, down his entire back to the top of his buttocks.”
At first, she became angry. Then she broke down.
“Everything in the whole of my body just went to the gut of my stomach,” she said. “It just tore me up on the inside.”
He has since been transferred to the hospital at the Mississippi State Penitentiary, his mother said. “He’s still on his feeding tube.”
Fisher said MDOC cannot comment on the cases of Wilemon, Armstead, Howard or Shorty, saying they remain open.
Demetrius Armstead called for a federal investigation into the violence against her son and others.
Lockdowns as a Permanent Way of Life
With declining staff and increasing violence, lockdowns have become a permanent way of life at SMCI.
Although courts have held that all inmates are entitled to an hour of exercise each weekday, that rarely happens at SMCI, inmates say.
Area II, which houses about half the inmates at SMCI, hasn’t allowed visits since January, and the rest of the prison recently followed suit. MDOC called the situation at SMCI a “partial lockdown.”
