The Mississippi Department of Corrections quietly entered into an agreement with a powerful law firm last summer to monitor its private medical contractor after Mississippi Today reports of alleged denial of health care in state prisons.
The move comes after the state Legislature instructed the department to deliver a report on the contractor’s performance and nearly a year after the agency entered into a medical services contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars it was responsible for overseeing. The Corrections Department hired Butler Snow, a politically connected law firm in Mississippi that has defended prison systems and private prison health contractors in civil rights lawsuits alleging health care failures in several states, to monitor its prison medical contract, a letter obtained by Mississippi Today reveals.
The letter, which has not previously been reported, from Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain to Senate Appropriations Chairman Briggs Hopson, a Republican from Vicksburg, says a Butler Snow attorney will manage a team “experienced in correctional healthcare management” to conduct contract oversight. The state Personnel Board approved the agreement with Butler Snow in August, the letter says.
Kansas-based VitalCore Health Strategies, LLC, holds a three-year contract worth over $357 million to provide medical services to people incarcerated in Mississippi prisons. The company has increasingly come under scrutiny after a state lawmaker raised the alarm about numerous inmates suffering from treatable illnesses and Mississippi Today began investigating the alleged routine denial of health care in Mississippi prisons.
Mississippi Today’s Behind Bars, Beyond Care series has documented potentially thousands of people living with hepatitis C going without treatment, an untreated broken arm that resulted in amputation and delayed cancer screenings one woman said led to a terminal diagnosis. One ex-corrections official said people are experiencing widespread medical neglect in Mississippi’s prisons and turned over internal messages bemoaning the contractor’s care to Mississippi Today.
In a statement, VitalCore spokesperson Timothy Keck said the company would comply with the new team monitoring its work.
“VitalCore’s commitment to our patients is the same regardless of any oversight,” Keck said. “We will comply with any audit and inspection and will fully engage with the MDOC in that process.”
MDOC spokesperson Kate Head did not respond to a request for comment.
The agreement with the Department of Corrections tasks Butler Snow with compiling a team that includes a licensed physician, a licensed mental health professional and a person with experience in correctional health care management. The team will complete an initial review of health and mental health services, identify urgent performance issues and develop tools to monitor the contractor’s work. It will also recommend clawbacks — or the recovery of funds already paid — for contract requirements that are not met.
Many of the issues the monitoring team will review, such as infectious disease control and infirmary operations, mirror concerns raised by Rep. Becky Currie, chairwoman of the House Corrections Committee, who has been attempting to pass new legislation forcing the Corrections Department and VitalCore to improve their delivery of medical care to prisoners.
Currie, a Republican from Brookhaven, tried to introduce a sweeping set of reforms in 2025 that included giving the Mississippi State Department of Health the authority to monitor prison health care. The bill was defeated, in part due to opposition from the Office of Gov. Tate Reeves, who wanted to award monitoring authority to a private firm, according to Currie.
“Yet, we spend $700,000 on a report,” Currie previously said to Mississippi Today.
Butler Snow received a one-year contract worth $687,000 for these services. According to the letter to Hopson, the Department of Corrections held an orientation meeting with the compliance team Nov. 10 and crafted a site visit schedule, beginning with a visit to the Central Mississippi Correctional Center in “early 2026.”
Butler Snow has been paid about $249,000 so far for its monitoring work, according to state records.
The initial contract year with Butler Snow does not include review of dental, dialysis, vision, discharge planning or long-term care. In a December report, the state’s legislative watchdog agency found that Mississippi prisoners were likely left without adequate dental care for months as the state’s private prison health care contractor failed to meet staffing requirements and the Department of Corrections failed to document the problem.
A bill passed by lawmakers in 2025 ordered the Department of Corrections to use $690,000 of funds clawed back from VitalCore to monitor and review the health contract and provide a report to lawmakers by Dec. 15.
Currie believed she would have a completed audit in hand heading into the 2026 legislative sessions. But she learned in late December that the monitoring team had only just been retained, and their work had not begun, she said.
“Everyone left thinking that we were getting an audit and we appropriated money to do it,” Currie said. “Not getting an audit that we were promised has haunted so much.”
Currie has again introduced a wide range of reforms in 2026.
This year’s bills would establish a corrections ombudsman to investigate health care related complaints, establish hepatitis C and HIV treatment programs, provide kiosks for prisoners to request medical attention and require correctional officers to wear body cameras. But most of the bills have been double-referred, meaning they must be passed by two committees before a full vote. That is sometimes a sign that a bill doesn’t have the support of a chamber’s leadership.
William “Bill” Lunsford, the Butler Snow attorney MDOC tapped to lead the contract monitoring team, has represented the Alabama Department of Corrections in civil rights cases, defending the agency against claims of inadequate health care. Since 2018, the corrections agency has paid him over $40 million for legal services, according to Alabama Department of Finance online records.
Lunsford has defended the department in Braggs vs. Alabama Department of Corrections, a lawsuit filed in 2014 by people incarcerated in Alabama and the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program that alleged the agency denied health care. The lawsuit alleged prisoners were denied hepatitis C treatment, echoing claims from people incarcerated in Mississippi, and that prisoners lost the use of their arms and legs after medical treatment was denied or delayed. A similar case played out in Mississippi when a man with a broken arm had a limb amputated after he was allegedly denied care.
Lunsford previously sat on the board of YesCare, a Tennessee-based private prison medical contractor formerly called Corizon Health, Inc. He also defended Corizon in a class action lawsuit filed by people in Idaho Department of Corrections custody living with hepatitis C who alleged the agency refused to administer treatment in line with standards of care.
In July, Lunsford and two of his colleagues at Butler Snow were disqualified by a federal judge in a case where he represented former Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner Jeff Dunn, after one of Lunsford’s colleagues admitted to inadvertently including made-up citations generated by artificial intelligence in court filings.
Lunsford has litigated and resolved numerous class actions against correctional agencies and vendors and regularly advises clients on compliance and liability issues related to correctional health care standards, according to his profile on Butler Snow’s website.
Butler Snow also wrote the Mississippi Department of Correction’s request for proposals for the medical contract.
Lunsford did not respond to Mississippi Today’s request for comment.
The agreement with Butler Snow raises questions about whether MDOC was monitoring the medical contract before it retained the law firm last summer.
The contract executed by the agency in October 2024 tasked the department with monitoring the contract, including reviewing service levels, quality of care and administrative practices, meeting with VitalCore to address issues, conducting site visits and inspections and reviewing third-party reimbursements, according to the contract. The agency did not respond to Mississippi Today’s questions about its prior monitoring activities.
In the agency’s request for proposals for a medical contractor in 2023, it wrote that the agency “does not employ any licensed personnel responsible with oversight of its contracted healthcare provider,” but said it planned to reestablish a medical compliance office within three to six months of executing the contract.
At that time, VitalCore had served as the agency’s medical contractor since 2020 after being awarded four no-bid emergency contracts worth $324 million for the services. Combined with its current role, VitalCore has been awarded about $682 million in Mississippi corrections contracts.
This year, the agency requested an additional $250,000 in funding from the state Legislature to fund five program auditor positions to provide oversight of the contracted medical provider.
“The presence of Program Auditors will instill confidence in both our organization and the public that we are fulfilling our duty to provide essential care and safeguard the health and well-being of the inmates entrusted to our care,” the agency’s budget request said.
VitalCore has struggled to meet the terms of its contract. According to documents obtained by Mississippi Today, the Department of Corrections clawed back $4.6 million from VitalCore during the 2025 fiscal year. Mississippi Today reported in June that even as the agency was clawing back funds for unmet requirements, VitalCore requested and received an additional $4 million to cover the increased costs of providing health care.
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