This article is part of a collaborative investigation into Mississippi’s Deadly Prisons.
An investigation by The Marshall Project-Jackson, Mississippi Today and other local reporting partners found that understaffing and gang violence in Mississippi’s prisons led to dozens of incarcerated people being killed in the last 10 years. Their killers seldom face consequences, and their families are often left without answers.
Of the nearly 50 homicides we identified, just eight killers have been convicted.
Over the course of a year, reporters from The Marshall Project, Mississippi Today, the Clarion Ledger, the Hattiesburg American and The Mississippi Link reviewed thousands of pages of court records, incident reports, and federal and state government death records. We interviewed families who have lost loved ones behind bars, formerly incarcerated people, former guards, attorneys and corrections experts.
Following our investigation, Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain said in October 2025 that the department would review unprosecuted homicides and deaths ruled to be of undetermined causes.
Yet three months later, there have been no additional indictments or convictions in open homicide cases.
The 2026 legislative session began Jan. 6. So far, House Corrections Chair Rep. Becky Currie stated that she plans to introduce legislation to advance prison health care reform. No legislation addressing prison violence, understaffing or homicides has been introduced.
Here are five key points from our investigation — and what the federal government and other states have done to stem their own prison violence:
1. Prison homicides are not isolated incidents. They are the result of long-documented failures of the state to protect those in its custody.
Many of the violent, preventable deaths we investigated showed the same factors: Chronic understaffing, lax oversight and gang control. These issues have been documented for decades in civil lawsuits and in investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice.
2. The killings have not stopped.
After the stories were published in September, our reporting team identified three additional men who were killed behind bars in 2025. At East Mississippi Correctional Facility in Meridian, 41-year-old Aaron Harrison was killed in July. According to an incident report, Harrison was receiving medical treatment after appearing pale and yellow. A nurse practitioner observed bruising on his lower abdomen. The incident report stated that Harrison’s cause of death was unknown, but the state medical examiner later determined his death to be a homicide caused by blunt force trauma.
Three months later, 23-year-old Cameron Roby succumbed to injuries following an assault at the same facility. Also in October, 29-year-old Donald Jones was beaten to death by his cellmate at Wilkinson County Correctional Facility, according to prison incident reports. No one has been criminally charged in connection with any of these deaths.
3. The chief problem is prison understaffing.
Most of the documented killings were beatings or stabbings that occurred when staff were either absent, outnumbered or poorly trained to handle the violence.
From 2015 through 2025, we discovered multiple accounts of a victim being beaten, killed and not found until hours later. In February 2025, officials at Wilkinson County Correctional Facility received a call that an incarcerated person had died in the prison. They found Jonathan Havard strangled to death in his cell, according to an incident report.
In December 2021, Ronnie Graham was beaten in the early hours of the morning. He spent nearly five hours passing in and out of consciousness before being found foaming at the mouth, according to prison incident reports and a Justice Department investigation. He died shortly after.
When there is not enough staff in a prison, functions like security counts are neglected. Gangs and violent individuals take advantage of these security gaps.
Deputy Corrections Commissioner Nathan Blevins told lawmakers in September that about 30% of the funded corrections officer positions were vacant.
“No prison can operate safely with that kind of staffing,” said David Fathi, director of the ACLU National Prison Project.
4. Investigations into prison killings are shrouded in secrecy.
Families are often left without answers. When they did get answers, they typically learned details about their loved ones’ deaths through a whisper network of incarcerated people, insiders, advocates, and, in some cases, from journalists. Family members report little communication with state prison officials.
Mississippi’s public records law also makes it difficult to find out what happened. The Mississippi Public Records Act exempts law enforcement investigative documents. It is up to the law enforcement agency — in this case, the Department of Corrections — to decide if a document is investigative. MDOC officials used this exemption broadly throughout our investigation, but reporters were able to obtain information through other sources.
5. Official accountability is elusive. The federal government and other states enacted more oversight.
Mississippi prison death investigations are handled internally. The corrections department ultimately decides whether to pass its investigation to the local district attorney’s office for prosecution.
An individual who kills another incarcerated person can either be held accountable through a criminal charge or an internal prison write-up called a rule violation report. Often, they receive neither. Of the 42 homicides examined in our investigation, just eight cases led to suspects pleading guilty in criminal court. A few received a rule violation that led to a loss of privileges, including the use of the phone and buying items from the commissary.
Outside of the prison system, there is scant oversight to hold corrections officials accountable for misconduct, root out corruption and investigate allegations of abuse. In some states, there are independent oversight bodies or officials who handle these tasks.
For example, Virginia created an ombudsman’s office to inspect its prisons and investigate complaints. The office received more than 500 complaints from June through August last year, which included excessive force, prolonged isolation and delayed medical care.
New York’s prisons are monitored by an independent agency. The Correctional Association of New York conducts inspections and interviews with incarcerated people and prison staff. The organization publishes reports and maintains a public dashboard with data on staffing, deaths, suicide attempts and more.
In 2024, the Federal Prison Oversight Act was enacted, creating an ombudsman office and granting the Justice Department’s inspector general office authority to inspect federal prisons. The legislation comes after investigations found rampant sexual abuse, preventable deaths and neglect in federal prisons.
In Mississippi, the Legislature established a Corrections and Criminal Justice Oversight Task Force in 2014, but it has virtually no authority, said André de Gruy, the state public defender and a task force member. The task force offers criminal justice policy recommendations to the Legislature that are focused on reducing the prison population.
De Gruy said he often receives calls from former clients and their family members about the dangers in prison.
“Not everybody has that ability to call and have a connection to somebody who can actually look into something, and put (it) on the commissioner’s radar,” he said.
He proposed the creation of an ombudsman’s office for Mississippi, similar to those for Virginia and federal prisons.
Victims’ families in Mississippi have also sued the prisons. However, such cases are difficult to win, civil rights lawyers said. There are legal protections like qualified immunity, which can shield officials from being held responsible for the deaths.
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