They spent years in solitary confinement in Mississippi despite suicide risk ...Middle East

Danny Austin has been out of prison for over a decade. These days, he focuses on life with his wife in north Mississippi and his work as a commercial truck driver. It’s not often that he reflects on his incarceration — especially the four years he spent in solitary confinement.

That was a bleak time at the Wilkinson County Correctional Facility. He still remembers the view looking outside his single cell. The noises of other incarcerated menmates, sometimes in crisis, banging on their doors. The smell of cells that were hardly ever cleaned. 

“I’’m not bitter about it anymore,” said the Corinth resident, who was released from prison after he left solitary.  

Restrictive housing, as state corrections officials call it, exists across the Mississippi prison system, and the use of solitary confinement has persisted across multiple administrations for decades.

A 2024 investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice called the torturous conditions inside the state’s restrictive housing units “breeding grounds for suicide, self-inflicted injury, fires, and assaults.”

At least 47 people died by suicide while in restrictive housing in Mississippi prisons in the past decade, records from the Department of Corrections and the State Medical Examiner’s Office show. An investigation by Mississippi Today, The Marshall Project-Jackson and the Clarion Ledger found that a majority of the suicide deaths occurred in solitary confinement, despite evidence that it intensifies mental illness and heightens the risk of suicide. 

READ ALSO: Even on death row, not all things are equal

And despite calls to end solitary confinement, and the growing research about its negative effects and fatalities, the Department of Corrections regularly holds incarcerated people in isolation for weeks, months, and, in some cases, years at a time.

“I don’t think I should have been in that long, and I don’t think we should have been treated like that,” said Austin, who was incarcerated for home burglary. 

Spokesperson Kate Head said MDOC uses restrictive housing in at least four prisons, but she did not indicate how long the practice has been going on. In a statement, she said it is used “as a last resort for housing an inmate who poses a threat to themselves, property, staff, other inmates, and/or the operation of the facility.” 

The department did not comment on specific cases of suicide in solitary confinement, nor on the experiences of formerly and currently incarcerated men in solitary.

Developing suicidal thoughts years into incarceration 

Quintez Hodges entered Unit 32 of the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman in 2001, days before his 21st birthday. He was on death row, convicted of capital murder and kidnapping.

At the time, Unit 32 was a solitary confinement unit. More than 1,000 people were there, ranging from those on death row to those with mental illnesses and people with lesser charges who had gotten a disciplinary violation. 

In 2002, the ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging the staggering conditions of that unit: People lived in profound isolation with malfunctioning toilets that exposed them to human waste from other cells, mosquito infestation, punishing summer heat that would raise the heat indexes in the cells to more than 130 degrees, all underscored by the constant screams of people with severe mental illnesses. “Suicides and attempted suicides occurred with alarming frequency,” according to the suit.

As one judge described it, Unit 32 was “a tinderbox about to explode.”

The ACLU’s lawsuit closed down Unit 32, and a majority of its inhabitants were reclassified and transferred from solitary confinement. Hodges was sent to Unit 29, where death row was housed until as recently as last year. 

In 2010, a federal district court judge vacated Hodges’ death sentence based on poor legal representation and inaccurate testimony. He began looking forward to seeing and touching his family again, said Joesph Patri Brown, who has been on death row for more than 30 years and met Hodges there.

Things had started to look up. But, Brown said, in his view, the state still killed Hodges. 

Just shy of 20 years in prison, Hodges died by hanging on Feb. 27, 2021. He was found in his cell with a bedsheet around his neck. His cause of death was ruled undetermined. Despite his change in status, he had remained in solitary confinement. 

A winter storm had swept through Mississippi in the weeks leading up to Hodges’ death. Unit 29, which contained multiple buildings of restrictive housing, was without water and electricity. Incarcerated people and their families drew attention from the media. Soon after, officials turned the heat on in the unit.

Brown said he believes the heat was turned to the extreme in retaliation for drawing media attention. MDOC logs during the time period leading up to Hodges’ death showed the temperature reached a high of 145 degrees and averaged around 128 degrees. 

“I had to chew on a pen cap to make saliva,” Brown said. 

Hodges complained about the heat repeatedly. He had asthma, and it got to be unbearable, Brown said. According to the Justice Department’s investigation into Parchman, Hodges expressed suicidal thoughts for the first time in his 20-year incarceration. No suicide risk assessment was completed. Two weeks later, he was dead. 

“This is not a f—ing suicide. They were killing this man,” Brown said in an interview. “Even though he may have put that rope around his neck, MDOC hung that man with that rope. All they had to do was turn that f—ing heat down.”

MDOC did not respond to findings about Hodges’s death in the DOJ report. In a statement, Head, the department spokesperson, said prison staff receive ongoing training for suicide prevention, including verbal cues, behavioral warning signs and environmental risk factors. 

“Security staff will ensure that more frequent observations are conducted for suicidal inmates,” she said in the statement. 

Limited ways to pass time in solitary 

Austin, the formerly incarcerated man, entered the prison system about a year after Hodges, and not long into his sentence, he was in restrictive housing. 

In 2004, he was sent to Parchman’s Unit 29 for 18 months because he got into a fight with other prisoners. Austin was released from solitary in 2006 and sent to the Marshall County Correctional Facility, but he wasn’t there long. 

He stabbed another person during a brawl, and his punishment was a transfer into solitary confinement at the Wilkinson County prison, which is over 300 miles south.  

Head, the MDOC spokesperson, said that before someone is placed in restrictive housing, medical staff employed by the department’s mental and medical healthcare provider evaluate them to ensure they’re suitable for restrictive housing.

In the statement, she did not define what makes someone suitable for solitary confinement or the criteria that medical staff use to allow someone to be placed there. 

On his own in solitary, Austin said he didn’t have much to do. His solution was to use blood pressure medication to help him sleep through most of the day. Other men would pass him the pills when they were on cleaning duty in the dorm. 

“I slept most of the time because I couldn’t read. I didn’t have books and I didn’t have a pen or paper, and I couldn’t use the phone,” Austin said. “So, it was just like standing at the bars, listening and talking or sleeping and just thinking about, you know, going home.”

MDOC policies say Austin, who was released in 2010, should have been placed in solitary for a specified amount of time, but Austin said he was not told how long he would be in restricted housing. 

He remained there four years until his release. MDOC policies also state that people are not supposed to be released from prison directly from restricted housing.

For the first two months and then at least every 30 days afterward, a classification committee or authorized staff group is supposed to evaluate anyone in solitary every seven days to determine whether the person should remain in restrictive housing, according to policy. But Austin said he didn’t receive an evaluation until two years into his isolation.

A lieutenant and two women he said he didn’t recognize asked him questions about why he did what he did to end up in restricted housing. They said they would see about getting him out, but Austin said nothing happened. 

While Austin found a way to cope with the isolation, he said that not everyone did. He remembers seeing others call for the prison guards, yell and kick the doors. Some were shackled and taken somewhere else and returned calmer.

“Sometimes … they would leave, and you wouldn’t see them (again),” Austin said.

He experienced similar problems as those in solitary confinement today, including limited time outside of his cell and outside in recreational areas. Austin also reported not receiving information about how long he was supposed to stay in restrictive housing and when his placement there would be reviewed. 

“Everybody deserves to get a shower every day and eat regular meals and at least have some pen and paper or a book to read,” he said.

‘Mama, don’t worry about me. I’ll be okay’

Olander Dedeaux has been in solitary confinement at the Walnut Grove Correctional Facility Unit 1D since Dec. 18 and is expected to be there for months more, if not longer.  

Having already spent more than a decade in prison, a third of his 30-year sentence, he found a routine to communicate with his family. That’s why his mother Laurie Saucier sensed something was wrong when he didn’t call on Christmas and New Year’s Day. She reached out to a prison advocate, and both women began their search for Dedeaux. 

His family and supporters were able to find him through a victim services platform that listed a location change. Dedeaux was unable to tell them where he was because he was not allowed to use the phone during his first three weeks in solitary. 

Saucier, who lives on the Gulf Coast, remembers seeing online posts about prison deaths around the time she lost contact with her son. She said her anxiety spiked and she prayed Dedeaux was alive.

Months later, she is able to speak with him, but Saucier has noticed how Dedeaux tries to shield her from what he’s experiencing in solitary confinement. 

“He said, ‘Mama, don’t worry about me. I’ll be okay,” Saucier said. “… ‘Baby,’ I said, ‘No, I’m gonna always worry.’”

A spokesperson from MDOC did not respond to whether or not family members are informed when a loved one is moved into solitary confinement.

Dedeaux remains in a single-person cell for all but four hours a week, which is when he’s let out to shower. On those days, he exercises. The rest of his days are spent sleeping. Infrequently, he and other men are taken outside in cages to get some fresh air. 

“It’s almost unbearable when you’re awake,” his advocate, Nicole Montagano, said he told her. 

Dedeaux, who was convicted of second-degree murder and possession of a controlled substance, says it’s hard to sleep in a unit where the lights are on for up to 23 hours a day. 

Since arriving in solitary, he said his mental state has worsened and doctors have increased the anxiety medication his mother said he has been on since he was a child and taken more consistently since his incarceration.

“Whenever I see officers that have keys, my heart rate goes up. I don’t know if they’re coming for me again,” Dedeaux said in a recorded phone call with Montagano from March that she shared with the news team. 

Montagano, executive director of Hope Dealers Prison Reform, said she can hear it in Dedeaux’s voice that he’s not doing well.

Head, the MDOC spokesperson, said inmates in restrictive housing receive additional screenings, behavioral health assessments from a qualified healthcare professional in line with their mental health needs. She added that medical services are available to those in restrictive housing on a scheduled and unscheduled basis, at the request of an inmate or staff member. 

Dedeaux said being transferred across the state from north Mississippi was confusing, and he still questions how he ended up in solitary. 

Once Dedeaux arrived at Walnut Grove, prison staff gave him paperwork showing he was in a “Security Threat Group management unit,” a 270-day program with three levels and 90-day stints. In order to leave restrictive housing, he will need to “satisfactorily complete” various educational courses, according to the paperwork shared with the reporting team.

Such management units are meant for people who pose a security threat and have security threat group status, which generally means gang affiliation. Commissioner Burl Cain has used Walnut Grove as a place to house gang leaders and prisoners with serious behavior issues, including extortion. 

Prison officials said Dedeaux was relocated and placed in solitary confinement because of a rules violation accusing him of taking part in gang activity and acting as a gang leader. 

A Rules Violation Report from Dec. 18 said Dedeaux held a state rank with the Gangster Disciples, which MDOC considers a security threat group. The violation came nearly a week after he went to his barber class at the Marshall County Correctional Facility, where prison investigators said Dedeaux worked with another inmate.

Video of the Dec. 12 barber class shared with Mississippi Today shows Dedeaux walk in and take a seat. As the class fills up, a prisoner named Robert Fisher sits next to him and occasionally they chat as others cut hair, have their hair cut or observe. People come in and out of the classroom for haircuts, including prison Superintendent Frank Caswell.

After his haircut, Fisher gets the superintendent’s attention and briefly speaks with him. Occasionally, Dedeaux is seen looking in their direction or nodding his head. The superintendent leaves after the conversation is over. 

No audio accompanies the video, but it was enough for both men to be issued a Rules Violation Report for “involvement in disruptive, assaultive or criminal gang activity.” Fisher and Dedeaux, ended up in solitary confinement at Walnut Grove.

A spokesperson for MDOC did not comment about Dedeaux’s placement in solitary and the alleged gang membership and activity that served as the basis of the rules violation report. 

Dedeaux has denied being in a gang and coordinating with Fisher that day in barber class. 

Fisher, who prison investigators have also accused of being a gang member, wrote in a March affidavit that Dedeaux and another man had nothing to do with his interaction with Caswell, which he described as asking a question.

Earlier in his incarceration, Dedeaux was in a gang, but Montagano said he has taken efforts to renounce affiliation. An October 2024 completion certification shared with the news team shows Dedeaux completed the Moral Compass Program, which is part of efforts by MDOC to reduce the gang population.

Dedeaux said he used to feel like he was working toward rehabilitation, and the barber class was a chance to learn a skill that could be useful once he left prison. Now he’s in restrictive housing where he only has access to courses he can complete on his own inside his cell. 

“It’s supposed to be rehabilitation, but it’s all a trap,” Dedeaux said about solitary confinement. “And it’s more than me going through it.”

Montagano, Dedeaux’s advocate, questions whether the rules violation is valid. 

Since January, she has reached out to prison officials requesting more information, including the justification for Dedeaux’s confinement. Montagano traded a few emails with the prison’s Office of Constituent Services, but no answers came. 

Dedeaux gave Montagano power of attorney so she could talk with MDOC on his behalf, but the department won’t, citing medical information privacy protections. 

“We appreciate your persistence,” MDOC’s constituent services office wrote in a Feb. 13 email to Montagano, three weeks after her first email.

“This office has no additional information to provide. Therefore, we will not be able to respond to further correspondence regarding this matter. We appreciate your understanding.” 

By April, Montagano spoke with Caswell, the Marshall County prison superintendent. She explained that she wanted a better understanding about what happened with Dedeaux because the little information she and his mother had received was vague. 

Caswell said he wished he could tell her more and reiterated that she doesn’t have the complete picture of the situation. Over the course of two calls he did not share additional information about why Dedeaux was still in solitary confinement.

Grant McLaughlin, who now works for Lagniappe Daily, has continued working on this project since he was a reporter at the Clarion Ledger.

This story was published in partnership with Mississippi Today, The Marshall Project – Jackson, a nonprofit news team covering Mississippi’s criminal justice systems, and the Clarion Ledger.

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