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| Miss. Officials Mum About Prison Disturbance |
| By Jackson Clarion-Ledger |
| Published: 02/27/2003 |
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Officials are not saying what caused a two-hour disturbance at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility on Tuesday night where officers were forced to use chemical agents to get 29 prisoners to return to their cells. The 29 inmates were transported late Tuesday to the State Penitentiary at Parchman after the situation was brought under control. But officials from Wackenhut Corrections Corp., a private prison management company that operates the 750-bed prison, would not say why the inmates caused the disturbance and gave few details about it. No one was seriously injured, but EMCF officials alerted the Lauderdale County Sheriff's Department about the problem. 'We were notified they were having a problem, but they never requested law enforcement assistance,' said Lauderdale County Maj. Ward Calhoun. 'They said they would contact us if they needed our help.' Calhoun said his department acts in more of an investigative role, having looked into two homicides and another death at the prison in 2002. Since the inmates at the prison have special needs requiring medication to control mental illnesses and disorders, Calhoun said his department likely could have provided little help. 'We operate a county jail and there is a vast difference between jails and prisons,' he said. 'We're equipped to run our own jail. We're not equipped to go running out to Wackenhut to solve their problems, but if we were called we would go.' |
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