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| Colorado ships problem inmates to Mississippi |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 06/15/2004 |
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In an attempt to rid its already overcrowded prisons of unruly inmates, the Colorado Department of Corrections has shipped at least 35 "troublemakers" to the Tallahatchie County (Miss.) Correctional Facility. But some of the inmates' family members, like the parents of Jerome Hall Jr., who must now travel more than a thousand miles to visit their son, believe they are the ones being punished. They don't dispute the sentence their son was handed for his crimes, or that he should be incarcerated, but they don't want him so far away. all ran with a rough crowd in the late 1990s. They sold drugs, they stole money, they kidnapped, and they killed. When justice caught up to Hall in 1998, his parents said it served him right. The young man needed discipline, and the couple braced themselves for weekly visits until his multi-count sentence expired in 2017. That all changed in May when Hall was sent to the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in Tutwiler. Now, the 29-year-old's parents must travel 1,122 miles to visit their oldest son. Colorado officials admitted the move puts a strain on innocent families, but they said the inmates are to blame _ not the prison system. Had the men now housed in Tutwiler behaved themselves at the Colorado facilities, they would still be home today, said Colorado Department of Corrections spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti. A Colorado corrections press release dated April 25 stated that the transferred inmates participated in six gang-related incidents during a three-month period that threatened the safety of the staff and inmates. The inmates' violence required officials to place them in administrative segregation, but Sanguinetti said Colorado's shortage of beds forced the state to ship them elsewhere. At this time, she said, no one knows how long the men will stay out of state. Sanguinetti said her state follows a code of penal discipline: Every prisoner is fairly judged for crimes alleged against them. Jerome Hall Jr. was no exception, she said. |
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