Mississippi State Penitentiary
| Parchman | |
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| Unincorporated community | |
| Mississippi State Penitentiary | |
Entrance to the Mississippi State Penitentiary
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 Parchman
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| Coordinates: 33°55′54″N 90°33′3″W / 33.93167°N 90.55083°WCoordinates: 33°55′54″N 90°33′3″W / 33.93167°N 90.55083°W | |
| Elevation | 144 ft (44 m) |
| Time zone | Central (CST) (UTC-6) |
| • Summer (DST) | CDT (UTC-5) |
| ZIP codes | 38738 |
| Area code(s) | 662 |
| GNIS feature ID | 675442 |
| Website | mdoc.state.ms.us |
| 675442 is the GNIS ID for the populated place. The GNIS ID for the "building" is 707754. | |
 Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman) Photo Collections - Mississippi Department of Archives and History
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Death Row Photos - Mississippi Department of Corrections
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Mississippi State Penitentiary (MSP), also known as Parchman Farm, is a prison farm, the oldest prison, and the only maximum security prison for men in the state of Mississippi.
Begun with four stockades in 1901, the Mississippi Department of Corrections facility was constructed largely by state prisoners. It is located on about 28 square miles (73 km2) in unincorporated Sunflower County, in the Mississippi Delta region.
It has beds for 4,840 inmates. Inmates work on the prison farm and in manufacturing workshops. It holds male offenders classified at all custody levels—A and B custody (minimum and medium security) and C and D custody (maximum security). It also houses the male death row—all male offenders sentenced to death in Mississippi are held in MSP's Unit 29—and the state execution chamber.
The superintendent of Mississippi State Penitentiary is Earnest Lee. There are two wardens, three deputy wardens, and two associate wardens.
Female prisoners are not usually assigned to MSP; Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, also the location of the female death row, is the only state prison in Mississippi designated as a place for female prisoners.
For much of the 19th century after the American Civil War, the state of Mississippi used a convict lease system for its prisoners; lessees paid fees to the state and were responsible for feeding, clothing and housing prisoners who worked for them as laborers. As it was lucrative for both the state and lessees, as in other states, the system led to entrapment and a high rate of convictions for minor offenses for black males, whose population as prisoners increased rapidly in the decades after the war. Wrongly accused of having a high rate of criminality, black males often struggled for years to get out of the convict lease system.
Due to abuses and corruption, the state ended this program after December 31, 1894, and finally had to build prisons to accommodate convicted persons. The State of Mississippi began to acquire property to build its first correctional facilities. But, as Douglas Blackmon explores in his book, Slavery by Another Name, a study of the convict lease system, the South kept a system of convict labor in place until World War II. Generations of black men were trapped in the system.
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Wikipedia