Another day, another inmate death in Mississippi.
Joshua Norman, 26, was found hanging in a cell at Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman on Sunday morning, Jan. 26. He was pronounced dead an hour later. He lived in a single-man cell at the time of the incident.
Sunflower County Coroner Heather Burton said that Norman’s sudden death wasn’t something more nefarious.
“In my professional opinion after viewing the scene, no foul play was involved,” Burton said in a statement. “Official cause of death and manner of death are pending autopsy results.”
Norman had just started serving a five-year sentence for a robbery in Oktibbeha. Norman was the twelfth inmate to die in custody since Dec. 29. But Norman wasn’t the only inmate to meet his demise this weekend.
Gabriel Carmen, 31, was found hanging by officers, who reported the inmate had been irate and throwing feces earlier. Burton’s statement said he was last seen alive during a Saturday evening security check.
Tamika Mallory, of the social justice operation Until Freedom, told the AmNews that the Mississippi Department Of Corrections needs to get on the ball.
“I think the department of corrections in the state of Mississippi overall really has a major humanitarian issue,” said Mallory. “And that there’s a humanitarian crisis. In the state, the department of corrections is violating the human rights of many of the prisoners. Some of the deaths aren’t even in one prison.” Mallory referenced the infamous Unit 29 at Parchman where nine deaths have occurred.
The latest news is another part of a month-long saga of violence in Mississippi prisons. Five people died at three different facilities earlier this month due to riots and alleged gang violence.
On Dec. 29, 40-year-old Terrandance Dobbins was killed at the South Mississippi Correctional Institution where there’s a ratio of 23 inmates to every one correctional officer. Several days after that, 25-year-old Walter Gates and Roosevelt Holliman were stabbed at the Mississippi State Penitentiary. During two other riots, 36-year-old Denorris Howell and 26-year-old Gregory Emary died in separate riots at the Mississippi State Penitentiary and the Chickasaw Regional Correctional Facility. Inmates took to social media to share pictures of the sub-optimal conditions they’re living under.
Two weeks ago, Democratic Mississippi State Representatives Robert Johnson, Jarvis Dortch, Otis Anthony, Orlando Paden, Tracey Rosebud, Abe Hudson, John Hines and Sonya Williams- Barnes visited Parchman and apologized for the lives lost while under state care.
“What we saw today at Parchman was a breeding ground for a bad situation,” read the statement. “Corrections officers we spoke to said each unit should have