The Marshall Project submitted a list of questions to Management & Training
Corporation. Here are the responses of ​Issa Arnita, Managing Director, Corporate
Communications for MTC​, to some of the questions.

Below are the questions we were able to provide some answers/corrections/context. It
may be fair for your readers to also be made aware of the improvements we’ve made at
the East Mississippi Correctional Facility as verified by District Court Judge William
Barbour.
https://www.mtctrains.com/corrections/u-s-district-court-judge-recent-ruling-confirms-mtcs-comm
itment-to-providing-quality-prison-services/

- What is the minimum number of mandatory positions for a shift at Wilkinson County
Correctional Facility?
This is proprietary information
- Mississippi’s vacancy rate for correctional officers is 50 percent. ​Mississippi has the
lowest starting pay of any state at $26,300 per year. That starting pay is roughly the
national poverty level for a family of four. Management & Training Corporation (MTC)
starts correctional officers at $23,400 ($11.25 an hour.)
We’re working with the state to raise the pay for security staff at Marshall and Wilkinson.
-Short staffing is one of the biggest problems facing prisons across the country.
This is correct
-Mississippi prisons—both public and private—lost more than a third of its workforce,
from 1,616 security staff working in 2016 to 1,060 in 2019. The prison population grew
by 5 percent from 2016 to 2019.
MTC facilities have not lost a third of its workforce between 2016 – 2019.

 -Short staffing leads to lockdowns in Mississippi prisons, both public and private. Some
prison units have been locked for months at a time.
We have not placed our facilities on lockdown due to staffing shortages.
-Due to lockdowns, o​utdoor recreation, indoor gym, school programs, church and dining
hall meals have been constantly cancelled.
We do place facilities on lockdown when directed by the state and whenever there is a
safety risk to inmates and staff. Lockdowns do cause interruptions in programming and
other services.
-A 2018 MTC internal audit found that staff at its ​Wilkinson County Correctional Facility
methodically falsified records. Log books reported inmates regularly going to recreation
or showers when surveillance cameras showed them locked in their cells the entire time.
We have recently made a concerted effort to train and re-train staff to ensure full
compliance with our policies.
-Monthly prison reports show that ​guards at Wilkinson suffer the highest rate of assaults,
injuries, and assaults with thrown liquids (dashing) of the state’s six large prisons.
Wilkinson has the highest percentage of gang-affiliated inmates.
It would be impossible for us to comment on this because we don’t have the statistics for
all MS prisons.
-Fourteen former and current Wilkinson staff say they can’t remember a shift that met
the mandatory staffing plan, which calls for at least 28 guards​ ​and sergeants to manage
the 950 men in this maximum security prison. Many described shifts at Wilkinson where
only four to five officers were on duty.
We recently launched new recruiting and retention programs to reduce vacancies.
-An MTC internal audit said short staffing caused inmates to miss 70 percent of clinic
visits in 2018.

 We recently put new inmate escort procedures in place to ensure inmates who have
medical appointments are seen by medical staff.
-We spoke with a former officer named Colton Smith. He described that when he started
at Wilkinson in 2014, it paid $9.50 an hour. Smith said he worked overtime whenever he
was asked.
-Smith said a few months into the job he fell asleep during an overnight shift working the
solitary confinement unit, and one of the inmates popped open his cell, took Smith’s
pepper spray, and sprayed Smith. He then stabbed him twice with a shank. Smith said
that at that time, the cell doors in the unit were malfunctioning.
On February 3, 2020, construction crews began a cell hardening project at the Wilkinson
facility to enhance security.
-Smith described the other attacks he endured during his time working at Wilkinson. He
said an​ inmate doused him with boiling water. Another time, an inmate got out of his
handcuffs and beat Smith unconscious, an account that is backed up by court records.
Another time, an inmate stabbed Smith ten times with a shank, he said.
Our brave correctional professionals work in an environment that has inherent risk, and
we do everything we can to minimize those risks.
-The electronic door locking systems at both Parchman and Wilkinson failed during the
mid-2010s, according to staff interviews. Inmates could pop open their cell doors and
organize attacks.
MTC began operating the Wilkinson facility in July 2013.
-​At Wilkinson, the electronic system was replaced with turnkey locks. Prisoners attack
officers to steal keys.
We have conducted extensive training to ensure officers use proper key-control
procedures to minimize these types of risks.
-Thirty six employees were injured by inmate violence in 2018, three times the rate of
other MTC prisons.

 The Wilkinson facility houses more than 700 close-custody, high-risk inmates. That’s
nearly 80% of the total inmate population which increases risk of incidents.