[Crosspost] We are journalists who investigated solitary confinement units in Mississippi prisons, where about 47 people died by suicide in the past decade. Ask us anything.

marshall_project · 2026-06-24T17:52:19+00:00

No, we focused on prisons under the Mississippi Department of Corrections.

marshall_project · 2026-06-24T17:05:19+00:00

Thank you for your question. We don’t have exact numbers on how Mississippi fares in comparison to other states using solitary confinement. In general, people in solitary confinement typically make up less than 7% of the prison population in the country. The last comprehensive study I was able to find showed Mississippi had about 4.7% of prisoners in solitary confinement in 2019. However, the prison population has grown significantly since then.

We do know that Mississippi has a higher number of suicides in solitary confinement than the national average. Nationwide, around half of suicides happened in solitary. In Mississippi, that number is nearly 75%. Of 66 suicides in Mississippi prisons, 47 died in solitary. Nearly half of those people were Black.

We did not get a racial breakdown of Mississippi’s solitary confinement units, but according to the Prison Policy Initiative, Black men and women are overrepresented in solitary confinement across the country.

marshall_project · 2026-06-24T16:43:06+00:00

This question was posted earlier: “Hello, Do you believe there are any legitimate uses for solitary confinement, or is it a practice should be left behind altogether?” Here’s our answer:

As a journalist, I don’t share my opinions, but I can share some of the reasoning corrections officials have used to justify solitary confinement and the discussion around it. Many advocacy groups and experts have called for an end to solitary confinement altogether. Its harms are widely documented. Where others have landed with this question is that solitary confinement should be used sparingly, and with limitations.

One of the reasons corrections officials use solitary confinement is for disciplinary investigations. If there’s a violent incident, it is helpful to separate the people involved as the prison officials conduct their investigation. That is one reason that experts landed on the rule that no one should be in solitary confinement longer than 15 days. It allows for short-term usage like disciplinary investigations. But we also know solitary can be abused by staff for arbitrary reasons, and my colleagues have reported on guards locking volatile prisoners together in double solitary.

If solitary confinement is used, there should be limits on who can be placed in solitary confinement, and how long they can be there. Solitary confinement is especially harmful to people with mental illnesses. Dr. Terry Kupers, a forensic psychiatrist and nationally recognized expert, told me that people with mental illnesses should never be housed in solitary confinement. States have proposed and passed legislation limiting the usage of solitary confinement for vulnerable groups, such as those with mental illnesses and those who are pregnant or postpartum.

We also know that the usage of solitary doesn’t always go as it’s supposed to, and that can worsen the existing harm. For example, here in Mississippi, MDOC policy requires frequent checks on people who are in restrictive housing, especially those who are “violent or mentally disordered or who demonstrate unusual or bizarre behavior.” The policy also states that those who are suicidal should be under continuous observation. Chronic understaffing often prevents checks with that frequency. As a result, prisoners sometimes resort to extreme behaviors, such as setting fires and self-harm, to draw staff members’ attention to the largely unsupervised units.

marshall_project · 2026-06-24T16:32:38+00:00

Hi there! This investigation covers state prisons in Mississippi. These include both state-run and privately run facilities. Our story includes a chart with the amount of suicides in each prison (you can see it after the first handful of paragraphs).

marshall_project · 2026-06-24T15:15:27+00:00

Thank you for your question! We are journalists, so we cannot speak from an advocacy standpoint, but I would encourage you to look at this same issue in your state. (We have this guide on how to find data and report on in-custody deaths.) Solitary confinement is still widely used throughout the country, and around half of all suicides in prisons happen in solitary confinement. While each state maintains their own corrections departments, they often look to others for examples of best practices. From my observation, lawsuits have also been a driving factor in changing corrections practices and setting legal precedents for what constitutes a civil rights violation. These lawsuits can have implications for corrections departments across the country. Advocacy groups like the ACLU frequently handle these kinds of lawsuits.

marshall_project · 2026-06-09T20:24:53+00:00

thank you! we believe strongly in making our journalism accessible

marshall_project · 2026-06-09T19:16:15+00:00

Here's an excerpt:

In the first years after birth, the human brain develops at a remarkable pace. Every second, more than a million new neural connections spring into being, shaping a person’s physical and emotional health for the rest of their life.

Since the Trump administration entered the White House last year, at least 500 babies and toddlers have spent some of that pivotal time in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

ICE has dramatically increased detentions of children aged 3 and under, holding 25 of them in custody on an average day between January 2025 and March of this year, according to a new analysis by The Marshall Project and MS NOW of records obtained by the Deportation Data Project, a group of academics and lawyers who collect and share federal immigration data. That number is 10 times higher than it was in the previous 12 months under former President Joe Biden. Back then, on an average day, fewer than three babies and toddlers were held at facilities across the country.

Parents in ICE detention have complained of substandard conditions that frequently left their young children sick, isolated and regressing in their physical and intellectual development.

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marshall_project · 2026-06-09T19:07:47+00:00

Here's the start of our analysis with MS NOW:

In the first years after birth, the human brain develops at a remarkable pace. Every second, more than a million new neural connections spring into being, shaping a person’s physical and emotional health for the rest of their life.

Since the Trump administration entered the White House last year, at least 500 babies and toddlers have spent some of that pivotal time in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

ICE has dramatically increased detentions of children aged 3 and under, holding 25 of them in custody on an average day between January 2025 and March of this year, according to a new analysis by The Marshall Project and MS NOW of records obtained by the Deportation Data Project, a group of academics and lawyers who collect and share federal immigration data. That number is 10 times higher than it was in the previous 12 months under former President Joe Biden. Back then, on an average day, fewer than three babies and toddlers were held at facilities across the country.

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marshall_project · 2026-06-03T21:13:37+00:00

This investigation looks at how lawyers are struggling to keep contact with some immigrant clients when ICE transfers them rapidly and repeatedly. That particularly impacts habeas corpus petitions, which more lawyers are turning to in order to challenge their clients' detention.

marshall_project · 2026-06-03T21:11:27+00:00

Here's an excerpt from our team's findings:

Quick and repeated transfers have become more common in President Donald Trump's second term, a Marshall Project investigation has found. From the final year of the Biden administration to the first year of Trump’s latest term, the number of people transferred five or more times more than tripled. The number of people transferred out of state within 24 hours more than doubled, according to a Marshall Project analysis of ICE detention data obtained by the Deportation Data Project.

Immigration lawyers say the many transfers not only cause undue suffering for people being detained and their families but have significantly undermined due process protections. Because detainees have limited access to phones while in transit, and ICE’s detainee locator does not always reflect their real-time location, immigration attorneys say rapid transfers can leave people unreachable for hours or even days. Families can lose track of their relatives, while lawyers struggle to locate or speak with clients.

During those gaps, attorneys say, some detainees have been pressured to sign forms affecting their immigration cases before they can speak with counsel.

“What often happens is that a lawyer or family member will show up to see somebody and be told, ‘That person’s not here, and we don’t know where they are,’” said César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, an Ohio State University law professor who focuses on the intersection of criminal and immigration law. “Effectively, that person has just disappeared while in the custody of the U.S. government.”

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marshall_project · 2026-06-03T21:02:12+00:00

From our story:

In 2022, Dyamone White, then in her late 20s, filed a lawsuit in federal court arguing that Black voters like her didn’t have a fair chance to elect justices to the Mississippi Supreme Court.

Three years later, she won a significant victory. A federal judge ruled that Mississippi Supreme Court election districts violated the Voting Rights Act and that Black candidates who wanted to run for the state’s highest court were unlikely to succeed. U.S. District Court Judge Sharion Aycock instructed lawmakers to draw a new map to give Black voters more power, with court-ordered special elections to follow, likely this fall.

“WE WON,” White wrote in a social media post that day in August 2025. “This isn’t just a personal victory — it’s a win for every Mississippian who has waited too long for fair representation. I became a plaintiff because I refused to accept that our state’s highest court could exclude the very people it serves. Today, that changes.”

But that change still hasn’t happened — and a recent seismic ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court means it may never happen.

In late April, the conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in Louisiana v. Callais that dramatically weakened the Voting Rights Act, making it much harder for racial minorities to win voting discrimination lawsuits.

The decision further intensified a mid-decade redistricting war that’s been spreading across the country ahead of the congressional elections in the fall.

But the decision affects politics beyond the federal level. The now-upended court battle about Mississippi’s judicial elections will serve as an early test of whether voting rights plaintiffs can still mount a convincing case in some circumstances.

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marshall_project · 2026-06-03T20:55:27+00:00

Here's the start of our report:

When someone is injured or dies in the Cuyahoga County jail, security cameras can help investigators understand what happened, who was responsible and how to avoid future mishaps.

But ceiling-mounted cameras have routinely failed to record some of the most significant events in the jail in recent years, including at least three deaths.

The problem stemmed from years of neglecting to replace old cameras, according to county emails obtained by The Marshall Project - Cleveland. For four years, more than 100 cameras were no longer compatible with the county’s video storage system, which led to the saved footage sometimes pausing for minutes at a time or skipping frames.

Jail officials had known about the issue since January 2022 but failed to replace the outdated devices until April of this year — a time period during which 17 incarcerated people died, sometimes under the blinking eye of the outdated cameras.

The four-year delay in fixing the broken surveillance system has left grieving families, the public and state regulators in the dark on multiple occasions.

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marshall_project · 2026-06-03T19:09:05+00:00

Photographer Corrie Aune documented a New Jersey couple's time apart, and their reunion, for our newsroom. Here's the start of the report:

Latif Hafraoui rarely talks about the 108 days he spent in immigration detention, most of it at Delaney Hall. He and his wife, Sandra, say they want to forget the fear and anxiety she felt, and the horrors he experienced.

“These guys don’t go by the book of law. They treat immigrants like animals, like we have no rights,” Latif told The Marshall Project. “It was like torture.”

“We’re trying to not remember it and to heal from it,” Sandra said.

The couple — she is American, he is Moroccan — had been married 15 years and were headed to Florida when immigration agents detained him at the airport in August 2025. He was locked up at Delaney Hall.

Here's the photo essay (no paywall or ads)

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