Word: parchman
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Most inmates of the state penitentiary in Parchman, Miss., are run-of-the- mill, old-style cons. But a few may have switched to high-tech crime, diverting prison products for profit. When a trailerload of cotton rolled out of the pen, its weight seemed in good order on the institution's computer records. Yet two weeks ago it was discovered that when the cotton arrived at a nearby gin, it was light by more than 90,000 lbs. The missing cotton, worth $20,000, seems to have been shipped elsewhere...
Despite RID's ominous undertones of A Clockwork Orange, most inmates speak highly of the program. "I feel better about myself than I have since I was in the service," says Russell Thomason, 22, who entered Parchman after violating probation on a drug charge...
Welcome to Parchman's "boot camp" prison. Officially known as the Regimented Inmate Discipline program, it is a paramilitary project designed to discourage young, first-time felons from pursuing a life of crime. Under constant harassment from prison officers, the participants are put through a regimen of grueling exercise and labor. After 90 days, the burglars, robbers and petty dope pushers are supposed to be transformed into confident, upstanding citizens...
...would hope they find it a distasteful experience," says Parchman Superintendent Donald Cabana. "Distasteful enough that they don't want to come back to prison." Of the more than 300 felons who have graduated from the 15-month-old program, only eight have returned to prison, a rate 35% lower than the normal return rate. Says Elzy Smith, a circuit-court judge who would rather sentence some first-time offenders to RID than grant them probation: "It's the best thing to come down the pike since I've been on the bench...
...prisons and the high cost of housing inmates are prompting more states to consider alternative types of sentencing like boot-camp prisons. Louisiana, South Carolina and possibly Michigan are planning similar programs. Oklahoma and Georgia within the past three years have opened camps as successful as the one in Parchman. Says David Jordan of the Georgia department of corrections: "We tear them down, then build them up, we hope, with a sense of responsibility, respect for others and a work ethic--things most of them have never had in their lives...