MISSISSIPPI CONVICT SYSTEM.
The horrid barbarity of the State convict-system in Georgia is paralleled by Mississippi. The moral sense of the people in these States is waking up and public attention is being called to the cruelty and inhumanity on the part of those who have prisoners in charge. It seems incredible that such things can be so. What a disgrace to our country and our civilization! Here is a report recently made by the Grand Jury of Hinds County, Mississippi:
To the Hon. T. J. Wharton, Judge:
After a most arduous session of eleven days we, the Grand Jury of the First District of Hinds County for this the June term of the court, having completed our labors, beg to submit our final report. We have examined 220 witnesses and have found and returned into court thirty-eight true bills, of which six have been for murder, eight for grand larceny, and the remainder for minor offenses.
We find, with the exception of murder, there is very little crime in this district; but we are compelled to deplore the fact that homicide seems to be on the increase. We feel we have discharged our duty toward the suppression of this crime as best we were able, leaving the court to carry on the work.
We have examined the public officers’ accounts and settlements and find everything in good shape. We have examined the jail, and find the roof and floors in bad condition and the bedding and covering of the prisoners insufficient and in a bad condition. We recommend that proper and clean bedding be furnished the prisoners and that the roof be repaired or replaced by a new one.
We felt it our duty to inspect the penitentiary, and we report the result of our inspection as follows: We find comparatively few prisoners in the walls of the penitentiary, most of them being out on the Gulf and Ship Island Railroad and elsewhere. We found nothing to complain of in the walls. The yard seemed to be clean, and the building, so far as we could judge, in a safe and cleanly condition, and those immediately in charge polite and accommodating in showing us around. But we feel constrained by a sense of public duty to call attention to the hospital there, the manner in which it is kept and the condition of its occupants. We found twenty-six inmates, all of whom have been lately brought there off the farms and railroads, many of them with consumption and other incurable diseases, and all bearing on their persons marks of the most inhuman and brutal treatment; most of them have their backs cut in great wales, scars and blisters, some with the skin peeling off in pieces as the result of severe beatings.
Their feet and hands in some instances show signs of frost-bite, and all of them with the stamp of manhood almost blotted out of their faces, which show that they have been treated more cruelly and brutally than a nation of savages ought to permit inflicted upon its convicts. They are lying there dying, some of them on bare boards, so poor and emaciated that their bones almost come through their skin, many complaining for the want of food.