This article contains a photo that some readers may find disturbing.
In its ongoing investigation, “Behind Bars, Beyond Care,” nonprofit newspaper Mississippi Today reports that sick people in the state’s prisons are suffering from medical neglect and mismanagement even as taxpayers pay more than $100 million to VitalCore Health Strategies, a private health care corporation.
The latest article in the series profiles Stephanie Nowlin, who spent two and a half years in prison for aggravated DUI before becoming Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain’s government affairs coordinator.
In that role, she focused on reducing a lengthy backlog in reclassification that too often means that people get left in restrictive housing who don’t need to be there and individuals who need medical care are stuck in facilities that don’t provide it.
In interviews with Mississippi Today, Ms. Nowlin said she was working with case managers at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Rankin County to tackle that backlog in August 2023 when she was called over by three incarcerated men who were carrying a man whose legs appeared to be rotting, his flesh blackened and cracking.
After seeing the sick man suffering in “quickbed,” a unit where newly arrived people sleep on bunk beds in a dorm while waiting to be classified, the three men had decided to find help.
Incarcerated man’s leg at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility on August 17, 2023. (Stephanie Nowlin)
Ms. Nowlin took photos of the man’s legs and called the prison superintendent, John Hunt, who came in a golf cart to take the man to the prison infirmary. There, Ms. Nowlin said, nurses labeled the man “noncompliant” for allegedly not taking diabetes medication, put some ointment on his leg, and sent him back to the dorm.
Ms. Nowlin texted photos and explained the situation to MDOC deputy commissioner of institutions Jay Mallet, one of the highest-ranking officials in the department.
According to messages reviewed by Mississippi Today, he responded that medical staff often say people are noncompliant and send them back to their cells.
Using an abbreviation for the private prison health care provider, VitalCore, he wrote, “VC sucks.”
When Ms. Nowlin texted that medical staff were alleging the man’s condition was because “he won’t eat right,” Mr. Mallet wrote back, “What the hell is eating other than what’s served.” And after Ms. Nowlin notified him the man had fallen into a coma, he responded, “Let me polish off this resume.”
Mississippi Today was unable to confirm what happened to the man.
Ms. Nowlin told reporters this case was not an exception—it was an example of systemic problems, including the backlogged classification system that causes sick people to get lost in the prison system.
Why are people getting sicker when we’re paying millions for medical care?
That’s the question State Rep. Becky Currie has been asking—and is not getting answered.
In 2023, the year when Stephanie Nowlin encountered the man whose legs appeared to be rotting, Mississippi agreed to pay VitalCore $100 million in taypayer funds to provide health care in state prisons, according to Mississippi Today.
That figure has been rising for years. Reporters wrote that Mississippi is set to spend more than $121 million on prison medical services in the next fiscal year.
A registered nurse and conservative Republican who chairs the state House Corrections Committee, Ms. Currie toured several prisons and saw widespread suffering—Hepatitis C and HIV patients denied medications, people with diabetes going without treatment, cancer patients dying from lack of care.
She met a 23-year-old woman with a visible lump from untreated breast cancer, she told Mississippi Today, and other women who were denied pap smears and mammograms. Many more incarcerated people were charged for care they never received.
She told reporters about a man she met in prison with untreated Hepatitis C, whose blood ammonia levels were so high he was hallucinating and was told he had three months to live.
“He didn’t have but a five-year sentence,” Ms. Currie said. “Now he’s got a death sentence.”
Hepatitis C can be cured in 95% of patients with medications—which MDOC allegedly has refused to provide for years, Mississippi Today reported.
The failure to treat illness is a result of deliberate decisions, Ms. Currie said. This widespread suffering is preventable, she told Mississippi Today, and raises questions about where hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent.
“When people are writing me letters begging me for treatment for health care needs it’s hard for me to just ignore it,” Ms. Currie continued. “When they need a liver transplant from untreated Hep C or begging me for help with untreated HIV. When they beg me for supplies because they make them reuse colostomy bags over and over that don’t fit, when they are bowel and bladder incontinent and they don’t provide diapers to them it is hard for me to hear that (MDOC) feels that they provide adequate care.”
“I’m ashamed of this system.”
Stephanie Nowlin left MDOC in 2024, but told reporters she felt she had to speak out about what she and other prison officials have seen that contradict the claim that Mississippi’s prisons are providing proper medical care.
“There are major damages being done. Not just to tax dollars but to real humans. People just like me who made mistakes and who shouldn’t suffer at the hands of egos, politics, laziness, hypocrites and more,” Ms. Nowlin said. “I’m ashamed of this system.”
State lawmakers recently approved $690,000 for a private firm to investigate MDOC’s medical services and present a report to legislative leaders by December 15, according to Mississippi Today.
“[I]t will be a waste of taxpayers’ money not to find out the truth about health care,” Ms. Currie cautioned, “and the only way to do that is to talk to inmates.”
A former inmate at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility who was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer after her release from prison told Mississippi Today that, without more transparency, people in prison will continue to suffer and die from untreated illnesses.
“They ignored my pleas for help and let my cancer grow untreated for 10 years until it was terminal and too late,” Susan Balfour said. “I never knew when I’d be seen after filing a medical request, and was always at their mercy. It’s like Mississippi is co-signing on their inhumane practices that prioritize corporate profits over people’s lives. Who do these public officials work for? And why are profits protected more than people?”