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Gov. Tate Reeves said in a press conference on Wednesday afternoon that his Christmas parties — the subject of broad public criticism this week — would adhere to his own executive mandates regarding mask-wearing, social distancing and “minimizing risk” of COVID-19 spread.

But photos published in a British tabloid showed partygoers at the Governor’s Mansion just a few hours later on Wednesday night doing the opposite of what is recommended in Reeves’ orders, huddling in close circles without masks and not maintaining six feet of distance.

Included in the photos are Anne Hall Brashier, Reeves’ deputy policy director, and Drew Snyder, who Reeves appointed to run the state’s Division of Medicaid. Neither were wearing masks as they stood within six feet of other guests.

As COVID-19 statistics in Mississippi continue to set new records almost by the day, State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs and the health department have warned Mississippians to avoid holiday gatherings beyond closest family and to avoid any groups beyond school, work or “essential gatherings.”

Dobbs called the holidays a “perfect storm” for “explosive outbreaks” of COVID-19 and warned, “We will see deaths, absolutely, around holiday gatherings.” Health officials warn that Mississippi hospitals are overloaded with patients as pandemic cases spike to record levels.

READ MORE: Partying in the pandemic: Gov. Reeves says mansion parties will adhere to COVID-19 orders.

Sitting next to Dobbs at the press conference on Wednesday, Reeves said he respects state medical officials and considers them “confidants,” but doesn’t always agree with them. He said he believes Mississippians want some “normalcy” after 10 months of the pandemic and that holiday gatherings can be held safely.

When pressed on Wednesday afternoon about why he was holding the Christmas parties while medical experts recommend that Mississippians avoid such events, Reeves said parties and public tours at the mansion “allow us to send a message to the people of Mississippi that you can return to life as somewhat normal, but you’ve got to do it in a way that minimizes risk.”

Reeves’ executive order, which he announced and signed on Wednesday, requires mask-wearing in public in Hinds County, where the Governor’s Mansion is located. It also suggests that residents follow Centers for Disease Control and Mississippi State Department of Health guidelines, including: “Wearing a face covering while in public spaces whenever it is not possible to maintain a minimum of six feet of social distancing from persons not in the same household” and “maintaining social distancing (at least six feet) between persons not in your household.”

Click here to see the photos and the story in the Daily Mail. 

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COVID-19 cases: Mississippi reports 2,283 new cases

By Alex Rozier and Erica Hensley | December 10, 2020

We are bringing you the latest COVID-19 Mississippi trends with daily case, death and hospitalization updates, as well as testing data charts and other helpful interactive maps and graphs.

This page was last updated Thursday, December 10:

New cases: 2,283| New Deaths: 42

Total Hospitalizations: 1,241

Total cases: 172,955| Total Deaths: 4,083

Mask Mandates | On Sept. 30, Gov. Tate Reeves ended the statewide mask mandate order, originally issued Aug. 4. Since then, he has added a total of 54 individual county mask mandates, covering half of the state. State health officials encourage widespread masking and credit the original mandate with helping cases improve after a steep summer spike. View the full list of COVID-19 orders here.

All data and information reported by the Mississippi State Department of Health as of 6 p.m. yesterday

Weekly update: Wednesday, December 2

After a record reporting of 2,457 new cases on Wednesday, the current seven-day average of 1,605 is now far past Mississippi’s summer peak. 

During a news conference yesterday, Gov. Tate Reeves denied that Mississippi had hit a new record for case spread, even though the rolling average had already surpassed the previous high of 1,381 in the summer. 

On Wednesday, the state health department issued new guidelines on distancing, recommending that people avoid all social gatherings with people outside of their home or nuclear family.

Mississippi also hit a new high for confirmed COVID-19 hospitalizations on both Sunday and Monday, with the rolling average having increased 68% since the start of November. The rolling averages for ICU patients and people on ventilators are up 45% and 88%, respectively, in that time. Total hospitalizations, which includes suspected and confirmed cases, are still below the record set in August. 

Thirteen major hospitals are without ICU capacity, according to this week’s health department numbers. Currently, 86% of the state’s ICU beds are full — including 96% capacity among the highest level COVID-care centers — and COVID-19 patients are filling 30% of those spots.

On the county level, Choctaw (17% increase in the last week), Kemper (15%), Rankin (14%), Jefferson (12%) and Stone (12%) counties saw the sharpest rise in cases this last week. 

The Delta continues to accumulate the most cases per capita out of anywhere in the state. Of the 15 counties with the highest rates, 11 are in the Delta. 

The state health department reported 128,746 people have recovered. 

Click through the links below to view our interactive charts describing the trends around the coronavirus in Mississippi:

View our COVID-19 resource page for more information about coronavirus in Mississippi.

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One huge problem exists writing about Petal native and football legend Ray Perkins, who died Wednesday three days after his 79th birthday: Where the heck do you start? There’s just so much to tell…

You could begin with the fact that as an NFL coach he hired both Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick, and both those pro football masterminds consider Perkins a mentor. Or you could begin with the fact that as a player, he starred for both Bear Bryant and Don Shula. Bryant called Perkins the best offensive player on two Alabama national championship teams.

“He’d have been our best player on defense if we had put him over there,” Bryant said.

Or you could start with the fact that he caught passes from Joe Namath and Snake Stabler in college, and then caught passes from Johnny Unitas and Earl Morrall in the pros. Or that he drafted and coached the great Lawrence Taylor with the New York Giants. Perkins famously went to North Carolina to scout Taylor. They talked for a few minutes and Taylor asked Perkins: “Don’t you want to watch me work out?” Perkins responded: “That would be a waste of your time and mine. I’ve seen enough.”

Or we could start where it all started for Perkins, which was at Petal High School or in the service station right across the street. For all his four years of high school, Perkins, a carpenter’s son, opened the Sinclair gas station at 6 a.m. before he went to school. He also worked on his school lunch break so the owner, Marcus James, could go eat his lunch. And then he would close the station after he finished practicing whatever sport he was playing late in the afternoon or early evening.

“I was 14-years-old when Mr. James, who was like my second father, gave me the keys to the station,” Perkins once told me. “Here I was, just a kid, and he was trusting me with his livelihood. He taught me about work ethic and about responsibility. And I made enough money to buy my first car, a 1955 Ford Fairlane. Mr. James co-signed the note.”

Perkins could take a car engine apart and put it back together. Same with transmissions. One problem: More often than not, his clothes were soiled with grease and oil when he went to school, which led to his nickname, “Grease.”

Mike Garren, who now lives in Pearl, was a high school teammate of Grease Perkins.

“He was a gifted athlete, but he still worked at it harder than everyone else, too,” Garren said. “He had the speed to run around you, but most times Ray would just run flat over you. He was so strong.”

Bryant sent his trusted lieutenant, Dude Hennessey, over to scout a big, strong back from Lumberton who everybody in the South was recruiting. Lumberton happened to be playing Petal that night. Hennessey went back and gave his report to the Bear, who signed Perkins instead of the other guy. Bear didn’t regret it, either. Alabama was 30-2-1 for Perkins’ three varsity seasons.

You should also know that years and years later when Bryant stepped down at Bama, Perkins took his place. Talk about filling big shoes – can you imagine? Somebody had to be that guy. Perkins was 32-14 in four years as head coach at Alabama. That was between stints as head coach of the New York Giants and Tampa Bay Bucs.

Our careers – mine and Perkins’ – intersected many times over the years. I covered him when he coached as an assistant at Mississippi State in 1973, when he was the head coach at Bama (1983-86) and later when he coached in the 1996 Super Bowl as offensive coordinator of the New England Patriots. I knew him then as a non-nonsense, often taciturn coach.

Later on, I got to know him much better. Perkins had retired and was living off the fifth tee at the Hattiesburg Country Club. We had played some golf together, and then I got a tip, in 2010, that Perkins was coaching junior high as a volunteer at Presbyterian Christian in Hattiesburg. So I drove down to Hattiesburg for a practice to check it out. And there was Perkins, who had played and coached in Super Bowls, teaching 13- and 14-year-olds where to line up on defense. He had once coached people such as Lawrence Taylor and Phil Simms, and now he was coaching kids who didn’t yet shave.

Why, I asked him?

“If I wasn’t doing this, I’d probably be on the golf course or doing something else that didn’t amount to anything,” Perkins replied. “If I can take a couple hours each day and contribute something to these kids’ lives, why shouldn’t I?”

I remember thinking: These kids have no idea who that old man is and what he has achieved. Perkins laughed when I told him that.

“It’s just as well,” he said. “I think I get as much out of it as they do. I’ve found that I really get a kick out of working with a boy on something one day, and then watching him do it a whole lot better the next. These are good kids. I enjoy making them feel better about themselves.”

A few years later, Perkins, then in his 70s, came out of retirement and coached Jones Junior College for a couple seasons. Again, here was a guy who had coached at the highest levels in packed stadiums and on national TV, now coaching before hundreds. Jones went 14-5 over those two seasons, shared the Mississippi Juco South Division title one year and then won it the next.

Perkins seemed to be having more fun then than he had as a coach for the New York Giants. I told him that post-game when we sat in his small, humble office. Replied Perkins: “This is better, more fun, more rewarding. It’s because of these kids. It’s because I am watching them grow.”

You could tell he meant it. And he said this: “If I died right here, in this office, drawing up plays and coaching football, that would be like heaven to me.”

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Gov. Tate Reeves on Wednesday expanded orders limiting gatherings statewide after catching criticism for hosting Christmas parties for politicians and supporters at the Governor’s Mansion as COVID-19 cases soar and top health officials advise against such events.

Reeves said his parties will be carefully structured for social distancing and safety and that he respects state medical officials, considers them “confidants,” but doesn’t always agree with them. He said he believes Mississippians want some “normalcy” after 10 months of the pandemic and that holiday gatherings can be held safely.

The state health department and state health officer have recently advised Mississippians not to attend holiday parties beyond closest family, and warned holiday socializing will bring more cases and deaths as Mississippi’s health care system is overtaxed.

But Reeves said parties and public tours at the mansion “allows us to send a message to the people of Mississippi that you can return to life as somewhat normal, but you’ve got to do it in a way that minimizes risk.”

Still, as MSDH reported a record-setting 2,746 new cases on Wednesday, Reeves expanded statewide his order limiting gatherings to no more than 10 people indoors and 50 outdoors when social distancing can’t be practiced. Until Wednesday, 54 counties had been under such executive orders and under orders to wear masks inside public places. He did not expand the mask mandate beyond specific counties with highest cases of COVID-19, although state medical experts have also urged him to do so.

The new orders also added and removed some counties from the list of those under a mask mandate, bringing the total to 61 of 82 counties.

Vaccines available by next week

A day after the first fully vetted vaccine shots were distributed in the United Kingdom, State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said that 25,000 doses of the new Pfizer vaccine will be available for Mississippi’s frontline healthcare workers next week. The following week, he expects the state will have enough vaccines for all nursing home residents and employees.

But the vaccine will likely not be available for the general public until the spring or summer as the COVID-19 spread regularly sets new peaks both nationally and statewide. Mississippi’s rolling seven-day average for new cases, now at 1,927, has reached a new record in six of the last nine days, and is up 40% in the last week and a half.

Recent numbers, layered with the concurrent cold season and winter holidays, have health officials begging the public to take new levels of precaution.

“I think as a society we’ve let our guard down, we’ve become more comfortable with certain things,” Dr. Alan Jones, assistant vice chancellor at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, said at a press conference last week. “It’s not the super-spreader events or some of the things we saw in the (summer peak). It’s smaller gatherings where people feel safe. Those events are not safe.”

Wednesday’s executive order also put forth new restrictions on indoor sporting events; at schools, crowds are limited to the lesser of four spectators per student participant or 250 ticketed spectators. Other indoor arenas will be limited to the lesser of 10% seating capacity or 1,000 attendees.

Reeves also announced that Mississippi Emergency and Management Agency Director Greg Michel, who regularly joins the governor and Dobbs at press conferences, had tested positive for the virus, and Michel did not appear at Wednesday’s briefing.

The 61 counties now under a mask mandate are: Adams, Alcorn, Amite, Attala, Bolivar, Calhoun, Carroll, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Clarke, Clay, Coahoma, Copiah, Covington, Desoto, Forrest, Franklin, Grenada, Harrison, Hinds, Holmes, Itawamba, Jackson, Jefferson, Jefferson Davis, Jones, Kemper, Lafayette, Lamar, Lauderdale, Lawrence, Lee, Leflore, Lincoln, Lowndes, Madison, Marion, Marshall, Monroe, Montgomery, Neshoba, Noxubee, Oktibbeha, Panola, Pearl River, Perry, Pontotoc, Prentiss, Rankin, Scott, Simpson, Stone, Tate, Tippah, Tishomingo, Union, Washington, Webster, Winston, Yalobusha and Yazoo Counties.

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COVID-19 cases: Mississippi reports 2,746 new cases

By Alex Rozier and Erica Hensley | December 9, 2020

We are bringing you the latest COVID-19 Mississippi trends with daily case, death and hospitalization updates, as well as testing data charts and other helpful interactive maps and graphs.

This page was last updated Wednesday, December 9:

New cases: 2,746| New Deaths: 24

Total Hospitalizations: 1,222

Total cases: 170,672| Total Deaths: 4,041

Mask Mandates | On Sept. 30, Gov. Tate Reeves ended the statewide mask mandate order, originally issued Aug. 4. Since then, he has added a total of 54 individual county mask mandates, covering half of the state. State health officials encourage widespread masking and credit the original mandate with helping cases improve after a steep summer spike. View the full list of COVID-19 orders here.

All data and information reported by the Mississippi State Department of Health as of 6 p.m. yesterday

Weekly update: Wednesday, December 2

After a record reporting of 2,457 new cases on Wednesday, the current seven-day average of 1,605 is now far past Mississippi’s summer peak. 

During a news conference yesterday, Gov. Tate Reeves denied that Mississippi had hit a new record for case spread, even though the rolling average had already surpassed the previous high of 1,381 in the summer. 

On Wednesday, the state health department issued new guidelines on distancing, recommending that people avoid all social gatherings with people outside of their home or nuclear family.

Mississippi also hit a new high for confirmed COVID-19 hospitalizations on both Sunday and Monday, with the rolling average having increased 68% since the start of November. The rolling averages for ICU patients and people on ventilators are up 45% and 88%, respectively, in that time. Total hospitalizations, which includes suspected and confirmed cases, are still below the record set in August. 

Thirteen major hospitals are without ICU capacity, according to this week’s health department numbers. Currently, 86% of the state’s ICU beds are full — including 96% capacity among the highest level COVID-care centers — and COVID-19 patients are filling 30% of those spots.

On the county level, Choctaw (17% increase in the last week), Kemper (15%), Rankin (14%), Jefferson (12%) and Stone (12%) counties saw the sharpest rise in cases this last week. 

The Delta continues to accumulate the most cases per capita out of anywhere in the state. Of the 15 counties with the highest rates, 11 are in the Delta. 

The state health department reported 128,746 people have recovered. 

Click through the links below to view our interactive charts describing the trends around the coronavirus in Mississippi:

View our COVID-19 resource page for more information about coronavirus in Mississippi.

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Mississippians turned out to vote in record numbers in 2020, according to final certified numbers released recently by the secretary of state’s office, though Mississippi’s record turnout still lagged behind most other states.

In this year’s election, 1,313,894 Mississippians voted. Total turnout this year broke the previous record of 2008, when 1,289,865 voted in the election between former President Barack Obama and John McCain, the 2008 Republican nominee for president.

President Donald Trump captured the most votes of any candidate running in a contested election in Mississippi with 756,789 votes, or 57.6%. McCain was the previous top vote-getter with 724,597 votes in 2008.

In Mississippi’s hotly contested U.S. Senate race, Mike Espy garnered the most votes ever for a Democrat running for statewide office in a losing effort on Nov. 3 to incumbent U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde Smith.

Espy won 578,806 votes, or 44.1%, against Hyde-Smith. The previous record vote-getter on the Democratic side in Mississippi was Obama in 2012, when he captured 562,949 votes in his re-election bid. In Mississippi that year, Republican Mitt Romney won 710,746 votes.

Before Espy’s 2020 record, former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove received the most votes for a Democrat running for a Senate seat with 560,064 votes, of 45%. Musgrove was running in a special election against Republican Roger Wicker.

Hyde-Smith received 709,539 votes, or 54.1%, on Nov. 3. She received more than 47,000 fewer votes than Trump and ran 3.5 points behind the president.

Prior to final votes being tabulated, Secretary of State Michael Watson had surmised in late November that while Mississippi had a strong turnout, it was not a record turnout.

“I think we will eclipse our number from 2016 of total votes cast, but I don’t think it will be as much as we expected,” Watson said at the time. “…I don’t think it is going to be a huge increase over 2016.”

But after record numbers of absentee ballots had to be counted in populous counties, the final numbers show that turnout not only eclipsed 2016 totals but also set a new record.

“I am incredibly proud of the extraordinary voter turnout this year,” Watson said.

PODCAST: Secretary of State Michael Watson discusses 2020 elections.

Dave Wasserman, a statistician and U.S. House editor for the Cook Political Report, tweeted that there was an 8.6% increase in voter turnout over 2016, which was a relatively light turnout election in Mississippi, and a 1.3% swing against Trump in the state when compared to 2016.

While the most people in the history of the state voted on Nov. 3, turnout still was relatively low when compared to the nation. Turnout of eligible voters was 66.7% nationwide in 2020, according to Statista. Mississippi was in the bottom 10 states with 60.4% turnout.

While the compilation of turnout for 2020 is still in the early stages and could be revised, it most likely still will reflect a record turnout for the nation. The previous modern-era record turnout, percentage-wise, occurred in 1960 when 62.8% of the eligible voters participated. In the 1800s, there was higher estimated turnout, but during that time more than half of the population, including women and some minorities, were barred from voting.

In advance of the 2020 election, the Espy campaign said to win it would need a record turnout among African American voters who are more inclined to vote Democratic in Mississippi. While information on the 2020 election is still being compiled, Joe O’Hern, Espy’s campaign manager, told Mississippi Today he believes Espy achieved that record turnout among Black Mississippians.

“You probably saw historic Black turnout this cycle,” said O’Hern. “… Even with nobody thinking Biden was going to win Mississippi, you probably saw historic Black turnout.”

That turnout helped Espy achieve lofty numbers for a Mississippi Democrat, but not enough for him or Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden to win the state.

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No-show prison workers cost Mississippi taxpayers millions

Prisoners, guards face danger from chronic understaffing by MTC

By Joseph Neff and Alysia Santo, The Marshall Project | Dec. 9, 2020

This investigation was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system, The Clarion-Ledger and Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting.  

When Darrell Adams showed up for an overnight shift at the Marshall County Correctional Facility in rural Mississippi, he was one of six officers guarding about 1,000 prisoners.

Adams said he thought that was normal; only half-a-dozen guards had been turning up each night during the three months he’d worked at the prison, which is run by Management & Training Corporation. He didn’t know the state’s contract with MTC required at least 19 officers.

On April 3, 2019, Adams escorted a nurse to deliver medicine in a unit where the most dangerous prisoners were held in solitary confinement. The contract required a sergeant and an officer to be there at all times. But that night, Adams and the nurse said, he was the sole guard working the unit, and was also covering for six absent officers in three other buildings.

As Adams was leaving the unit, a prisoner slipped out of his cell, sneaked up behind Adams and smashed his head into the steel door frame. As the nurse watched in horror, the prisoner dragged Adams inside the cell block, shut the door and beat him unconscious.

Prisons across the country, both public and private, are struggling with staff shortages. But the circumstances that led to the attack on Adams illustrate a perverse financial incentive unique to private prisons: While fewer workers means more danger for staff and incarcerated people, it can create more profit for companies like MTC.

This problem is acute in Mississippi, where state officials failed to enforce contractual penalties that punish short staffing. Instead, they continued to pay MTC the salaries of absent employees, aka ghost workers.

By contract, MTC must have a set number of guards on every shift at its three Mississippi prisons. When a mandatory position isn’t filled, the company is supposed to repay the state the wages plus a 25 percent penalty. At the prison where Adams was attacked, the company paid some refunds to the state for several years. But MTC invoices show those repayments dropped from more than $700,000 in 2017 to only $23,000 in 2018, even as the staff vacancy rate rose.

In the company’s two other Mississippi prisons, MTC didn’t repay a penny from 2013 to 2019, despite understaffing, allowing the company to pocket millions of taxpayers’ dollars for ghost workers’ pay, according to records analyzed by The Marshall Project.

Other states have forced MTC and other prison companies to pay back millions of dollars for vacant positions and other contractual violations. Some came to light after riots, escapes, murders and sexual assaults drew attention to the company’s staffing shortfalls.

Neither MTC nor state officials would discuss how much the company owes for unfilled shifts. To estimate that amount, The Marshall Project obtained the company’s monthly invoices through public records requests, as well as data on vacant positions MTC submitted to the state from 2013 to 2019. Our analysis showed that MTC should have repaid about $6 million at Wilkinson County Correctional Facility, $950,000 at East Mississippi Correctional Facility, and $800,000 at Marshall.

MTC spokesman Issa Arnita declined to address our analysis. He attributed staff shortages to low pay resulting from a state law that requires private prisons to cost 10 percent less to operate than public facilities, as well as the small labor pools near the rural prisons.

“Attempting to make a connection between staff shortages and profit is reckless and wrong,” Arnita said. “Our goal is always to have all vacancies filled.”

After eight years of contracting with MTC, the Mississippi Department of Corrections said that in recent months it began withholding payments from the company for failing to meet staffing requirements. Commissioner of Corrections Burl Cain declined an interview request.
In a statement, he said his department has withheld $208,000 from MTC for unfilled positions since he took office in June.

Although MTC is the nation’s third-largest private prison company, it lacks the high public profile and notoriety of its larger publicly traded rivals, CoreCivic and GEO Group.

Based in Centerville, Utah, MTC is privately owned and run by a prominent Utah family, the Marquardts. Through the company spokesman, members of the family declined to comment.

Created to seek contracts to operate federal job training centers, MTC expanded into private prisons in 1987. The company now runs 20 prisons in the United States and two overseas, as well as five immigrant detention facilities. Dun & Bradstreet reports the company had annual revenues of $667 million.

MTC has a long history of failing to meet contractual obligations in its prisons, in some cases with violent consequences.

In 2006, the company built what was then the nation’s largest immigration detention facility north of Brownsville, Texas. It was understaffed, according to human rights groups, and there were complaints of poor medical care and nutrition, as well as allegations of physical and sexual abuse of detainees. MTC’s spokesman said those claims were “not true and were never substantiated.” The federal government closed the facility in 2015 after prisoners seized control for two days and set it on fire, leading the government to declare it “uninhabitable.”

A similar situation unfolded at the Kingman prison in Arizona, which MTC was hired to run in 2004. Two years later, prison officials said MTC’s understaffing violated its contract. But the dysfunction at Kingman wasn’t fully revealed until 2010, when a group of prisoners escaped and carjacked and murdered a retired couple. State investigators blamed a broken alarm system, unsecured doors, and untrained staff.

Arizona prison officials levied nearly $2 million in fines between 2006 and 2013 for understaffing. Still, the deficiencies remained. In 2015, a three-day riot broke out; 16 people were injured and the facility was badly damaged. State officials described “a culture of disorganization, disengagement, and disregard,” and soon after, the governor cancelled MTC’s contract. The company disputes the state’s findings.

In Mississippi, MTC understaffing was an issue at a 2018 trial after civil rights groups sued over bad prison conditions. The corrections commissioner at the time, Pelicia Hall, took the witness stand and was asked whether MTC had repaid the state for ghost workers.

“I am not aware of that,” Hall testified. She did not respond to messages from The Marshall Project.

Even after that court appearance, Hall and other prison officials failed to impose financial penalties on MTC as low staffing made its prisons increasingly dangerous.

Wilkinson, a high-security prison for 950 men, was so violent and understaffed that its then-warden admitted in a 2018 internal audit that he had ceded control to prison gangs. Yet MTC invoices show the company refunded nothing to the state for vacant positions at Wilkinson between 2013 and 2019. The state paid MTC $87 million to run the prison over this period.

In the internal audit, MTC noted that Wilkinson routinely failed to fill two or three mandatory positions every shift. The overnight shift was the worst: A dozen officers have told The Marshall Project that it was common for five or six guards to run the prison when the contract called for a minimum of 30 overnight.

Markus Chatman, 31, had been working at Wilkinson for two months when he was stabbed in May of 2019 in the prison’s most dangerous unit.

He and his coworkers were escorting men to and from the showers one afternoon when a prisoner pulled out a shank and demanded his keys. Chatman says the other two officers fled as he struggled with the prisoner, who stabbed him in the back and collarbone and sliced his arm. He estimated only a dozen guards had shown up to work the day he was attacked; the contract requires 43 officers on the day shift.

Chatman returned to work but quit a few weeks later. The prison is “very understaffed,” he said. People fail to show up for shifts so often, he said, “you wouldn’t believe they still had a job there,” he said.

MTC did not respond to questions about Chatman’s assertions.

It’s difficult to put an exact dollar amount on how much MTC owes the state for ghost workers. The Marshall Project’s estimate is conservative and based on MTC invoices and monthly vacancy reports. A former manager said Wilkinson undoubtedly owed the state more than The Marshall Project’s estimate of $6 million.

More precise numbers could have been found in shift rosters filed with the state, but Mississippi officials denied The Marshall Project’s public records request for those documents. Payroll data would be even more exact, but those records are not public because they are maintained by MTC. Employee pay is the single biggest cost of running a prison.

MTC went to court to try to redact staffing patterns from contracts that have been posted for years on the website transparency.mississippi.gov. The Marshall Project is suing to obtain weekly reports from state officials responsible for monitoring the prisons; the corrections department had agreed to provide these records until MTC intervened, citing security concerns.

“Private prison companies are always trying to minimize their operating costs, because that is how they increase their margins and revenue,” said Shahrzad Habibi, research and policy director of In the Public Interest, which opposes privatization of public services. Habibi has analyzed dozens of private prison contracts nationwide, and says understaffing and paying subpar wages are common ways to increase profits.

“That’s taxpayer money that could actually be reinvested in the system to make it better,” she said.

At the Marshall prison, short staffing eroded medical care, according to Dr. Amy Woods, who according to court records fought with prison officials when they refused to take injured prisoners to the hospital for appropriate medical care.

Woods worked for Centurion, a private health care provider hired by the corrections department. She declined to speak with The Marshall Project, but her story is detailed in the federal employment lawsuit she filed against MTC, Centurion, and the warden after she was pushed out last year. MTC declined to discuss the case.

Woods’ suit said that in April 2019, the warden delayed her order to take a prisoner who said he was raped to a hospital for evaluation, even though DNA evidence must be collected as soon as possible.

Two months later, a nurse told Woods that a prisoner bit off a big chunk of another man’s ear, according to Woods’ lawsuit. Fearing the victim could bleed to death, Woods ordered he be taken to the local hospital. The emergency doctor said the injury was too severe to be treated there, and urged Woods to transfer the man to a medical center in Jackson, the state capital.

Woods agreed, the lawsuit says. But a prison captain told Woods that there were not enough guards available and ordered the man returned to prison. Woods recalled her reply: “If his ear rots off and he sues someone, it’s going to be you and not me.” Prison officials eventually relented and sent the man to Jackson late that afternoon.

Two days after that incident, the warden accused Woods of disclosing the short staffing problems to a local legislator who chaired the House Corrections Committee, her lawsuit says. Woods denied it.

That legislator was state Rep. Bill Kinkade, who testified in a deposition in Woods’ case that a different prison employee had complained that the extreme short staffing made Marshall dangerous for staff and prisoners. Kinkade said he took his concerns to top state corrections officials, but the short staffing continued.

The warden revoked Woods’ security clearance, effectively firing her, even though she worked for Centurion. Kinkade, the warden, and MTC declined to comment on Woods’ case, which is scheduled for trial in January. Centurion did not respond to requests for comment.

For those who work at MTC prisons, the consequences of the short staffing can be permanent. Adams, the corrections officer beaten at Marshall last year, said he doesn’t remember being attacked. He slipped in and out of consciousness as he was put on a helicopter and flown to a trauma center in Memphis, where doctors diagnosed traumatic brain injury, he said. Surgeons used six slim metal strips to wire together his shattered eye socket, cheek and jaw.

Adams never returned to Marshall. He drives a tow truck now. He says that throbbing pain in his cheek reminds him daily of his three months as a correctional officer.

“I really want somebody to crack down on this prison, because this prison really dropped the ball,” he said. “I should have never been there by myself.”

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Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves asks a question during a meeting of the State Board of Election Commissioners, Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2020, in Jackson, Miss. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

A spokeswoman for Gov. Tate Reeves says Christmas parties planned for the Governor’s Mansion will be “conducted safely” and follow Reeves’ COVID-19 executive orders restricting gatherings across much of the state.

Reeves is hosting several Christmas parties at the Governor’s Mansion, despite warnings from state health experts against such gatherings and the governor’s own orders limiting the number of people allowed at such events.

“The Governor and First Lady have cancelled or delayed many mansion events this year including the 1st Friday Christmas Candlelighters event and their daughter’s 16th birthday party, and have only continued with those events that can be conducted safely — following the governor’s executive orders,” spokeswoman Bailey Martin said in a written statement. “These events — that tend to be smaller and never allow more than 10 participants indoors at a time to see the museum/decorations — are conducted similar to the limited public tours that are offered to the general public.”

As COVID-19 statistics continue to set new records almost by the day, State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs and the health department have warned Mississippians to avoid holiday gatherings beyond closest family and to avoid any groups beyond school, work or “essential gatherings.” Dobbs called the holidays a “perfect storm” for “explosive outbreaks” of COVID-19 and warned, “We will see deaths, absolutely, around holiday gatherings.” Health officials warn that Mississippi hospitals are overloaded with patients as pandemic cases spike to record levels.

Reeves has in recent weeks issued executive orders for 54 of Mississippi’s 82 counties that require wearing of masks in public and limiting gatherings to no more than 10 indoors and no more than 50 outdoors where social distancing is not possible.

An invitation, obtained by Mississippi Today, extended to “a small group of the governor’s friends and biggest supporters” for a party at the Governor’s Mansion.

Reeves has separate parties planned at the mansion for the 52-member Senate and 122-member state House, and for statewide and districtwide elected officials. He also has Christmas receptions planned for “a small group of the governor’s friends and biggest supporters,” Martin said.

This follows a fundraiser held by a hospital executive at his home on the Coast last week for Reeves for more than 20 people.

Reeves has caught some public criticism for planning such events and for being photographed at Republican events in Washington, D.C. and North Carolina while Mississippi was under mask-wearing and crowd limit mandates per his executive orders.

READ MORE: Gov. Tate Reeves plans Christmas parties despite his own orders and record COVID-19 numbers.

Reeves, along with Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, is listed as a headliner for a fundraiser scheduled for Monday at the Westin hotel in Jackson for state Sen. Briggs Hopson of Vicksburg. But a spokeswoman for Hosemann said he is not planning to attend — Reeves might not, either — and Hopson said Tuesday that it might be cancelled.

Gov. Tate Reeves and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann are the listed headliners for a December fundraiser for state Sen. Briggs Hopson.

Hopson said he had “planned the event and sent invitations prior to any recommendations that may have affected gatherings.” He said he is “looking at options on what to do.”

Martin said that Reeves “’hosts’ or ‘headlines’ fundraising efforts for upstanding legislators, of which Senator Hopson certainly tops that list.”

“The Governor does not always or even routinely attend but his involvement on the invite is typically a sign that he supports the work of the person in question, rather than an RSVP to be there.”

The invitation for Hopson’s fundraiser says, “Please join Governor Tate Reeves and Lt. Governor Delbert Hosemann for a reception honoring Senator Briggs Hopson,” with attendance costing from $200 to $2,500, depending on sponsorship levels.

READ MORE: CEO of major Mississippi hospital hosts in-person fundraiser for Gov. Tate Reeves.

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