Mississippi would take more steps to investigate prison deaths, under a proposal that’s advancing through the Legislature. 

House lawmakers approved a bill that calls for more oversight of prison deaths, legislation inspired by an investigation by Missisisppi Today, The Marshall-Project Jackson, the Clarion Ledger, the Hattiesburg American and The Mississippi Link.

On Tuesday, House Bill 1739 passed unanimously with 120 votes. Next, it heads to the Senate Corrections Committee. 

Senate Corrections Chairman Juan Barnett, a Democrat from Heidelberg, said he planned to review the prison death task force legislation before bringing it up for consideration in his committee. 

“I heard about it, but I haven’t had a chance to look at it,” Barnett said. “I think that’s something that we really need to be looking into more. More oversight, more transparency for the public so they can feel more comfortable and know that if something happens, somebody will be on top of it to make sure that we don’t have any bad actors.”

Rep. Becky Currie, a Brookhaven Republican who filed the legislation and chairs the House Corrections Committee, told lawmakers Tuesday that people continue to die in prison and their cause of death remains unknown. She said that includes the deaths of a 20- and 30-year-old who died last week and two people who died that day. 

The bill would direct and empower the Corrections and Criminal Justice Oversight Task Force to look into “unexpected” deaths using information provided by coroner’s reports and the Mississippi Department of Corrections. 

“A lot of times these deaths don’t get investigated correctly, they’re swept under the rug,” Currie said. “We don’t know if they were suicide, we don’t know if they were drugs. We don’t know if they were killed by another inmate. But I’m a big believer (in) if you don’t know where you’ve been, you can’t figure out where you need to be.”

Unexpected deaths would include those not related to a previously diagnosed or serious terminal illness. Under Currie’s bill, the task force must release a public report describing its findings and recommendations to try to prevent future deaths. 

Currie proposed prison death oversight in response to an investigation by the news outlets. Prison understaffing and gang violence likely led to the killings of nearly 50 people since 2015, the news team found. Of those, eight resulted in criminal convictions. At least 20 deaths remain undetermined. 

Family members of those who died in prison said they received little information from prison officials, and instead had more luck learning from a whisper network of incarcerated people, insiders, advocates, and, in some cases, from journalists. 

Weeks after the news investigation, prison Commissioner Burl Cain told a legislative budget committee and Mississippi Today that the department would review unprosecuted homicides and deaths ruled as undetermined. 

But four months later, there have been no new indictments or convictions in open homicide cases.

Currie’s bill adds members to the task force, including the chairs of the House and Senate Corrections committees,  the Accountability, Efficiency and Transparency committees and the public safety commissioner or a designee. 

Currently, much of the group is Department of Corrections staff, leading to a situation where “MDOC is reviewing themselves,” Currie said.

Rep. Tracey Rosebud, a Democrat from Tutwiler, asked if it was possible for the corrections commissioner to be removed from the task force. Currie said that’s unlikely because the commissioner is the one who would bring information to the task force. 

“All this does is bring transparency, oversight and sunshine to the board,” she said. 

The bill would have to clear the Senate Corrections Committee, be passed by the Senate and signed by the governor to become law.

Michael Goldberg contributed to this report.