PARVEEN KUMAR Wexford Health Sources

Litigation in Mississippi required the Department of Corrections to ameliorate substandard conditions at the supermaximum Unit 32 of Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, remove prisoners with serious mental illness from administrative segregation and provide them with adequate treatment, and reexamine the entire classification system. Pursuant to two federal consent decrees, the Department of Corrections greatly reduced the population in administrative segregation and established a step-down mental health treatment unit for the prisoners excluded from administrative segregation. This article describes and discusses not only the process of enacting the changes but also the outcomes, including the large reductions in rates of misconduct, violence, and use of force. Keywords: supermaximum security; administrative segregation; classification; use of force; mental health step-down unit Between the 1970s and the 1990s, the prison population in the United States multiplied several times over, and prisoners who were suffering from serious mental illness (SMI) grew to a greater proportion of the prison population (U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2006). Meanwhile, and predictably (based on the crowding), correctional facilities experi-enced a sharp rise in rates of misbehavior and violence. In response to what many perceived as unmanageable prisons, departments of correction increasingly turned to lockdown an