Mississippi is one of only five states with no time limit on how long District Attorneys can allow people to be detained without indictments – in most Mississippi counties, grand juries meet only 2-3 times each year.
OXFORD, Miss. – The Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Mississippi School of Law released a comprehensive report today identifying more than 5,400 people detained in Mississippi’s county jails. The Center also released a report revealing the infrequency of grand jury proceedings in Mississippi. 2,683 of Mississippi’s pretrial detainees have been in jail longer than 90 days. More than 1,100 have been detained at least nine months, and 747 have been stuck in a county jail over a year. The jail census report captures only a portion of the state’s jail population due to inconsistent reporting from counties, meaning that there are even more people jailed across Mississippi, the vast majority of whom are awaiting indictment and trial. The Center’s grand jury report reveals that more than 67% of Mississippi counties conduct grand jury proceedings no more than two or three times each year.
The MacArthur Justice Center estimates that Mississippi counties spend at least $90 million each year on pretrial incarceration. This is the sixth report on Mississippi’s local jail population issued by the MacArthur Justice Center since April 2018. All six reports and the underlying data can be accessed at www.msjaildata.com. The grand jury frequency report also is posted on the jail data website.
According to Cliff Johnson, director of the MacArthur Justice Center at UM Law, one of the reasons for extended pretrial detention in Mississippi is that the state is one of only five states in America without any time limit on how long a person can be held in jail without being formally indicted by a grand jury. “While other states across the country place limits on how long people can be forced to languish in jail before district attorneys are required to present evidence to a grand jury, Mississippi doesn’t impose any deadline for formal charges. People here are stuck until the prosecutor decides it’s time to move their case along.”
Johnson says the infrequency with which Mississippi grand juries meet contributes to the problem of delays in obtaining indictments. The report issued today shows that in 28 counties a grand jury meets only once or twice each year. In 27 counties, a grand jury meets only once every four months, and in 12 counties only once every three months. “If you get arrested in one of these counties where grand juries seldom meet, you can wind up in jail for months or even years just waiting to be indicted, and you will spend more time behind bars simply because of geographic misfortune.” Johnson estimates that it costs counties less than $5,000 to convene a grand jury and notes that grand juries consider multiple cases each time they meet.
According to Johnson, his office’s interviews with prosecutors and public defenders have revealed frustrations with how long some law enforcement agencies take to conduct investigations and provide prosecutors with evidence needed for grand jury consideration. Johnson says prosecutors also point to delays in obtaining reports from the Mississippi Crime Lab as a reason criminal cases are not presented to a grand jury more quickly.
A recent report by the Vera Institute of Justice shows that the vast majority of the more than 740,000 held in America’s jail are there because they are unable to afford the monetary bail imposed by courts. Studies cited by Vera show that those held in extended pretrial detention are more likely to be convicted and sentenced harshly (due primarily to missing dismissal, diversion, and pleas bargaining opportunities release provides) and more likely to commit future crimes. That report confirms that pretrial detention in the United States increased 433% between 1970 and 2015 – growing from 82,922 people to 441,790. (https://www.vera.org/downloads/publications/Justice-Denied-Evidence-Brief.pdf ).
A 2021 report by the Brookings Institute estimates that individuals suffer almost $30,000 in economic damage when detained in jail while awaiting disposition of their criminal cases. That report also concludes that counties with a high level of pretrial detention exhibit significantly lower levels of intergenerational mobility in later years, consistent with pretrial detention adversely impacting young children. ( https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/BPEASP21_Dobbie-Yang_conf-draft.pdf ).
Johnson concluded, “Mississippi has been addicted to pretrial detention for decades. Many people here can’t even imagine a world where people don’t have to buy their way out of jail so they can get back to their families and jobs while they await their day in court. In fairness to all those folks we lock up before they’re ever convicted of a crime, it’s time we join the rest of the country and place limits on how long our prosecutors can delay seeking an indictment.”
# # #
The Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center is one of the premier public interest law firms in the United States. The firm’s offices are located in Chicago (Northwestern Law School), St. Louis, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and Oxford, Mississippi (University of Mississippi School of Law). The MacArthur Justice Center litigates a wide range of civil rights cases, with particular emphasis in the area of criminal justice. Additional information is available at www.macarthurjustice.org.