Walnut Grove | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

Phoebe Judge: This episode contains descriptions of violence and may not be suitable for everyone.
Please use discretion. Michael McIntosh: Visitation days were on Sunday. And I went to go visit him and when I got there, they told me they didn't know where
he was at. Phoebe Judge: In 2010, Michael Macintosh's son was incarcerated at the Walnut Grove Youth
Correctional Facility in the town of Walnut Grove, Mississippi. His son, who's named after him, had just turned 20.
And on one Sunday, Michael went to visit his son and was told he could not see him because
they didn't know where he was. Michael McIntosh: And I didn't take that as an answer.
I asked to speak to the sergeant or the guard or the captain who's ever in charge.
Then finally, I was told that he wasn't there, but they didn't know where he was at.
And then come back or call and talk to the warden tomorrow, which was a Monday, and maybe
they can answer my questions. Phoebe Judge: So that's what Michael did, calling every phone number he could find until
he finally got to the warden's answering machine on Monday. He left a message. Michael McIntosh: The warden didn't call me back until that Wednesday.
And then he said, Mr. McIntosh, I hear you've got a problem. I say, "Yeah, my problem is I can't find my son."
[Music comes in.] And then the warden said, "Well, I don't know where he's at. So, you should call the Mississippi Department of Correction."
Phoebe Judge: Michael's son was sentenced to Walnut Grove because the facility was designated
as a place for youth offenders who had committed very serious crimes. He'd been incarcerated there for about three months before his father showed up for visitation
that day and realized his son was missing. So here Michael was, now trying to find his son in hospitals.
Michael McIntosh: I was so frustrated. I didn't know what to do. And then I thought about it.
I said, maybe I'm asking the wrong question. None of them recognize him as Michael McIntosh.
They recognize him as a number, because he was still considered an inmate. Phoebe Judge: He tried the University of Mississippi Hospital again and asked them if there were
any inmates getting medical treatment. He was referred to security. Michael McIntosh: And then the guard said, "Well, Mr. McIntosh, he's right here."
And I said, "Well, I want to see him." And he said, "Well, we can't authorize you to see him, but you can call the Mississippi
Department of Corrections, talk to the medical center, and they can authorize you," so that's
what I did. And when I called them that very next day, I told them I was looking for my son.
Once again, they said, "We don't know where he's at." I said, "Well, I do. He's in the hospital.
He's down at UMC. I want to go see him." So they said, "We'll call you back." Phoebe Judge: They did call back.
They didn't tell Michael why his son was being treated, but they did say he would be permitted
to visit his son the following Wednesday at 1 p.m. Michael McIntosh: So I waited a whole week.
The next Wednesday, I went to go see him, and when I got to the hospital, they said,
"Mr. McIntosh, he is no longer here. They moved them yesterday." It took me roughly, almost about another week and a half before I realized they moved him
two and a half hours away, to Greenwood Leflore Hospital. Phoebe Judge: Michael began calling every phone number he could find for that hospital.
And finally, the chaplain spoke with him and said he could help. Michael McIntosh: And he did.
He got me a two hour window, and the first time I seen my son has been six and a half
weeks later. [Music ends, new music comes in.] I stood at the end of the bed. He can hear my voice.
They said my voice was the only thing he recognized since he'd been in the hospital.
They wouldn't tell me, believe it or not, the hospital wouldn't even tell me what they
were treating him for because they had to get authorization from Mississippi Department
of Correction medical staff in order to even tell me. Phoebe Judge: Eventually, the Department of Corrections granted the hospital permission
to tell Michael what was going on. [Music fades out.] Michael McIntosh: My son had a few stab wounds, he had stitches.
They were more concerned about his brain injury, because they said it was very severe.
That's why even when he was in the hospital, they told me not to hold him because he was
in some bad condition. No use of the right arm, no use of the right leg. His sight was almost gone.
And they said this was all related to the injury. The few stab wounds, they said they took care of that.
The fractured nose they were still working, letting that heal. It was nerve wracking to sit there knowing I was helpless and couldn't do nothing about
it. Phoebe Judge: Investigators found that his injuries stemmed from a fight that had occurred
at Walnut Grove. The investigation report states that the Walnut Grove prison guards did not intervene to stop
the fight. And in fact, they, "Endorsed the disturbance." And then they tried to cover it up by falsifying log entries.
And Michael McIntosh believes the reason it took six and a half weeks of searching to
find his son is because the prison didn't want the public to know how bad things had
gotten at Walnut Grove. Michael McIntosh: The way the story came back to me, I can't verify because I wasn't there,
but they said there was a riot broke out. They got anybody that was on the site and anybody in the area, it was almost like bees
swarming. Whatever's in the way, that's what we're demolishing. So that's how all these young men got hurt.
Phoebe Judge: When the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional facility opened in 2001, it promised
to be a safe, rehabilitative place for very troubled youth offenders. The youngest was just 13 years old.
But by 2012, Walnut Grove was the most violent prison in the entire state of Mississippi.
One judge wrote that what happened at Walnut Grove, "Paints a picture of such horror as
should be unrealized anywhere in the civilized world." [Music comes in.] Today, we have the story of a juvenile prison.
The people who ran it, the small town that relied on it, and how everything went so horribly
wrong. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. When the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional facility opened, it housed 350 offenders, ages 13 to
19 who had been tried as adults. [Music fades out.]. The prison's population more than tripled as they steadily increased capacity.
And by 2011, it was the largest juvenile facility in the U.S. It's about an hour from Jackson,
Mississippi, in the very small town of Walnut Grove. And as you can imagine, the people in town were not excited about the arrival of a prison.
Russell Baty: I will say that at first, residents didn't want a prison. You think about a prison and, I don't know if we want that in our backyard.
But they begin to accept it. Phoebe Judge: This is Russell Baty, Director of the Main Street Chamber of Leake County.
That's basically their version of the Chamber of Commerce. He says Walnut Grove had historically been a manufacturing town.
Russell Baty: But as the plants closes and as things have changed, it needed that boost.
Linda Bounds: Walnut Grove has always been a friendly, small, community-type town and
there was not a lot of jobs. Well, at one point there was when manufacturing was big, but after that phased out, there
was not a lot of jobs in town. Phoebe Judge: This is Linda Bounds. She's been the librarian at the Walnut Grove Library for almost 30 years.
Linda Bounds: Some people were against the prison moving in here just because it is a
prison and prisons get a lot of bad rep, I guess you could say. And they were kind of opposed to it, but it did bring a lot of jobs for a lot of people,
and it brought a lot of good things for Walnut Grove. Phoebe Judge: The prison became the largest employer in town.
Kashia Zollicoffer was just a kid in 2001, but remembers when her mother got a job as
a corrections officer. Kashia Zollicoffer: My mom, she worked with the one in the first group of people that
worked in the facility. The facility helped us be able to financially survive, so the facility being built here
brought a big opportunity for a lot of people. Phoebe Judge: As Kashia grew up, she noticed the prison brought a lot of people into town
— parents visiting their kids, but also vendors and contractors and teachers. Kashia opened a restaurant, Urban Country Kitchen, and right from the start, she had
regulars. Kashia Zollicoffer: Well, I was on Hell's Kitchen, season 12, so I've been trying to
get my foot out there with my own restaurant and get my name out there. So when the facility came that kind of put Walnut Grove on the map, a lot of people came
here to visit, which brought new attractions, which led me to find this restaurant and show
interest in purchasing it. Phoebe Judge: In addition to creating a lot of jobs, the prison paid the town about $180,000
a year in lieu of taxes. Over the years, that money funded new sidewalks, a new library, a new fire department, and
enabled the town to move to a 24-hour police force. So, even though many residents hadn't liked the idea of the prison moving to Walnut Grove,
it actually ended up turning things around for the whole town. Russell Baty: I dare anybody to ride through the city of Walnut Grove, and you look at
all of the things that a lot of small towns would be envious of. That beautiful new library, that fire station there, a nice city hall.
A lot of towns with a population of 500 people would be envious of those things.
And a lot of that is because of money generated from the prison. Phoebe Judge: The prison didn't just generate money for the town of Walnut Grove, it generated
money for a whole lot of other people. [Music comes in.]. The state built the building and private companies managed operations at the prison.
It changed operators several times. In 2003, it was taken over by Cornell Companies.
In 2010, Cornell Companies was acquired by the second-largest for-profit prison company
in the country, GEO Group. GEO Group made all the operational choices — food vendors, medical vendors, uniforms
— and their biggest expense was staffing the prison with correctional officers. The corporation decided how many guards to hire, how much to train them, and what they
would be paid. These decisions are subject to oversight from the state. In theory, this private model allows a prison to operate at a lower cost.
It makes money for the corporation running it and boosts the local economy of a town
like Walnut Grove along the way. But that's not what happened. Jody Owens: We first learned of the issues related to Walnut Grove because we would get
complaints from families, from clergy, from members of the community about just some really
horrific events that were happening. That people were being extorted, people were being raped, sexual assault, people were being
left alone when they committed to hurting themselves and subsequently did take their
own lives. [Music fades out.] Phoebe Judge: This is Jody Owens. He leads the Mississippi office of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and first visited Walnut
Grove in 2009. Jody Owens: So what we did as a result was launched an investigation internally.
Once we got into place, we couldn't leave. Everyone had something to tell us about what was happening in this hell hole.
Phoebe Judge: In November of 2010, Jody Owens and the Southern Poverty Law Center filed
a lawsuit against the Mississippi Department of Corrections, alleging a culture of violence
and corruption that endangered the young people incarcerated at Walnut Grove. Jody Owens: You had children as young as 14 and 15 years in the prison who were there,
were growing up essentially where they would have been in grade school or 9th or 10th grade,
they were growing up in the prison. And what we would find is that drugs, contraband were rampant.
Sanctioned fighting between other residents of the facility were a normal event.
Abuse and overuse of force and Mace by the guards was something that we would see on
a regular basis. There were these sanctioned riot-like events called "flipping the pod" where it would just
be a battle royale. I don't want you to think of just a fight, I want you to think of people getting knocked
unconscious and teeth being knocked from people's mouth. All the while the question everyone would ask is: where are the guards?
Where are the people who are supposed to be protecting the most vulnerable population
we have, our kids? And they were nowhere to be found. Phoebe Judge: What were the racial demographics of Walnut Grove?
Jody Owens: Mississippi's prison system as a whole is predominantly African American.
Mississippi has approximately about 65% Caucasian population to a 35% African-American population.
And the prison rate would be upward of easily 75%. And that goes into a larger problem as well.
You can't talk about prisons without talking about who's there and how they got there,
and what do the people look like. Phoebe Judge: And Walnut Grove was mostly African American.
Jody Owens: Absolutely. Phoebe Judge: When Jody was investigating the prison in 2010, about 80% of the 1,200
youth offenders were African American. And he found that there was a documented lack of mental health and educational services.
Not even half the inmates were in school and there were just not enough guards. There was only one correctional officer for every 60 inmates.
The recommended ratio is one guard for every eight inmates. Things had gotten out of control.
Guards were caught smuggling in weapons and drugs and coercing inmates have sex in exchange
for food or phone privileges. There were widespread reports of rape, stabbings, beatings, and other acts of violence.
Inmates reported organized gladiator-style fights that were encouraged by the guards.
Sometimes the guards bet money on the outcomes. Jody Owens: One involved an individual who, his brothers or his gang got out the pod and
he was there by himself. And he was beat savagely for approximately about 12 minutes.
He was stabbed more than 100 times. He was urinated on. There's a video of microwaves being dropped on his head as he sat there, and his clothes
were just soaked with blood. And what was so sad about this instance is that the control tower that looked down upon
this pod had an opening where the guards were supposed to be able to shoot a canister for
emergency purposes — smokescreen, tear gas to quell a disturbance if this happened.
[Music comes in.]. But unfortunately, the guards were not trained properly to do so, so they shot the tear gas
in the control tower. It didn't go into the pod. So what you see in the video is that the control tower fills with smoke and the beatings continue
and continue and continue. You see people taking these knives and these punches and these punches,
all on video. It's something no human should ever have to endure, particularly a human that's in the
custody and control of a state. Phoebe Judge: Did the man survive? Jody Owens: He did survive.
He did survive. I'm pretty sure he lost his eye, but he survived. If this happens to someone in the free world, near me or near you, we'd be talking about
it every day. It would be on the six o'clock news, it'd be on Fox News, CNN. It'd be going viral.
But because these things happen in prison, they don't make it to the public. [Music fades out.]
Phoebe Judge: Much of the documented abuse took place under the management of Cornell
Companies, which no longer exists because it was acquired by GEO Group. In its complaint, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote, "Defendant GEO has a policy,
which began years ago under Cornell, of under-staffing the prison. The under-staffing creates violent conditions that subject youth to serious and sometimes
permanent injury." We reached out to GEO Group for comment, and they emailed a statement from their spokesman,
Pablo Paez, that reads, "At GEO, we do not believe in cost cutting for profit's sake.
Instead, we believe in running an efficient operation that provides adequate staffing
and relies on state-of-the-art technology for monitoring, communication, and healthcare."
[Music comes in.] In October of 2010, the Department of Justice launched a formal investigation into the conditions
at Walnut Grove. They reviewed videos, injury lists, death reports, and even the floor plans.
They interviewed between 300 and 400 youth offenders. They also interviewed prison staff.
Jeremy Belk: Was there violence? Absolutely. As with any institution, prison facility.
Was it worse than your average facility? I would say no. I may be a little bit biased.
I haven't been in a lot of prisons over my course of my working career. Phoebe Judge: This is Jeremy Belk.
He was trained as a chaplain and worked as an alcohol and drug counselor at Walnut Grove.
He was promoted to fire and safety manager and later promoted again to facility investigator.
[Music fades out.] What was it like to work there, to work at the prison when it was being investigated
by the DOJ? Jeremy Belk: I guess it could be considered awkward. You didn't know if you were going to have a job six months down the road.
It was disheartening to me personally, and to other people. The prison got a lot of flak for some things that were purported to have happened.
And unfortunately, when you're in this line of work, you never get to tell your side of
the story. You only get a skewed view because it's mainly coming from a complaint from a parent or from
an inmate who was at the facility. So the view is certainly skewed. These were not children who disobeyed their parents.
These were, many times, hardened criminals. And many times they were very respectful, but many times they had a problem with society,
and it was society's fault for them being there, and they were going to punish anyone
that was around them, including other inmates. Phoebe Judge: What was it like working there?
How were the employees and guards treated? Did you make a good salary? Jeremy Belk: Well, of course there's always room for bigger and better salaries, but I
think it was comparable to — maybe a little bit better than — most of your work in the
area. The staff is just your typical staff. There were people there who did their jobs and who wanted to excel in their line of work,
and then also you had some bad apples, as well. Phoebe Judge: Guards that weren't operating correctly?
Jeremy Belk: Yes. Phoebe Judge: And you were responsible for stopping them or citing them.
Jeremy Belk: Sure. Any facility in this country or any other country, you're going to have people who are
there to, I guess, take advantage of the situation, unfortunately. Phoebe Judge: I heard this over and over when I talked to people in the town of Walnut Grove.
That yes, some guards were abusive, but no worse than any other place. Yes, there were riots in the prison, just like many other prisons in the country.
The town felt like it was being unfairly singled out. Linda Bounds: I felt like they were eager to tell all the bad news, and there was a
lot of good going on. Phoebe Judge: Linda Bounds. What about the people who say, wait a second, this town is improving because of a place
where there's reports of inmates getting hurt. Linda Bounds: It is a prison and you're going to have problems in a prison.
And so I felt like they had, like I say, I knew that there would be problems in a prison.
Russell Baty: This isn't Sunday School. Phoebe Judge: Russell Baty. Russell Baty: So you're housing incarcerated people, so yes, you're going to have an issue
from time to time. Jody Owens: No one thinks that prisons should be a Club Med. Phoebe Judge: Jody Owens.
Jody Owens: And should be this vacation. But if it ever is your loved one in the prison that your prayer is that they will be free
of torture and abuse. They can sleep at night without worrying about somebody coming in their cell with a knife.
And I don't think the public appreciates just how this system is run and what accountability
looks like. Because if we're asking for, if you do the crime, you pay the time. Well, what does that mean?
Does that mean that time means that you're restricted or does that time mean for the
entire time you're there, every day, every second, every minute you have to be abused
— and to do so that it impacts you as a person that's permanent? Phoebe Judge: On March 20th, 2012, the Department of Justice completed its 18-month investigation
of Walnut Grove, concluding that the inmates were not receiving constitutionally adequate
protection. Their report states that the sexual misconduct was among the worst that they had seen in
any facility in the nation. Staff was routinely engaging in sexual acts with the youth.
Excessive force was a first response, not a last resort. Officers brutally reacted to low level aggression — like abusive language or passive resistance
to an order — by slamming youth head-first into the ground, slapping, beating, and kicking
them. A federal judge wrote, "Those youth, some of whom are mere children, are at risk every
minute, every hour, every day," and ordered that all offenders under the age of 17 be
moved out of Walnut Grove. [Music comes in.] And less than a month after that report came out, the state of Mississippi did not renew
its contract with the corporation operating the prison, GEO Group. Walnut Grove became an adult-only facility and a Utah-based company called MTC took over
its operations. Last August, in a move that made national news, the Department of Justice announced
that it would phase out its contracts with private prisons. The memo read, "Private prisons served an important role during a difficult period.
But time has shown that they compare poorly to our own bureau facilities." But this move only impacts federal prisons.
It won't impact the vast majority of private prisons in this country, which are operated
at the state level. And yet the next month, in September of 2016, the Mississippi Department of Corrections
shut down the Walnut Grove Correctional Facility. The stated reason was budget cuts and a decreasing prison population.
The decision was made without any communication with the town itself. [Music fades out.]
[News clip.] Brian Gomillion: Oh, I'm absolutely mad. I think that the governor has an unleashed rabid dog running the Department of Corrections.
Newscaster: Walnut Grove Mayor Brian Gomillion is furious at Commissioner Marshall Fisher
and the Mississippi Department of Corrections after hearing on the news that the state was
closing his town's privately managed prison after 14 years. Brian Gomillion: It's a sad day.
Your largest employer is shut down and your state government does not bother to tell you
they're about to do that. [News clip ends.] Phoebe Judge: Mayor Gomillion did not respond to our request for an interview.
The 900 remaining inmates were moved to other prisons, and now the facility sits empty,
just a three-minute drive from downtown. It's one of the biggest buildings I've ever seen.
Jeremy Belk: And it's just sitting there and there's no, there's no hustle and bustle.
Phoebe Judge: Jeremy Belk, the man who worked at the prison for five years. Jeremy Belk: I've always said, there's no way they're going to close this facility.
It's needed, it's too new. It would be a tremendous burden for it to close, for the taxpayers of the state.
And I was shocked. I did not believe it. Phoebe Judge: It feels like maybe these people just got picked up and what was once a bustling
place is now completely ... the signs are still here. Everything is here, except there's no people.
Jeremy Belk: That's correct, and that's essentially what happened when the decision was made.
Within about a month, maybe five weeks, they picked all the inmates up and closed its doors.
Phoebe Judge: In its wake, the prison left the town of Walnut Grove in even worst shape
financially than it was before. The library can only afford to be open 20 hours a week now.
City offices are only open four days a week. Police officers have taken a pay cut of $2 an hour.
Everyone's utility bills have gone up to compensate for the loss of the town's biggest customer.
And the 200 some-odd jobs that the prison created have all been lost. Jeremy Belk: You are standing downtown Walnut Grove.
This is in the absolute epicenter of the town. Phoebe Judge: So this is the busiest place that you could be in Walnut Grove?
Jeremy Belk: This is it. This is it, and there's one vehicle on Main Street. Phoebe Judge: Would that have been the case before the prison closed?
Jeremy Belk: No. At shift change, there was an absolute traffic jam here on Main Street, so it's completely
different. It is certainly a lot quieter than it was this time last year. Phoebe Judge: You really can kind of stand in the middle of Main Street here.
Jeremy Belk: You can. Phoebe Judge: [Laughs.] Literally stand in the middle of it.
Jeremy Belk: You can stand here for quite a while, actually. Phoebe Judge: Nobody wants to admit that they're disappointed that a prison closed, especially
one as bad as Walnut Grove. But the thing is, there are a lot of people in the town of Walnut Grove right now who
don't really know what to do. Jeremy Belk has opened a food pantry to make sure people in town have enough to eat.
Jeremy Belk: Well, we have our share of elderly, and I'm seeing a lot of my ex-coworkers come
through. Phoebe Judge: People who worked at the prison? Jeremy Belk: People who worked at the prison, absolutely.
Phoebe Judge: How has been — how's the response been? Jeremy Belk: Unbelievable.
Lots of not-so-dry eyes when we're here. Very, very thankful people. Lots of gratitude for doing this.
[Music comes in.] Phoebe Judge: You must feel so relieved that Walnut Grove is closed down now.
Michael McIntosh: Well, I'm relieved because the young men that were there were basically
living in barbaric conditions. They was a prey to the older ones that was there, and there was no relief.
You send those young people there and they are so charged up, you wonder if they ever
can get back down. Phoebe Judge: Michael McIntosh, the man we met at the beginning of the story who spent
weeks searching for his son. Michael McIntosh: So to have it close, I thought it was a good thing because I realized, as
I was walking through this process and learning quite a bit from going through this process,
that anytime you start putting rehabilitation against profits and profits win, rehabilitation
never occurs. It's hard enough to even try to get rehabilitation from a prison system that's even running correctly.
So imagine the ones that's out for profit, they're cutting corners, they're not caring.
They got a lot of lapses in it, and then you want rehabilitation. It was never going to happen.
So to have this place close and know that these kids might have a better chance, especially
not from that place, I'm all for it. Phoebe Judge: Michael's son is out of prison now, working and trying to go back to school.
He's gone through a lot of physical therapy. His cognition has improved, but he still can't remember things sometimes.
His father says he may never recover from that. [Music fades out.] While Michael McIntosh and the Southern Poverty Law Center see the closure of Walnut Grove
as a victory, the private prison industry on the whole is doing pretty well. Walnut Grove's former operator, GEO Group, manages a lot of other prisons in this country,
and also in Australia, South Africa, and the UK. The other major private prison operator in this country is called the Corrections Corporation
of America, also known as CCA. They recently rebranded as CoreCivic. And these are publicly traded companies.
A large chunk of their shares are held by investment funds that pool people's money.
[Music comes in.] Like Vanguard, Wells Fargo, or Fidelity. So if you have a 401(k) or invest in mutual funds, you could have a stake in the private
prison industry without even knowing it. The day after the election, CCA was the best-performing stock on the New York Stock Exchange.
It rose 43%. GEO Group rose 21%. Some have speculated the spike was in response to President-Elect Trump's comments about
detaining undocumented immigrants. He also said in March, "I do think we can do a lot of privatizations and private prisons.
It seems to work a lot better." Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohrer, Nadia Wilson, and me.
Audio mix by Rob Byers. Alice Wilder is our intern. Special thanks to Russ Henry and Sam Turkin.
Julienne Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com, where we've put links to various things about Walnut
Grove and the Department of Justice report. We're on Facebook and Twitter, @CriminalShow.
Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collection of the best podcasts around.
Radiotopia from PRX is supported by the Knight Foundation and MailChimp, celebrating creativity,
chaos, and teamwork. Thanks to Adzerk for providing their ad-serving platform to Radiotopia.
I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. [Music ends.] Jingle: Radiotopia. From PRX.

In 2010, Michael McIntosh’s son was incarcerated at the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility in the small town of Walnut Grove, Mississippi. One Sunday, Michael McIntosh went to visit his son and was turned away because, he was told, prison officials “did not know” where his son was. He spent the next six weeks searching for his son, only to find him in the hospital with severe injuries. And Michael McIntosh’s son wasn’t the only one who had been hurt at the facility.

Jody Owens, of the Southern Poverty Law Center (https://www.splcenter.org/), launched an investigation and found that Walnut Grove was such a violent prison that one Federal Judge called it “a cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts.” Today, we have the story of an especially troubled youth prison, the for-profit corporation, Cornell Companies, that managed it, and the small town that relied on it.

The U.S. Department of Justice Investigation of the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility: https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2012/04/09/walnutgrovefl.pdf

The Southern Poverty Law Center Lawsuit: https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/d6_legacy_files/downloads/case/cb_v_walnut_grove_complaint.pdf

The U.S. Department of Justice Memo Re: Reducing the Use of Private Prisons: https://www.justice.gov/opa/file/886311/download

Music in the episode: “Highway to the Stars” by Kai Engel “Dropped Ticket” by Blue Dot Sessions “Old Bernie Blues” by David Szesztay “The Caspian Sea” by Blue Dot Sessions “A Calendar Spread” by Blue Dot Sessions “Lacquer Groove” by Blue Dot Sessions “Under the Stairs Instrumental Version” by Josh Woodward “Wahre” by Blue Dot Sessions “In Passage” by Blue Dot Sessions

Criminal is a show about people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. Hosted by Phoebe Judge. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. https://link.chtbl.com/n33u0HsA

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Episode transcripts are posted on our website https://thisiscriminal.com/.

Episode 58 originally published 1/6/2017 https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-59-in-plain-sight-1-20-2017

Brief Summary

Michael McIntosh searches for his son injured in a violent Mississippi youth prison, revealing systemic abuse and corruption before its closure.

Key points

A Father's Desperate Search. Michael McIntosh's relentless quest to find his son in a youth correctional facility.
The Horrors of Walnut Grove. An investigation reveals severe abuse and violence in the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility.
Federal Judge's Warning. A federal judge highlighted the risks faced by youth in the facility, prompting urgent action.
Walnut Grove's Closure. The Mississippi Department of Corrections shut down the Walnut Grove Correctional Facility, citing budget cuts.
Impact on Walnut Grove. The closure of the prison left the town in financial distress, losing its largest employer.
Michael McIntosh's Hope. Michael McIntosh reflects on the closure as a chance for better rehabilitation for youth.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I can't find my son.

Michael McIntosh expressing his frustration about his son's whereabouts.

1:28WatchDec 3, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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